Hello LessWrong!
My name is Michelle. I am from the United States and am entering college this August. I am a graphic design student who is also interested in public speaking. I was lead to this site one day while browsing fanfiction. I am an avid reader and spend a good percentage of my life reading novels and other literature. I read HPMOR and found the story intriguing and the theories very interesting. When I finally reached the end, I read the author’s page and realized that I could find more information on the ideas presented in the book. Naturally, I was delighted. The ideas were mainly why I kept reading. I had not encountered anything similar and found it refreshing to read something that had so many theories that rang true to my ear.
I am not a specialist in any science field or math field. I consider rationality to be something that I wish everyone would get interested in. I really want this idea to stick in more people’s heads, but know better than to preach it. I hope to help people become more involved in it, and learn more about rationality and the like.
I’m learning. I’m no expert and hardly consider myself a rationalist. If this were split into ranks like karate, I’d still be a white belt.
I’m looking forward to learning more about rationality, philosophy, and science with all of you here, and hopefully one day contributing, myself!
This is a pretty good idea, actually. Before I started reading posts on Less Wrong, I didn’t have a negative view of rationality, and saw it as “common sense,” or “logic.” I did see it as ignoring the emotional bits and focusing wholly on the facts, though. (I became interested in Less Wrong after reading through Harry Potter and the MOR, finding the theories etc. in it fascinating, and eventually meandering over to this site, which I have been browsing for several months now.)
I’ll be on campus in about a month and a half and I’ll make sure to casually ask my classmates. It’s been added to my mental to-do list. Though it will be a bit difficult to ask it in the exact same way without sounding artificial, and I don’t want to ask it differently each time since that would not be very accurate.