(I assume “here” = welcome thread.) Yes, of course. But no need to introduce yourself more than once.
Is there a place to talk about our personal experiences and efforts
The most recent “Group Rationality Diary” thread might be the best place for that.
[...] timeline [...]
Once upon a time, an economist called Robin Hanson started a blog called “Overcoming Bias”. He invited one Eliezer Yudkowsky, an amateur artaificial intelligence theorist and philosopher (note: he might disagree with that characterization), to post on his blog, and for some time OB was a joint Hanson/Yudkowsky blog, with Yudkowsky’s contributions constituting a sort of informal course in rationality-as-Eliezer-sees-it. After a few years of this, Robin Hanson wanted his blog back and quite a community had built up that was mostly following and commenting on Eliezer’s posts, and a new site was created for that community: lesswrong.com. It was seeded with all Eliezer’s old OB posts. It was a thriving would-be-rationalist community for some time, but in the last few years a lot of what used to be its regulars have gone elsewhere and it’s generally reckoned that both quality and quantity of content here are much lower than they used to be. There are various plausible conjectures about why. There are occasional attempts to fix this by various means.
Is there a max comment length?
Probably, but it’s pretty long. I don’t recall ever hitting it, and (some of) my comments tend to be longer than most.
[...] politics [...]
Unfortunately, political discussions here have often turned out quite unhelpful—more heat than light. So political discussion (especially if more specific) is generally discouraged here. There is fairly frequent political discussion, in a somewhat-rationalist community, in the open threads at Slate Star Codex (whose author was a very highly valued participant here on LW until he went his own way).
How can I get up to date on the latest parts of Less Wrong?
I don’t think there’s anything cleverer than reading the recent archives. You could look for particularly highly-voted posts, but note that until quite recently there was one user with a multitude of sockpuppets mass-downvoting everything posted by people whose politics he didn’t like (and, for all I know, mass-upvoting things posted by people whose politics he did, but that hasn’t been noticed if so) so the scores on things are less useful than you might hope.
(I assume “here” = welcome thread.) Yes, of course. But no need to introduce yourself more than once.
The most recent “Group Rationality Diary” thread might be the best place for that.
Once upon a time, an economist called Robin Hanson started a blog called “Overcoming Bias”. He invited one Eliezer Yudkowsky, an amateur artaificial intelligence theorist and philosopher (note: he might disagree with that characterization), to post on his blog, and for some time OB was a joint Hanson/Yudkowsky blog, with Yudkowsky’s contributions constituting a sort of informal course in rationality-as-Eliezer-sees-it. After a few years of this, Robin Hanson wanted his blog back and quite a community had built up that was mostly following and commenting on Eliezer’s posts, and a new site was created for that community: lesswrong.com. It was seeded with all Eliezer’s old OB posts. It was a thriving would-be-rationalist community for some time, but in the last few years a lot of what used to be its regulars have gone elsewhere and it’s generally reckoned that both quality and quantity of content here are much lower than they used to be. There are various plausible conjectures about why. There are occasional attempts to fix this by various means.
Probably, but it’s pretty long. I don’t recall ever hitting it, and (some of) my comments tend to be longer than most.
Unfortunately, political discussions here have often turned out quite unhelpful—more heat than light. So political discussion (especially if more specific) is generally discouraged here. There is fairly frequent political discussion, in a somewhat-rationalist community, in the open threads at Slate Star Codex (whose author was a very highly valued participant here on LW until he went his own way).
I don’t think there’s anything cleverer than reading the recent archives. You could look for particularly highly-voted posts, but note that until quite recently there was one user with a multitude of sockpuppets mass-downvoting everything posted by people whose politics he didn’t like (and, for all I know, mass-upvoting things posted by people whose politics he did, but that hasn’t been noticed if so) so the scores on things are less useful than you might hope.