I was thinking the other day that I desperately wished I had written down my cached thoughts (and more importantly, cached feelings) about things like cryonics (in particular), politics, or [insert LW topic of choice here] before reading LW so that I could compare them now. I don’t think I had ever really thought about cryonics, or if I had, I had a node linking it to crazy people.
Actually, now that I think about it it’s not true. I remember thinking about it once when I first started in research, and we were unfreezing lab samples, and considering whether or not cryonicists have a point. I don’t remember what I felt about it though.
One of the useful things about the internet is it’s record keeping abilities and humans natural ability to comment on things they know nothing about. Are you aware of being on record on a forum or social media site pre LW on issues that LW has dealt with?
Yes, to an extent. I’ve had Facebook for about six years (I found HPMOR about 8 months ago, and LW about 7?) but I deleted the majority of easily accessible content and do not post anything particularly introspective on there. I know, generally, how I felt about more culturally popular memes, what I really wish I remember though are things like cryonics or the singularity, to which I never gave serious consideration before LW.
Edit: At one point, I wrote a program to click the “Older posts” button on Facebook so I could go back and read all of my old posts, but it’s been made largely obsolete by the timeline feature.
It’s probably a bit late for many attitudes of mine, but I have made a stab at this by keeping copies of all my YourMorals.org answers and listing other psychometric data at http://www.gwern.net/Links#profile
(And I’ve retrospectively listed in an essay the big shifts that I can remember; hopefully I can keep it up to date and obtain a fairly complete list over my life.)
I was thinking the other day that I desperately wished I had written down my cached thoughts (and more importantly, cached feelings) about things like cryonics (in particular), politics, or [insert LW topic of choice here] before reading LW so that I could compare them now. I don’t think I had ever really thought about cryonics, or if I had, I had a node linking it to crazy people.
Actually, now that I think about it it’s not true. I remember thinking about it once when I first started in research, and we were unfreezing lab samples, and considering whether or not cryonicists have a point. I don’t remember what I felt about it though.
One of the useful things about the internet is it’s record keeping abilities and humans natural ability to comment on things they know nothing about. Are you aware of being on record on a forum or social media site pre LW on issues that LW has dealt with?
Useful and harmful. ;-)
Yes, to an extent. I’ve had Facebook for about six years (I found HPMOR about 8 months ago, and LW about 7?) but I deleted the majority of easily accessible content and do not post anything particularly introspective on there. I know, generally, how I felt about more culturally popular memes, what I really wish I remember though are things like cryonics or the singularity, to which I never gave serious consideration before LW.
Edit: At one point, I wrote a program to click the “Older posts” button on Facebook so I could go back and read all of my old posts, but it’s been made largely obsolete by the timeline feature.
It’s probably a bit late for many attitudes of mine, but I have made a stab at this by keeping copies of all my YourMorals.org answers and listing other psychometric data at http://www.gwern.net/Links#profile
(And I’ve retrospectively listed in an essay the big shifts that I can remember; hopefully I can keep it up to date and obtain a fairly complete list over my life.)