With no particular or unusual intellect (that I could objectively test aside from an IQ test in elementary school, which scored somewhere around 115-125), as well as low school grades, I found myself as a teenager who took issue with religion. I suppose my journey in becoming rational started when I decided I was an atheist. I was finding various flaws with religion, as well as enjoying material put out by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I consider that as the starting point because it was when I realized that humans are inherently terrible at understanding reality, and that merely not succumbing to wrong beliefs is something the vast majority of people fail at, let alone actually understanding reality to even the vague degree our brains could comprehend. I would describe this point as “when I started thinking”, or at least trying to do so.
My interest in being studious grew over time. The next milestone related to politics. I was a very typical bleeding heart liberal throughout my teenage years, having such simplistic convictions as “corporations are bad!” and “pictures of oil-soaked penguins mean we should hold back industry” and “we might as well socialize most industries!”. Eventually I began studying economics, which caused me to go from liberal to libertarian. I had so many irrational beliefs about policy and society, it’s a bit shameful for me to think back on it. I now frequently speak against Keynesianism, and finally am beginning to understand the subtle but huge negatives of government intervention.
But I’m not sure my journey as a rationalist was even in an uptrend. I was just absorbing material other people put out, and wasn’t really able to make good decisions for myself. I was just cynical and suspicious of commonly held views.
I flipped through Less Wrong, came across Eliezer’s article “Cynical about cynicism”, and then I realized I was...full of it. I thought I was being rational, but now I realize I was being childish and angsty. In fact I wonder if that should be part of the sequences, I know many people who would benefit from it, many of them are either environmentalists or atheists (or both). It was the article that made me realize I have so, so much work to do yet before I can consider myself rational.
Which brings me here, now. I am working my way through the sequences, and occasionally re-reading previous ones to try and learn it as well as I can. I am highly fortunate to be here, I can escape my irrational past, and hopefully have something similar to Yudkowsky’s Bayesian enlightenment. I feel as if in many ways I am starting over, and...it feels very, very good.
Hello, Less Wrong.
With no particular or unusual intellect (that I could objectively test aside from an IQ test in elementary school, which scored somewhere around 115-125), as well as low school grades, I found myself as a teenager who took issue with religion. I suppose my journey in becoming rational started when I decided I was an atheist. I was finding various flaws with religion, as well as enjoying material put out by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I consider that as the starting point because it was when I realized that humans are inherently terrible at understanding reality, and that merely not succumbing to wrong beliefs is something the vast majority of people fail at, let alone actually understanding reality to even the vague degree our brains could comprehend. I would describe this point as “when I started thinking”, or at least trying to do so.
My interest in being studious grew over time. The next milestone related to politics. I was a very typical bleeding heart liberal throughout my teenage years, having such simplistic convictions as “corporations are bad!” and “pictures of oil-soaked penguins mean we should hold back industry” and “we might as well socialize most industries!”. Eventually I began studying economics, which caused me to go from liberal to libertarian. I had so many irrational beliefs about policy and society, it’s a bit shameful for me to think back on it. I now frequently speak against Keynesianism, and finally am beginning to understand the subtle but huge negatives of government intervention.
But I’m not sure my journey as a rationalist was even in an uptrend. I was just absorbing material other people put out, and wasn’t really able to make good decisions for myself. I was just cynical and suspicious of commonly held views.
I flipped through Less Wrong, came across Eliezer’s article “Cynical about cynicism”, and then I realized I was...full of it. I thought I was being rational, but now I realize I was being childish and angsty. In fact I wonder if that should be part of the sequences, I know many people who would benefit from it, many of them are either environmentalists or atheists (or both). It was the article that made me realize I have so, so much work to do yet before I can consider myself rational.
Which brings me here, now. I am working my way through the sequences, and occasionally re-reading previous ones to try and learn it as well as I can. I am highly fortunate to be here, I can escape my irrational past, and hopefully have something similar to Yudkowsky’s Bayesian enlightenment. I feel as if in many ways I am starting over, and...it feels very, very good.