Hi everyone. I have been lurking since the site started, but did not have the courage to start posting until recently. I am a male college graduate in his mid-twenties, happily engaged and currently job-hunting, and have been fascinated by science and reason since I was a child. I was one of those people who actually identified with the “Hollywood Rational” robots and aliens in science fiction and wanted to be more like them. Science and science fiction socialized me and made me curious about the inner working of the universe.
I love the sequences and consider them a major influence on the way I think. The insights into reasoning, psychology, and metaethics the sequences gave me helped make me who I am today. Less Wrong made me a consequentialist and an altruist. It helped me realize that ethical naturalism might be true after all. I learned about akrasia from LW, which caused me to reject the poisonous cynicism that Revealed Preference Theory had infected me with. It’s helped me put my life in order a little better, although I’m still fighting akrasia.
My only regret is that I recently started suffering bouts of severe depression because something snapped and made me start thinking about existential risks in Near Mode instead of Far Mode. I suspect it was Robin Hanson’s “em” posts, which made me realize that AI could still threaten the future of the human race even if the FOOM theory turned out to be incorrect. I sometimes wish with all my heart that I could bleach the em posts out of my brain and return to a higher level of happiness, start believing in Julian Simon and the promise of the future again. But on the other hand those posts have caused me to think about certain topics much harder and more clearly than I would have otherwise.
I’m not a very prolific poster so far, but I think it’s high time I started being part of the community that’s been part of my life for so long.
Hi everyone. I have been lurking since the site started, but did not have the courage to start posting until recently. I am a male college graduate in his mid-twenties, happily engaged and currently job-hunting, and have been fascinated by science and reason since I was a child. I was one of those people who actually identified with the “Hollywood Rational” robots and aliens in science fiction and wanted to be more like them. Science and science fiction socialized me and made me curious about the inner working of the universe.
I love the sequences and consider them a major influence on the way I think. The insights into reasoning, psychology, and metaethics the sequences gave me helped make me who I am today. Less Wrong made me a consequentialist and an altruist. It helped me realize that ethical naturalism might be true after all. I learned about akrasia from LW, which caused me to reject the poisonous cynicism that Revealed Preference Theory had infected me with. It’s helped me put my life in order a little better, although I’m still fighting akrasia.
My only regret is that I recently started suffering bouts of severe depression because something snapped and made me start thinking about existential risks in Near Mode instead of Far Mode. I suspect it was Robin Hanson’s “em” posts, which made me realize that AI could still threaten the future of the human race even if the FOOM theory turned out to be incorrect. I sometimes wish with all my heart that I could bleach the em posts out of my brain and return to a higher level of happiness, start believing in Julian Simon and the promise of the future again. But on the other hand those posts have caused me to think about certain topics much harder and more clearly than I would have otherwise.
I’m not a very prolific poster so far, but I think it’s high time I started being part of the community that’s been part of my life for so long.