I suppose it’s high time I actually introduced myself.
Hullo LW! I’m Elizabeth Ellis. That’s a very common first name and a very common last name, so if you want to google me, I recommend “relsqui” instead. (I’m not a private person, the handle is just more useful for being a consistently recognizable person online.) I’m 24 and in Berkeley, California, USA. No association with the college; I just live here. I’m a cyclist, an omnivore, and a nontheist; none of these are because of moral beliefs.
I’m a high school dropout, which I like telling people after they’ve met me, because I like fighting the illusion that formal education is the only way to produce intelligent, literate, and articulate people—or rather, that the only reason to drop out is not being one. In mid-August of this year I woke up one morning, thought for a while about things I could do with my life that would be productive and fulfilling, and decided it would be helpful to have a bachelor’s degree. I started classes two weeks later. GEs for now, then a transfer into a communication or language program. It’s very strange taking classes with people who were in high school four months ago.
My major area of interest is human communication. Step back for a moment and think about it: You’ve got an electric meatball in your head which is capable of causing other bits of connected meat to spasm, producing vibrations in the air. Another piece of meat somewhere else is touched by those vibrations … and then the electric meatball in somebody else’s head is supposed to produce an approximation of the signals that happened to be running through yours? That’s ridiculous. The wonder isn’t how often we miscommunicate, it’s that we ever communicate well.
So, my goal is to help people do it better. This includes spreading communication techniques which I’ve found effective for getting one electric meatball to sync up with another, as well as more straightforward things like an interest in languages. (I’m only fluent in English, but I’m conversational in Spanish, know some rudimentary Hebrew, and have a semester-equivalent or less of a handful of other things.)
One of my assets in this department is that, on the spectrum of strongly logic-driven people to strongly emotion-driven people, I am fairly close to the center. This has its good and bad points. I understand each side better than the other one does, and have had success translating between them for people who weren’t getting across to each other. On the other hand, I’m repelled by both extremes, which can be inconvenient. I think that no map of a human can be accurate without acknowledging emotions in the territory, which we feel, and which drive us, but which we do not fully understand. This does not preclude attempting to understand them better; it just requires working with those emotions rather than wishing they didn’t exist.
I came to LW because someone linked me to the parable of the dagger and it delighted me, so I looked around to see what else was here. I’m interested in ways to make better decisions and be less wrong because I find it useful to have these ideas floating around in my head when I have a decision to make—much like aforementioned communication techniques when I’m talking to someone. I’m not actively trying to transform myself, at least not in any way related to rationality.
That’s everything of any relevance I can think of at the moment.
I suppose it’s high time I actually introduced myself.
Hullo LW! I’m Elizabeth Ellis. That’s a very common first name and a very common last name, so if you want to google me, I recommend “relsqui” instead. (I’m not a private person, the handle is just more useful for being a consistently recognizable person online.) I’m 24 and in Berkeley, California, USA. No association with the college; I just live here. I’m a cyclist, an omnivore, and a nontheist; none of these are because of moral beliefs.
I’m a high school dropout, which I like telling people after they’ve met me, because I like fighting the illusion that formal education is the only way to produce intelligent, literate, and articulate people—or rather, that the only reason to drop out is not being one. In mid-August of this year I woke up one morning, thought for a while about things I could do with my life that would be productive and fulfilling, and decided it would be helpful to have a bachelor’s degree. I started classes two weeks later. GEs for now, then a transfer into a communication or language program. It’s very strange taking classes with people who were in high school four months ago.
My major area of interest is human communication. Step back for a moment and think about it: You’ve got an electric meatball in your head which is capable of causing other bits of connected meat to spasm, producing vibrations in the air. Another piece of meat somewhere else is touched by those vibrations … and then the electric meatball in somebody else’s head is supposed to produce an approximation of the signals that happened to be running through yours? That’s ridiculous. The wonder isn’t how often we miscommunicate, it’s that we ever communicate well.
So, my goal is to help people do it better. This includes spreading communication techniques which I’ve found effective for getting one electric meatball to sync up with another, as well as more straightforward things like an interest in languages. (I’m only fluent in English, but I’m conversational in Spanish, know some rudimentary Hebrew, and have a semester-equivalent or less of a handful of other things.)
One of my assets in this department is that, on the spectrum of strongly logic-driven people to strongly emotion-driven people, I am fairly close to the center. This has its good and bad points. I understand each side better than the other one does, and have had success translating between them for people who weren’t getting across to each other. On the other hand, I’m repelled by both extremes, which can be inconvenient. I think that no map of a human can be accurate without acknowledging emotions in the territory, which we feel, and which drive us, but which we do not fully understand. This does not preclude attempting to understand them better; it just requires working with those emotions rather than wishing they didn’t exist.
I came to LW because someone linked me to the parable of the dagger and it delighted me, so I looked around to see what else was here. I’m interested in ways to make better decisions and be less wrong because I find it useful to have these ideas floating around in my head when I have a decision to make—much like aforementioned communication techniques when I’m talking to someone. I’m not actively trying to transform myself, at least not in any way related to rationality.
That’s everything of any relevance I can think of at the moment.
Upvoted for the amusing phrase “electric meatball”.
“Have you heard my new band, Electric Meatball?”
(I’ve tried to describe that idea several times and I think that’s my favorite wording so far.)