Long-time reader, only occasional commenter. I’ve been following LW since it was on Overcoming Bias, which I found via Marginal Revolution, which I found via the Freakonomics Blog, which I found when I read and was fascinated by Freakonomics in high school. Reading the sequences, it all clicked and struck me as intuitively true. Although my “mistrust intuition” instinct is a little uncomfortable with that, it all seems to hold up so far.
In the spirit of keeping my identity small I don’t strongly identify with too many groups or adjectives. However, I’ve always self-identified as “smart” (whatever that means). If you were modeling my utility function using one variable, I’m most motivated by a desire to learn and know more (like Tsuyoku Naritai, except without the fetish for unnecessary Japanese). I’ve spent most of my life alternately trying to become the smartest person in the room and looking for a smarter room.
I just graduated from college and am starting work at a consulting firm in Chicago soon, which I anticipate will be the next step in my search for a smarter room. My degree is in economics, a discipline I enjoy because it is pretty good at translating incorrect premises into useful conclusions. I also dabbled fairly widely, realizing spring of my senior year that I should have started taking computer science earlier.
I’ve been a competitive debater since high school, which has helped me develop many useful skills (public speaking, analyzing arguments, brainstorming pros/cons rapidly, etc.). I was also exposed to some bad habits (you can believe whatever you want if no one can beat your arguments, the tendency to come to genuinely believe that your arbitrarily assigned side is correct). Reading some of the posts here, especially your strength as a rationalist, helped me crystallize some of these downsides, though I still rate the experience as strongly positive.
I am a male and a non-theist, although I’ve grown up in an area where many of my family members and acquaintances have real and powerful Christian beliefs (not belief in belief, the real deal). This has left me with a measure of reverence for the psychological and rhetorical power of religion. I don’t have particularly strong feelings on cryonics or the singularity, probably because I just don’t find them that interesting. Perhaps I should care about them more, given how important they could be, but I haven’t displayed any effort to do so thus far. It makes me wonder if “interestingness bias” is a real phenomenon.
My participation here over the years has been limited to reading, lurking, and an infrequent comment here and there. I’ve had a couple ideas for top level posts (including one on my half-baked notion that “rationalists” should consider following virtue ethics), but I have not yet overcome my akrasia and written them. Just recently, I have started using Anki to really learn the sequences. I am also using it to memorize basically useless facts that I can pull out in pub trivia contests, which I enjoy probably more than I should.
Long-time reader, only occasional commenter. I’ve been following LW since it was on Overcoming Bias, which I found via Marginal Revolution, which I found via the Freakonomics Blog, which I found when I read and was fascinated by Freakonomics in high school. Reading the sequences, it all clicked and struck me as intuitively true. Although my “mistrust intuition” instinct is a little uncomfortable with that, it all seems to hold up so far.
In the spirit of keeping my identity small I don’t strongly identify with too many groups or adjectives. However, I’ve always self-identified as “smart” (whatever that means). If you were modeling my utility function using one variable, I’m most motivated by a desire to learn and know more (like Tsuyoku Naritai, except without the fetish for unnecessary Japanese). I’ve spent most of my life alternately trying to become the smartest person in the room and looking for a smarter room.
I just graduated from college and am starting work at a consulting firm in Chicago soon, which I anticipate will be the next step in my search for a smarter room. My degree is in economics, a discipline I enjoy because it is pretty good at translating incorrect premises into useful conclusions. I also dabbled fairly widely, realizing spring of my senior year that I should have started taking computer science earlier.
I’ve been a competitive debater since high school, which has helped me develop many useful skills (public speaking, analyzing arguments, brainstorming pros/cons rapidly, etc.). I was also exposed to some bad habits (you can believe whatever you want if no one can beat your arguments, the tendency to come to genuinely believe that your arbitrarily assigned side is correct). Reading some of the posts here, especially your strength as a rationalist, helped me crystallize some of these downsides, though I still rate the experience as strongly positive.
I am a male and a non-theist, although I’ve grown up in an area where many of my family members and acquaintances have real and powerful Christian beliefs (not belief in belief, the real deal). This has left me with a measure of reverence for the psychological and rhetorical power of religion. I don’t have particularly strong feelings on cryonics or the singularity, probably because I just don’t find them that interesting. Perhaps I should care about them more, given how important they could be, but I haven’t displayed any effort to do so thus far. It makes me wonder if “interestingness bias” is a real phenomenon.
My participation here over the years has been limited to reading, lurking, and an infrequent comment here and there. I’ve had a couple ideas for top level posts (including one on my half-baked notion that “rationalists” should consider following virtue ethics), but I have not yet overcome my akrasia and written them. Just recently, I have started using Anki to really learn the sequences. I am also using it to memorize basically useless facts that I can pull out in pub trivia contests, which I enjoy probably more than I should.