All of simplestudent's Comments + Replies

"Our reality is a cheap, sloppy hack with lots of bugs. For instance, if you arrange sufficiently similar objects into a pentagon, they lose 6.283% of their mass. Yes, that's twice pi, I'm not sure why but I think it's an uninitialized pointer reference. Arranging electrical conductors into a trapezohedron like this produces free energy in the form of photons. And there's a few frequencies of light that simply don't exist; emissions that should come out at those points on the spectrum instead roll over the particle counter and come out as neutrinos."

3listic
How does the AI know?

Can you explain this? PM or email if necessary-- asimplestudent at gmail

-2[anonymous]
I want to know what you are talking about too. My email is twistortheory at gmail. Thanks.

I have more time than I need at present, even allowing for various frivolous pursuits and time allocated for social interaction, eating, etc. I have the unique luxury of having a very flexible schedule, and am not close to filling that schedule anytime soon. Therefore, whenever I find something that I am truly interested in, I study it. To do otherwise would be wasteful.

I am truly interested in and committed to becoming a better person through any means necessary; becoming more rational will make me a better person. Thus, I am truly interested in and committed to becoming more rational.

3Vladimir_Nesov
There are only so many hours in a day.

I am a student, and have recently found this website through a friend. I am intrigued by the art that you are promoting here, and it strikes a chord with my own dedication to learning and becoming a better person. In the past, I have often preferred autodidactic learning; however, this particular subject seems especially dense and in some cases even dangerous if learned incorrectly. I am thus somewhat apprehensive at proceeding along my own course.

What is a good starting point for someone like me? Is there a single grand summary of the work being done here, or some similar statement of purpose and general principles?

1[anonymous]
There's also the wiki, which has lots of summaries of common terms.
1RobinZ
I would begin with some of Eliezer Yudkowsky's essays on rationality, particularly "The Simple Truth", "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem", and "A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation", and then I'd start flipping through the archives reading things that look interesting. Often-times these will have links, either at the top or in the text, to previous essays; jumping backwards through the sequences and then reading forwards back to where you began is a good method. That's just for stuff on this site, though - I'd certainly read through the other online essays people linked in this post, and keep my eyes open for library copies of some of the books.
0Vladimir_Nesov
You can try reading Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong archives.
3Alicorn
You are a student of what?