This just happened to me, but I think it's based on where you post from. I haven't posted all that much, and recalled there being a choice of where to post. The last time I did this, I clicked "Save and Continue" but it posted to Discussion.

I quickly opened my post, clicked edit, clicked the button to see raw html, selected and copied all of it, and then deleted the post (it wasn't ready in the least).

As an idea, I went to LW proper, clicked on "Submit an Article" and saw the familiar box at the bottom that let me choose "Submit to jwhendy drafts."

So... long story short is that if you want to draft, create the article from the top level area and it will let you submit it as a draft; from what I've seen the Discussion area has nos such feature and thus both "Submit" and "Save and Continue" appear to do the same thing, except that "Save and Continue" leaves the window open despite having just an actual article.

Hope that helps.

Edit: Oh, and one last time in case it wasn't clear... what I'm really saying is that I don't think Discussion has a draft option at all.

My understanding that the est of the 70's employed a fairly confrontational format. Do you feel that helped the learning process by making it more personal? I have talked to folks who drew a lot out of the training but weren't fans of the est organization (the group, that is, not the format of the training).

I've done a personal development course, about 18 years ago I think, which originated in the 1970s (around the same time as est, and also in California), called More To Life, and previously called The Life Training. I've quoted the two co-founders, Brad Brown (who died a few years ago) and Roy Whitten, on the quotes threads a few times. The emphasis is on noticing and getting to the truth of things. Noticing feelings, especially negative ones, seeing what happened that one responded to in that way, getting at the beliefs that produced that response, and judging the truth or falsity of those beliefs. In the years since then, I've also done some of the further courses they offer to those who have done the basic course.

I find the experience very valuable, although I can't point to anything specific in my life that I can say directly follows from it.

MBTI I have less of a feeling for. I've done online versions a few times, but apart from the I (no surprise to me there), I never remember what the rest of my classification was or what the other dimensions are. It's all Greek astrology to me. I already get the idea that other people cannot be understood as carbon copies of myself (which is what passes for "theory of mind" among a great many people), and take them as I find them.

I used to have a button that said "If you haven't changed your mind lately, how do you know you've still got one?" I really liked that sentiment.

It's very easy to get comfortable with our opinions and beliefs, and uncomfortable about any challenge to them. As I've posted elsewhere, we often identify our "selves" with our "beliefs", as if they "were" us. Once we can separate our idea of "self" as different from "that which our self currently believes", it becomes easier to entertain other thoughts, and challenges from others, to our beliefs and opinions. If we are comfortable and secure in our own selves, then we can discuss dispassionately the ideas that contradict what we have previously held to be true. It is the only way that we can learn, that we can take in new and different ideas without that being a blow to our ego. Identifying our selves with our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, blocks us, threatens us, so that we get stuck with our old ways of doing things and framing things, and we don't grow and change with ease.

I'm brand new to Less Wrong, and very pleased that I found a topic right away that I have given a great deal of thought to already, since it's affected me throughout my life. I grew up with a mother who was constantly critical, and stingy or withholding of praise, with the result that my sister and I, who are both in our late 40s, still converse about the negative affect that my mother had on us when it comes to making mistakes, and attempting to do new things.

I used to feel that I was being scolded because I didn't know something I "ought to have known" in advance. I'm not referring to breaking some established rule in the family. I'm talking about being blindsided by sudden harsh words in a loud volume about something I had never heard about or considered before, something that I had had the nerve to "get wrong." This happened often enough that I began thinking that I had better not try to do things unless I knew EVERYTHING there was to know BEFORE I took any action. This, not surprisingly, had the affect of paralyzing me into inaction, fearing the reprisals for "mistakes", and of course, the judgment about what was right and what was wrong was based on what my mother thought about the issue, which was largely subjective.

As my sister and I got older, we began challenging my mother about her views and how she spoke to us. She was quite unhappy about being challenged by her daughters, who had once been so docile and albeit unhappily, accepting of her criticism and punishment. I did many years of therapy, starting in my early teens, I also read many books and articles about and took several courses in psychology, and did the est training (a personal growth seminar) in 1983. My sister and I both eventually came to the understanding that not only do you not have to know everything about an endeavor before embarking upon it, you CAN'T know what you need to know EXCEPT in the process of doing it. There is a reason it's called "trial and error". You don't learn anything when you know how to do something and get it right the first time. You learn when you make mistakes, and you find that you need to keep working at getting it, yes, "less wrong".

My son who is 15 now, is in his first year of High School at both his neighborhood HS and at an engineering program at a local magnet HS. His class had a project that incorporated their biology and engineering principles coursework that was due in January. They were assigned teams, and had to come up with a hemodialysis machine. There is a company that supplies the school with a synthetic blood, which is filled with a substrate, and the teacher provides a selection of components the kids have to use in their design. The team has to prove that their device filters the distillate material out of the synthetic blood.

Matthew told me that all the other teams designed a machine, and stuck to their original design, whereas he kept experimenting and coming up with different designs. His team didn't do any of the designing, they saw that Matthew knew how to take charge, and he just delegated to them the tasks that would assist him in completing the machine. They got very concerned that he kept changing his design, but when they asked him why he was doing that, he just said "I have to get it right, and until it's right, I won't use the design." He had the team present the paper explaining the machine they finally built, and he demonstrated how it worked. They got a 95%. I am very proud of him. I have worked hard on raising him without the same mistakes that my mother made (so I've given him a bunch of different mistakes ;) ) He has always been told that it's not only OK to make mistakes, they are necessary stepping stones on the pathway towards accomplishment and knowledge.

I've heard people claim that leaving a job in less than a year looks very bad on the resume. True?