Ignoring the more obvious jokes people make in introduction posts: Hi. My name is Robin. I grew up in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, and have lived in the same place essentially all my life. I was homeschooled by secular parents—one didn’t discuss religion and the other was agnostic—with my primary hobby being the reading of (mostly) speculative fiction of (mostly) quite high quality. (Again, my parent’s fault—when I began searching out on my own, I was rather less selective.) The other major activity of my childhood was participation in the Boy Scouts of America.
I entered community college at the age of fifteen with an excellent grounding in mathematics, a decent grounding in physics, superb fluency with the English language (both written and spoken), and superficial knowledge of most everything else. After earning straight As for three years, I applied to four-year universities, and my home state university offered me a full ride. At present, I am a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the same institution.
In the meantime, I have developed an affection for weblogs, web comics, and online chess, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule and work ethic. I suspect I discovered Overcoming Bias through “My Favorite Liar” like everyone else, but Eliezer Yudkowsky’s sequences (and, to a lesser extent, Robin Hanson’s essays) were what drew me in. I lost interest around when EY jumped to lesswrong.com, but was drawn back in when I opened up the bookmark again in the past day or so, particularly thanks to a few of Yvain’s contributions.
Being all of twenty-four and with less worldly experience than the average haddock, I imagine I shan’t contribute much to the conversation, but I’ll give it my best shot.
(P.S. I am not registered for cryonics and I’m skeptical about the ultimate potential of AI. I’m an modern-American-style liberal registered as a Republican for reasons which seemed good at the time. Also, I am—as is obvious in person but not online—both male and black.)
Oh, I’m sure someone does, but the real reason I mentioned it is because I usually don’t have a lot more to say about a subject than “that sounds reasonable to me”. (:
Welcome! As Alicorn pointed out, age and experience don’t count for much here, as compared to rationality and good ol’fashioned book-learnin’. If it helps any, you even have more education than a lot of the folks about (though we have a minor infestation of doctors)
Ignoring the more obvious jokes people make in introduction posts: Hi. My name is Robin. I grew up in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, and have lived in the same place essentially all my life. I was homeschooled by secular parents—one didn’t discuss religion and the other was agnostic—with my primary hobby being the reading of (mostly) speculative fiction of (mostly) quite high quality. (Again, my parent’s fault—when I began searching out on my own, I was rather less selective.) The other major activity of my childhood was participation in the Boy Scouts of America.
I entered community college at the age of fifteen with an excellent grounding in mathematics, a decent grounding in physics, superb fluency with the English language (both written and spoken), and superficial knowledge of most everything else. After earning straight As for three years, I applied to four-year universities, and my home state university offered me a full ride. At present, I am a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the same institution.
In the meantime, I have developed an affection for weblogs, web comics, and online chess, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule and work ethic. I suspect I discovered Overcoming Bias through “My Favorite Liar” like everyone else, but Eliezer Yudkowsky’s sequences (and, to a lesser extent, Robin Hanson’s essays) were what drew me in. I lost interest around when EY jumped to lesswrong.com, but was drawn back in when I opened up the bookmark again in the past day or so, particularly thanks to a few of Yvain’s contributions.
Being all of twenty-four and with less worldly experience than the average haddock, I imagine I shan’t contribute much to the conversation, but I’ll give it my best shot.
(P.S. I am not registered for cryonics and I’m skeptical about the ultimate potential of AI. I’m an modern-American-style liberal registered as a Republican for reasons which seemed good at the time. Also, I am—as is obvious in person but not online—both male and black.)
What gave you the idea that anyone cares about age and experience around here? ;)
Oh, I’m sure someone does, but the real reason I mentioned it is because I usually don’t have a lot more to say about a subject than “that sounds reasonable to me”. (:
So, that was a rationalization above the bottom line of observation that you choose to not say much?
No—I choose to talk a lot, in fact. That’s just the reason I expect most of it to be inane. :D
Welcome! As Alicorn pointed out, age and experience don’t count for much here, as compared to rationality and good ol’fashioned book-learnin’. If it helps any, you even have more education than a lot of the folks about (though we have a minor infestation of doctors)
Well, like I said, I’ll give it my best!
(Doctors, eh? Y’know, I have this rash on my lower back… ^_^)