It is so painful to have an easily available possible world in which you find LessWrong earlier than in the real world. I ran into LW/OB five times since I was 16 and didn’t stick around until I was 21. I can’t imagine what I would be like with five years of exposure to the important things that I’ve been exposed to in the past six months, as well as having grown alongside the community, seeing as how I came around near the time that LW began.
I also didn’t stick with LW at the first time. I found an article linked from somewhere, I believe it was “Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism”, I was impressed, but then I left. A year or two later, I again randomly found an article, then I saw it was the same website as the previous one, so I was like “Oh, this website contains multiple interesting articles” and started clicking on random links in text. Then I cautiously posted a few comments in the Open Thread—some got downvotes, some got upvotes—and kept reading...
So, somewhere in the parallel Everett branch there is a version of me that didn’t return to LW anymore, or just returned, read one article, and left again. Poor guy; he probably spends a lot of time having stupid debates on other websites.
What do you believe you would have done differently, if you would stick around here at 16?
It is so painful to have an easily available possible world in which you find LessWrong earlier than in the real world. I ran into LW/OB five times since I was 16 and didn’t stick around until I was 21. I can’t imagine what I would be like with five years of exposure to the important things that I’ve been exposed to in the past six months, as well as having grown alongside the community, seeing as how I came around near the time that LW began.
I also didn’t stick with LW at the first time. I found an article linked from somewhere, I believe it was “Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism”, I was impressed, but then I left. A year or two later, I again randomly found an article, then I saw it was the same website as the previous one, so I was like “Oh, this website contains multiple interesting articles” and started clicking on random links in text. Then I cautiously posted a few comments in the Open Thread—some got downvotes, some got upvotes—and kept reading...
So, somewhere in the parallel Everett branch there is a version of me that didn’t return to LW anymore, or just returned, read one article, and left again. Poor guy; he probably spends a lot of time having stupid debates on other websites.
What do you believe you would have done differently, if you would stick around here at 16?