All of SystemsGuy's Comments + Replies

Thank you for the welcome!

I will review CFAR, as at a glace it has some significant clients and at least some success.

There are no meetups near me, it seems.

I appreciate the feedback.

Thank you for the welcome!

This site is unusually populated with internal links -- that must take some discipline for the posters (and either good search tools or good memories, or both!).

I will review your links, and I much appreciate your sharing.

Hi all. I'm a seasoned engineer, BSEE plus MS in Systems Engineering, with a couple of decades in electronics systems architecture, team management, and now organization management. I'm a big picture guy who can still somewhat do the math, but not really much anymore (ahhh, back in the day.......). Myers-Briggs says I'm an INTJ.

I've had some classes and additional practical experience in decision theory, statistics, communications theory, motivation, common biases and fallacies, utility, and such basics. I am beset with an interest in almost everything... (read more)

2ChristianKl
If you have a specific problem that you want to get solved that you think fits the website, feel free to open a thread in discussion. But I don't think there's no problem solving. Out of the first site at the moment there are: 1) Request for suggestions: ageing and data-mining (The thread is about chosing how the OP focuses his scientific research which is a practical problem) 2) Breaking the vicious cycle (Solving a community problem, that important for some members) 3)The Centre for Effective Altruism is hiring to fill five roles in research, operations and outreach (Recruitment is a clear practical problem) 4) I just increased my Altruistic Effectiveness and you should too (Shares a practical technique about increasing the size of donations) 5) Shop for Charity: how to earn proven charities 5% of your Amazon spending in commission (Practical technique for increasing money going to charity) 6) Memory Improvement: Mnemonics, Tools, or Books on the Topic? (Sharing of practical techniques) 7) I Want To Believe: Rational Edition (Sharing of practical techniques) 8) Financial Effectiveness Repository (Sharing of practical techniques) 9) How to build the skill and the habit of experimentation? (Sharing of practical techniques) I don't consider that a bad output.
5Vaniver
Welcome! Function follows form; a forum website mostly leads to forum-style discussions. But other things are going on in forms that are more conductive to action verbs, like physical meetups or workshops run by CFAR. (And the changes mostly happen in the lives of people reading the site, like you could see in the bragging threads or rationality diaries.)

Once I held passing interest in Mensa, thinking that an org of super-smart people would surely self-organize to impact the world (positively perhaps, but taking it over as a gameboard for the new uberkind would work too). I was disappointed to learn that mostly Mensa does little, and when they get together in meatspace it is for social mixers and such. I also looked at Technocracy, which seemed like a reasonable idea, and that was different but no better.

Now I'm a few decades on in my tech career, and I have learned that most technical problems are reall... (read more)

Some individuals (and I presume more here than most venues) struggle with any internal inconsistency, while others readily compartmentalize and move on. I am an engineer by training and of course most of my workmates are engineers, yet they represent a variety of religions as well. Most have some questions and doubts about their own, and plenty more about others, and yet that doesn't make a huge difference for day-to-day life.

Some would quickly conclude that such an engineer's judgement is questionable, and discount their work, but most seem to be adequa... (read more)

First post, so I'll be brief on my opinion. I would say "it depends". To communicate between people and even to clarify one's own thoughts, a formal language, with an appropriate lexicon and symbols, is a key facilitator.

As for desirability of audience, the About page says "Less Wrong is an online community for discussion of rationality", with nothing about exclusivity. I would suggest that if a topic is of the sort that newbies and lay people would read, then English is better; if more for the theorists, then math is fine.