What do you do when you have a thousand questions to ask, and a thousand things to say, in a place where you do not normally do either? How do you say the first thing?
As a rationalist, what do you what to see more of in literature?
I enjoyed HPMOR, and that’s how I got here, a few months ago. It reminds me of textbooks, but I wasn’t bored. It’s one of my favorite books, and I’ve been recommending it to Ender’s Game fans. I want to write a book or tell a story like that.
Origin story? I think of myself as an irrationalist, but I’m busy debugging. It’s more difficult than debugging code (c++ atleast), but more important, and...hopefully more rewarding.
A few questions:
Can we comment here multiple times?
Is this the best place to talk about ourselves on Less Wrong, or is that our User page?
Is there a place to talk about our personal experiences and efforts ‘becoming more rational’, and encourage each other, or is this just a place for general scientific discussion and posts?
Is there a timeline page for this website? If not, what’s important about this site’s history? Any interesting simultaneous sets of events? If not, is there anyone keeping records?
Is there a max comment length?
I know politics aren’t talked about on Less Wrong, but religion is. If you view irrationality, or ‘that which the truth can destroy’ as things which ‘should be destroyed with the truth’, then why not talk about a vortex of bias and irrationality and poor design? Or, as a problem, talk about solutions. If solutions are never discussed how will the problem ever be solved? By everyone joining a group that can solve the problem but doesn’t talk about it, but believes it will magically be solved when everyone does? While everywhere else, whenever someone thinks they have magically solved all problems and uncovered the secret to world peace, they shout it to the heavens and don’t stop ranting about it where everyone can hear, including the internet. This seems exactly like the one of the few places I’d actually want to talk, and listen to people talk, about politics. It reminds me of Be Secretly Wrong.
How can I get up to date on the latest parts of Less Wrong? If The Sequences are the introduction, where are things now?
(I assume “here” = welcome thread.) Yes, of course. But no need to introduce yourself more than once.
Is there a place to talk about our personal experiences and efforts
The most recent “Group Rationality Diary” thread might be the best place for that.
[...] timeline [...]
Once upon a time, an economist called Robin Hanson started a blog called “Overcoming Bias”. He invited one Eliezer Yudkowsky, an amateur artaificial intelligence theorist and philosopher (note: he might disagree with that characterization), to post on his blog, and for some time OB was a joint Hanson/Yudkowsky blog, with Yudkowsky’s contributions constituting a sort of informal course in rationality-as-Eliezer-sees-it. After a few years of this, Robin Hanson wanted his blog back and quite a community had built up that was mostly following and commenting on Eliezer’s posts, and a new site was created for that community: lesswrong.com. It was seeded with all Eliezer’s old OB posts. It was a thriving would-be-rationalist community for some time, but in the last few years a lot of what used to be its regulars have gone elsewhere and it’s generally reckoned that both quality and quantity of content here are much lower than they used to be. There are various plausible conjectures about why. There are occasional attempts to fix this by various means.
Is there a max comment length?
Probably, but it’s pretty long. I don’t recall ever hitting it, and (some of) my comments tend to be longer than most.
[...] politics [...]
Unfortunately, political discussions here have often turned out quite unhelpful—more heat than light. So political discussion (especially if more specific) is generally discouraged here. There is fairly frequent political discussion, in a somewhat-rationalist community, in the open threads at Slate Star Codex (whose author was a very highly valued participant here on LW until he went his own way).
How can I get up to date on the latest parts of Less Wrong?
I don’t think there’s anything cleverer than reading the recent archives. You could look for particularly highly-voted posts, but note that until quite recently there was one user with a multitude of sockpuppets mass-downvoting everything posted by people whose politics he didn’t like (and, for all I know, mass-upvoting things posted by people whose politics he did, but that hasn’t been noticed if so) so the scores on things are less useful than you might hope.
Is this the best place to talk about ourselves on Less Wrong, or is that our User page?
This. No one looks at User pages on a regular basis (as far as I know)
Is there a place to talk about our personal experiences and efforts ‘becoming more rational’, and encourage each other, or is this just a place for general scientific discussion and posts?
Yes and yes. Both.
Is there a timeline page for this website?
No, but I’m sure one of the old-timers will be willing to summarise :-)
Is there a max comment length?
Yes, enforced by software. It’s quite reasonable.
