I think your advice is pretty fine but does not seem to be related to high school advice in general. I prefer advice that is directed to a potential high school student, not really looking for advice directed to newcomers on LessWrong.
I strongly disagree, and I’m curious why you think this? I have known a number of rationalists who got into SSC/ACX more than LessWrong or rather than LessWrong, and I’ve found them to generally be extremely sidetracked into constantly debating social justice issues / nerdsniped by interesting politics—often to the point where I would strongly prefer not to attend meetups that are marketed as “Lesswrong + ACX” rather than just “LessWrong”, because I don’t want to be exposed to that.
That’s a fair point, different directions have different landmines. Culture war issues are tempting and most people seem to have strong yet poorly informed opinions that are not obviously poorly informed. I think that the original collection by Rob Bensinger The Library of Scott Alexandria is really good to start with, it is very light on political and culture war topics and grasps the essence of rational thinking, without going into the esoteric and irrelevant topics like quantum mechanics.
Step away from this place for a time and read Scott Alexander first. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vwqLfDfsHmiavFAGP/the-library-of-scott-alexandria is a good start, then continue on his blogs directly. He links back to this site where appropriate. You might get inured to some of the common pitfalls newbies here are prone to.
I think your advice is pretty fine but does not seem to be related to high school advice in general. I prefer advice that is directed to a potential high school student, not really looking for advice directed to newcomers on LessWrong.
I recommend reading the articles without comments, because the comments are 10x as much text (without being 10x as much value).
Selections of rationalist texts:
The Library of Scott Alexandria
Rationality: From AI to Zombies (price: write “0”), or here
Best of LessWrong
I strongly disagree, and I’m curious why you think this? I have known a number of rationalists who got into SSC/ACX more than LessWrong or rather than LessWrong, and I’ve found them to generally be extremely sidetracked into constantly debating social justice issues / nerdsniped by interesting politics—often to the point where I would strongly prefer not to attend meetups that are marketed as “Lesswrong + ACX” rather than just “LessWrong”, because I don’t want to be exposed to that.
That’s a fair point, different directions have different landmines. Culture war issues are tempting and most people seem to have strong yet poorly informed opinions that are not obviously poorly informed. I think that the original collection by Rob Bensinger The Library of Scott Alexandria is really good to start with, it is very light on political and culture war topics and grasps the essence of rational thinking, without going into the esoteric and irrelevant topics like quantum mechanics.