Well, hello. I’m a first-year physics PhD student in India. Found this place through Yvain’s blog, which I found when I was linked there from a feminist blog.
It’s great fun, and I’m happy I found a place where I can discuss stuff with people without anyone regularly playing with words (or, more accurately, where it’s acceptable to stop and define your words properly). So, one of my favourite things about this place is the fact that it’s based on the map to territory idea of truth and beliefs; I’ve been using it to insult people ever since I read it.
The post says I should say why I identify as a rationalist; I wouldn’t, personally, ’cause I never feel like being better at rationality is the point, and whatever you or I say the word means it stands to be misunderstood in this way. But as for why I’m interested in this place at all: better calibration, and the possibility of better communication.
Anyway, still going through the sequences (personally, I would prefer reading something more mathematical, but I can understand why these posts aren’t). I have a whole tab group in firefox for LW right now, because it went too far out of hand.
As for special personal interests, I’m ridiculously scatterbrained, and so haven’t garnered any non-trivial understanding of anything.
One vaguely interesting thing I do enjoy doing is trying to charitably understand some mystical-looking stuff, like the Tao te Ching or Maya or art criticism (warning: my blog is a review blog, but you won’t find much of this if you click through, as there I just use the conventions post-justification and modify them whenever). My methodology: ask what questions they were thinking about to posit the answers they did, and then think about the questions myself. Collect more information, and update. Maybe I’ll even write about some of this once I have a better grasp of how to explicitly use the tools presented here.
Also, I have a question about Anki: is the web part defunct or something? I can’t find anything there. Whatever I search for, I get a blank page. (I was going to post in that page, but this is more likely to be replied to.)
Well, hello. I’m a first-year physics PhD student in India. Found this place through Yvain’s blog, which I found when I was linked there from a feminist blog. It’s great fun, and I’m happy I found a place where I can discuss stuff with people without anyone regularly playing with words (or, more accurately, where it’s acceptable to stop and define your words properly). So, one of my favourite things about this place is the fact that it’s based on the map to territory idea of truth and beliefs; I’ve been using it to insult people ever since I read it.
The post says I should say why I identify as a rationalist; I wouldn’t, personally, ’cause I never feel like being better at rationality is the point, and whatever you or I say the word means it stands to be misunderstood in this way. But as for why I’m interested in this place at all: better calibration, and the possibility of better communication.
Anyway, still going through the sequences (personally, I would prefer reading something more mathematical, but I can understand why these posts aren’t). I have a whole tab group in firefox for LW right now, because it went too far out of hand.
As for special personal interests, I’m ridiculously scatterbrained, and so haven’t garnered any non-trivial understanding of anything. One vaguely interesting thing I do enjoy doing is trying to charitably understand some mystical-looking stuff, like the Tao te Ching or Maya or art criticism (warning: my blog is a review blog, but you won’t find much of this if you click through, as there I just use the conventions post-justification and modify them whenever). My methodology: ask what questions they were thinking about to posit the answers they did, and then think about the questions myself. Collect more information, and update. Maybe I’ll even write about some of this once I have a better grasp of how to explicitly use the tools presented here.
Also, I have a question about Anki: is the web part defunct or something? I can’t find anything there. Whatever I search for, I get a blank page. (I was going to post in that page, but this is more likely to be replied to.)
Oh, and can I latex in the comments?
Yup, but it’s not super elegant! There’s some info here.
Also, AnkiWeb.net works for me—but you need to use https:// for Anki 2 and http:// for Anki 1.