A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
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* Normal_Anomaly
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A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
- The Worst Argument in the World
- That Alien Message
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Planning Fallacy
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site!
Once a post gets over 500 comments, the site stops showing them all by default. If this post has 500 comments and you have 20 karma, please do start the next welcome post; a new post is a good perennial way to encourage newcomers and lurkers to introduce themselves. (Step-by-step, foolproof instructions here; takes <180seconds.)
If there's anything I should add or update on this post (especially broken links), please send me a private message—I may not notice a comment on the post.
Finally, a big thank you to everyone that helped write this post via its predecessors!
An excellent way to stop people from being killed is to make them strong or get them protected by someone who is strong. Strong in a broad sense here, from courage to coolness under pressure etc.
Here is a problem. To be a strong protector correlates with having the kind of transphobic and so on, long list of anti-social justice stuff or bigotry, because that list reduces to either disliking weakness or distrusting difference / having strong ingroup loyalty, and there is a relationship between these (a tribal warrior would have all).
Here is a solution. Basically moderate, reciprocal bigotocracy. Accept a higher-status, somewhat elevated i.e. clearly un-equal social role of the strong protector type i.e. that of traditional men, in return for them actively protecting all the other groups from coming to serious harm. The other groups will have to accept having lower social status, and it will be hard on their pride, but will be safer. This can be made official and perhaps more palatable by conscripting straight males, everybody claiming genderqueer status getting an exemption, and also after the service expecting some kind of community protection role, in return for higher elevated social status and respect. Note: this would be the basic model of most European countries up to the most recent times, status-patriarchy and male privilege explicitly deriving from the sacrifice of conscription.
This is not easy to swallow. However there seem to be not many other options. You cannot have strong protectors who are 100% PC because then they will have no fighting spirit. Without strong protectors, all you can hope is a utopia and hoping the whole Earth adopts it or else any basic tribe with gusto will take you over.
But I think a compromise model of not 100% complete equality and providing a proctor role in return should be able to work, as this has always been the traditional civilized model. In the recent years it was abandoned due to it being oppressive, and perhaps it was, but perhaps there is a way to find a compromise inside it.
Policeman don't need fighting spirit to be able to go after violent criminals. Being PC is no problem for them.