Hi guys, my name is Luka, and I’m 20. I study physics at University of Vienna.
I follow LW since February, and I went probably through all core sequences, and good chunk of the rest. I did not gained too much, because I was kinda always eager to argue with good arguments and resistant to bad arguments, even from elder (which brought me into trouble quite a few times). My biggest win is that I remained strong in the moment when I started to fall: I started drowning in irrationality (because of lack of rational people in my surrounding), and started using passwords without noticing, I started learning at cost of thinking, instead of using them both. LW gave me structural knowledge of what I already used, and thus made me stay that way. AND HOPE! How did I forget that, it was big...
Which leads me to more interesting topic, and that is: what will I give to you?
I had strong education in mathematics, physics and informatics during high school, since I attended specialized high school. There I developed strong logical thinking, but even better, I always tried to implement that into my every-day-life. Since I do feel material from sequences on gut level, I will try to teach you how to do it, too (as soon as I understand what exactly I do different xD). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t try to show off, I just hope to give you insight from other perspective, and with help from more experienced members (because you guys know much more about cognitive science, teaching and writing then I do) to write good materials to help people move on from understanding rationality to actively using it. If someone of the experienced members live in Belgrade or Vienna I will be glad to meet you to discuss how to write all the things I would like to.
I strongly believe I did manage do actualize my self (in Maslow’s sense (I just needed the term to express myself, I don’t have so good knowledge in psychology to state that any of his theories is true or false)), and I will argue it has a lot to do with becoming rationalist in time.
I will try to diversify this community, since it is mostly devoted to development of friendly AI, and I think there are other things how to help our world (more) effectively. We should not put all eggs in one basket.
To tell you more about me, I believe I posses wide knowledge (and I invest time to make it wider): I am really good in mathematics, physics and programming(there i went in-depth the most), and I have some basic knowledge in finance, economics, psychology. I play guitar in free time, attend choir, play video games… I am not a native English speaker, which you probably already noticed, so please, send me private message if you notice some big errors, I will appreciate it. I speak Serbian (my native language) and German as well (since I study in Vienna).
I look forward to making this world a wonderful place!
While reading, i tried to think of a case when i fell in affective death spiral, and interesting thing came to my mind. Falling in love falls under Halo Effect? Butterflies in stomach, worshiping the beloved, etc… That means that who overcomes this bias can’t fall in love that way anymore?