My name is Rick, and I’m 29. I’ve been lurking on LW for a few years, casually at first, but now much more consistently. I did finally post a stupid question last week, and I’ve been going to the Austin Meetup for about a month, so I feel it’s time to introduce myself.
I’m a physics PhD student in Austin. I’m an experimentalist, and I work on practical-ish stuff with high-intensity lasers, so I’m not much good answering questions about string theory, cosmology, or the foundations of quantum mechanics. I will say that I think the measurement problem (as physicists usually refer to the question which “many worlds” is intended to answer) is interesting, but it’s not clear to me why it gets so much attention.
I come from a town where (it seems like) everybody’s dad has a PhD, and many people’s moms have them as well. Getting a PhD in physics or engineering just seemed like the thing to do. I remember thinking as a teenager that if you didn’t go to grad school, you were probably an uneducated yokel. More importantly, I learned very early that a person can have a PhD and still make terrible decisions or have terrible beliefs. I also formed weird beliefs like “chemistry is for girls” and “engineers ride mountain bikes; physicists ride road bikes”. I think I still associate educational attainment too strongly with status.
I’ve been involved in the atheist and secular humanism communities for close to ten years now. I gradually transitioned from viewing these communities as a source of intellectual stimulation to sources of interesting and relatable people. I’m still involved in the secular humanism club that I started a few years back at UT.
I was vaguely aware of Less Wrong for a while before my roommate showed me HPMOR. After reading through all of that (which had been released at the time), I got more into the site and quickly read all the core sequences. I found all of it to be much more intellectually satisfying than all of the atheist apologetics I’d read in college, and I realized how much better it was for actually accomplishing something other than winning an argument. Realizing how toxic most political arguments are and understanding why I could win an argument and still feel icky about it were pretty huge revelations for me. In the last six months, I’ve been able to use things that I learned here and made some seriously positive changes in my life. It’s been pretty great.
I’m also interested in backpacking, rock climbing, and competitive cycling. A bike race is a competition in which knowing what your opponent knows about you can be a decisive advantage. It’s very much a Newcomb-like problem. Maybe I’ll start a thread about that sometime.
Hi everyone!
My name is Rick, and I’m 29. I’ve been lurking on LW for a few years, casually at first, but now much more consistently. I did finally post a stupid question last week, and I’ve been going to the Austin Meetup for about a month, so I feel it’s time to introduce myself.
I’m a physics PhD student in Austin. I’m an experimentalist, and I work on practical-ish stuff with high-intensity lasers, so I’m not much good answering questions about string theory, cosmology, or the foundations of quantum mechanics. I will say that I think the measurement problem (as physicists usually refer to the question which “many worlds” is intended to answer) is interesting, but it’s not clear to me why it gets so much attention.
I come from a town where (it seems like) everybody’s dad has a PhD, and many people’s moms have them as well. Getting a PhD in physics or engineering just seemed like the thing to do. I remember thinking as a teenager that if you didn’t go to grad school, you were probably an uneducated yokel. More importantly, I learned very early that a person can have a PhD and still make terrible decisions or have terrible beliefs. I also formed weird beliefs like “chemistry is for girls” and “engineers ride mountain bikes; physicists ride road bikes”. I think I still associate educational attainment too strongly with status.
I’ve been involved in the atheist and secular humanism communities for close to ten years now. I gradually transitioned from viewing these communities as a source of intellectual stimulation to sources of interesting and relatable people. I’m still involved in the secular humanism club that I started a few years back at UT.
I was vaguely aware of Less Wrong for a while before my roommate showed me HPMOR. After reading through all of that (which had been released at the time), I got more into the site and quickly read all the core sequences. I found all of it to be much more intellectually satisfying than all of the atheist apologetics I’d read in college, and I realized how much better it was for actually accomplishing something other than winning an argument. Realizing how toxic most political arguments are and understanding why I could win an argument and still feel icky about it were pretty huge revelations for me. In the last six months, I’ve been able to use things that I learned here and made some seriously positive changes in my life. It’s been pretty great.
I’m also interested in backpacking, rock climbing, and competitive cycling. A bike race is a competition in which knowing what your opponent knows about you can be a decisive advantage. It’s very much a Newcomb-like problem. Maybe I’ll start a thread about that sometime.