I stumbled upon LessWrong via AI & SlateStarCodex, but quickly noticed the rationality theme. My impressions on rationality were that of Sheldon Cooper-esque (the Big Bang theory) and I had put it aside as entertainment. I had read some of Eliezer's work earlier, such as staring into the singularity and saw these things called "sequences" under the library section. The first few posts I read made me think "Oh! Here are my people! I get to improve!"
But of course the library made it easy to notice HPMOR, and that's where I actually "began". I've listened to it twice so far. I have begun suggesting friends to give it to their kids in the rare cases that is possible (language barriers and general orientation being the primary barriers).
I grew up in Kutch. Looking back, I might have been an outlier as a kid, but then again, maybe not. I don't meet many "rationally oriented" people around here, and among the few I do know, I'd say I'm well-acquainted with many of them.
It is great to have the sequences, and the posts from all of you. I feel it is one of the rare places where I get to refine my thinking. I am going through the Sequences slowly. I noticed that if I actually talked the way sequences talk, when reasoning with people (ie, practicing rationality), they feel awkward. This has led me to a search space of sentences and analogies to use when I am talking to friends. Well, it has not been tough in past, but there are some more focused updates going on in my brain and talking like "Is this discussion availability heuristic?" seem to make people feel a bit off-putting. The process is great fun!
Thanks! And Hi!
I've actually been working to start writing down some notes about my version of a lot of these ideas (as well as my version of ideas I've not seen floating around yet). I think it would be a good opportunity to solidify my thoughts on things, notice new connections, and give back to the intellectual culture.
You get to cheat on your first readthrough and leave fun comments :)
If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it.
If you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are invited. This is also the place to discuss feature requests and other ideas you have for the site, if you don't want to write a full top-level post.
If you're new to the community, you can start reading the Highlights from the Sequences, a collection of posts about the core ideas of LessWrong.
If you want to explore the community more, I recommend reading the Library, checking recent Curated posts, seeing if there are any meetups in your area, and checking out the Getting Started section of the LessWrong FAQ. If you want to orient to the content on the site, you can also check out the Concepts section.
The Open Thread tag is here. The Open Thread sequence is here.