Hi LW, My name's Olivier, I'm a 37-year-old Canadian currently living in Ottawa. My background is varied: I have a BA in Communication Studies and an MPhil in Japanese Studies but also a DEC (some special Quebec degree equivalent to the last year of high school and first of university in the rest of Canada and the USA) in Natural Sciences. I've owned a business, worked in cultural media and am now a public servant working in immigration.
I've been interested in AI, existential risks, intelligence explosion et al. for a number of years, probably since finding Bolstrom's paper on Simulated Reality.
I'm not 100% sure how I found LW, but it probably was while browsing for one of the topics above.
I've considered myself a rationalist for as long as I can remember, though I've long called it (rather naively?) "realist". Also being an existentialist, I try to bring these beliefs/convictions into practice in my work and how I raise my children (we'll see how that turns out!)
Through browsing here, I'm glad to find community that appears in between rigid academia and sensationalist media.
Anyhow, I'll most likely lurk a lot more than I post. Having three young kids leaves me with little time, and a sleep-addled, rather incoherent brain.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks guys! A meetup would be great - I'm new to the area and don't know too many people here.
I'll try and slowly go through the sequences as recommended... Definitely looks interesting. I'm half-way through Bolstom's Superintelligence right now (like most of the planet, it would seem!), so I'll need more material soon!
Rationality with kids... It works and it doesn't. A recent example: my son (5) is somehow afraid of zombies. I've been trying to have him look at this rationally: as he ever seen zombies in real life? Does he know anyone who has? Zombies often appear in stories with other mythical creatures: are those real? If they're unreal and only appear in his dreams, what could he do about it? Maybe tell himself zombies don't exist, so he must be dreaming? I am proud to say he has applied that last technique and told me that when they showed up, he knew then weren't real. Problem solved? Partly. I still need to go through that same reasoning every night...