I know politics aren’t talked about on Less Wrong
Well, kinda. Generally speaking, political philosophy is OK, the current outrage of the day isn’t. Even-handed analysis of the situation is OK, partisan rants aren’t.
How can I get up to date on the latest parts of Less Wrong?
What do you do when you have a thousand questions to ask, and a thousand things to say, in a place where you do not normally do either? How do you say the first thing?
As a rationalist, what do you what to see more of in literature? I enjoyed HPMOR, and that’s how I got here, a few months ago. It reminds me of textbooks, but I wasn’t bored. It’s one of my favorite books, and I’ve been recommending it to Ender’s Game fans. I want to write a book or tell a story like that.
Origin story? I think of myself as an irrationalist, but I’m busy debugging. It’s more difficult than debugging code (c++ atleast), but more important, and...hopefully more rewarding.
A few questions:
Can we comment here multiple times?
Is this the best place to talk about ourselves on Less Wrong, or is that our User page?
Is there a place to talk about our personal experiences and efforts ‘becoming more rational’, and encourage each other, or is this just a place for general scientific discussion and posts?
Is there a timeline page for this website? If not, what’s important about this site’s history? Any interesting simultaneous sets of events? If not, is there anyone keeping records?
Is there a max comment length?
I know politics aren’t talked about on Less Wrong, but religion is. If you view irrationality, or ‘that which the truth can destroy’ as things which ‘should be destroyed with the truth’, then why not talk about a vortex of bias and irrationality and poor design? Or, as a problem, talk about solutions. If solutions are never discussed how will the problem ever be solved? By everyone joining a group that can solve the problem but doesn’t talk about it, but believes it will magically be solved when everyone does? While everywhere else, whenever someone thinks they have magically solved all problems and uncovered the secret to world peace, they shout it to the heavens and don’t stop ranting about it where everyone can hear, including the internet. This seems exactly like the one of the few places I’d actually want to talk, and listen to people talk, about politics. It reminds me of Be Secretly Wrong.
How can I get up to date on the latest parts of Less Wrong? If The Sequences are the introduction, where are things now?
(I assume “here” = welcome thread.) Yes, of course. But no need to introduce yourself more than once.
The most recent “Group Rationality Diary” thread might be the best place for that.
Once upon a time, an economist called Robin Hanson started a blog called “Overcoming Bias”. He invited one Eliezer Yudkowsky, an amateur artaificial intelligence theorist and philosopher (note: he might disagree with that characterization), to post on his blog, and for some time OB was a joint Hanson/Yudkowsky blog, with Yudkowsky’s contributions constituting a sort of informal course in rationality-as-Eliezer-sees-it. After a few years of this, Robin Hanson wanted his blog back and quite a community had built up that was mostly following and commenting on Eliezer’s posts, and a new site was created for that community: lesswrong.com. It was seeded with all Eliezer’s old OB posts. It was a thriving would-be-rationalist community for some time, but in the last few years a lot of what used to be its regulars have gone elsewhere and it’s generally reckoned that both quality and quantity of content here are much lower than they used to be. There are various plausible conjectures about why. There are occasional attempts to fix this by various means.
Probably, but it’s pretty long. I don’t recall ever hitting it, and (some of) my comments tend to be longer than most.
Unfortunately, political discussions here have often turned out quite unhelpful—more heat than light. So political discussion (especially if more specific) is generally discouraged here. There is fairly frequent political discussion, in a somewhat-rationalist community, in the open threads at Slate Star Codex (whose author was a very highly valued participant here on LW until he went his own way).
I don’t think there’s anything cleverer than reading the recent archives. You could look for particularly highly-voted posts, but note that until quite recently there was one user with a multitude of sockpuppets mass-downvoting everything posted by people whose politics he didn’t like (and, for all I know, mass-upvoting things posted by people whose politics he did, but that hasn’t been noticed if so) so the scores on things are less useful than you might hope.
Yes.
This. No one looks at User pages on a regular basis (as far as I know)
Yes and yes. Both.
No, but I’m sure one of the old-timers will be willing to summarise :-)
Yes, enforced by software. It’s quite reasonable.
Well, kinda. Generally speaking, political philosophy is OK, the current outrage of the day isn’t. Even-handed analysis of the situation is OK, partisan rants aren’t.
Read the forum.
Thanks a lot. I was nervous about posting here.