I’m a 3rd year CS student at MIT interested in working with computer graphics in the future. I have way too many things I’m interested in doing (I pretty much can’t find any field/hobby that I think would be completely boring after I put enough effort into finding out more about it), but things I’m actually involved in and maybe a little good at are art (digital/traditional, and some 3D) and music (singing mostly nowadays). In terms of how I spend my free time I love games and reading, and generally spending too much time on the internet.
I’ve always been a rationalist I think (though not a very good one), but only became more of an altruistic rationalist more recently after going through a pretty rough year. Not sure exactly why the combination of things that happened last year changed me so much, but I went from caring mostly about being right to caring about being a Good Person.
Anyway how I ended up here is procrastination from working/studying for finals. Staying up late tends to get me overly excited about the infinite amount of interesting content on the web. I’m not a very extroverted person so finding a community like this is really great.
What I’m mainly hoping to get out of LW is to improve how I live and think, to help me do better on my path from Rationalist to Altruistic Rationalist and hopefully later to Altruistic Rationalist Who Actually Does Things That Help People. I’ve realized I like talking a lot about my ideals but don’t do enough to really apply them to my life. I’m also somewhat interested in the question of how art (or well humanities/entertainment...anything less concrete than being a doctor) helps the world. On the one hand I feel like maybe I should aspire to do something more “concrete” than what I’d probably do with my work in computer graphics (try to reform the government? cure some disease? make advancements in our understanding of physics?), but on the other hand I know that the humanities can be extremely powerful, and though I haven’t completely thought this out, maybe life with only cures and efficient/good governments and a good understanding of physics without any stories or love of beauty isn’t the best life for humans. I’m also debating whether being altruistic means you should sacrifice some of your own quest for self-actualization to help other people, or if you should focus even more on it since that is what you’d want others to do (not sure if I’m really wording this well here...).
Given the time though, I better stop here. I look forward to learning from you all!
Hi all,
I’m a 3rd year CS student at MIT interested in working with computer graphics in the future. I have way too many things I’m interested in doing (I pretty much can’t find any field/hobby that I think would be completely boring after I put enough effort into finding out more about it), but things I’m actually involved in and maybe a little good at are art (digital/traditional, and some 3D) and music (singing mostly nowadays). In terms of how I spend my free time I love games and reading, and generally spending too much time on the internet.
I’ve always been a rationalist I think (though not a very good one), but only became more of an altruistic rationalist more recently after going through a pretty rough year. Not sure exactly why the combination of things that happened last year changed me so much, but I went from caring mostly about being right to caring about being a Good Person.
Anyway how I ended up here is procrastination from working/studying for finals. Staying up late tends to get me overly excited about the infinite amount of interesting content on the web. I’m not a very extroverted person so finding a community like this is really great.
What I’m mainly hoping to get out of LW is to improve how I live and think, to help me do better on my path from Rationalist to Altruistic Rationalist and hopefully later to Altruistic Rationalist Who Actually Does Things That Help People. I’ve realized I like talking a lot about my ideals but don’t do enough to really apply them to my life. I’m also somewhat interested in the question of how art (or well humanities/entertainment...anything less concrete than being a doctor) helps the world. On the one hand I feel like maybe I should aspire to do something more “concrete” than what I’d probably do with my work in computer graphics (try to reform the government? cure some disease? make advancements in our understanding of physics?), but on the other hand I know that the humanities can be extremely powerful, and though I haven’t completely thought this out, maybe life with only cures and efficient/good governments and a good understanding of physics without any stories or love of beauty isn’t the best life for humans. I’m also debating whether being altruistic means you should sacrifice some of your own quest for self-actualization to help other people, or if you should focus even more on it since that is what you’d want others to do (not sure if I’m really wording this well here...).
Given the time though, I better stop here. I look forward to learning from you all!