Today's post, Something to Protect was originally published on 30 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Many people only start to grow as a rationalist when they find something that they care about more than they care about rationality itself. It takes something really scary to cause you to override your intuitions with math.
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Trust in Bayes, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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The difference in my reaction when reading this post before and after I found my something to protect is rather remarkable. Before, it was well-written and interesting, but fundamentally distinct from my experience-- rather like listening to people talk about theoretical physics. Now, when I read it, my feeling of determination is literally physical. It's quite odd.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Feel free to share what is that something you found to protect.