Hello there, just saw this. I’m Hans, a 22-year-old Software Engineer. I’ve been reading cursory here for a while, but to be perfectly honest, I have no clue how I stumbled upon it. This page is bookmarked since January, a time at which I was working on my Bachelor’s Thesis, so I reckon I found it after taking one to many (or perhaps the exact right amount of) tangents while researching. Another hypothesis has just formed in my mind since gwern wrote about the Libera channel lower, and I faintly remember stumbling upon Libera at the same time. (Not as a tangent to research, but as a procrastination)
I haven’t read much here yet, but the Sequences are firmly on my to-read list. What convinced me to stay was the fact that I devoured Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality—I’ve read it over the course of a few days, whenever I was bored and was SHOCKED when I saw how long the PDF-version would have been. (I did not perceive it that lengthy)
When looking back, I’ve always valued “Rationality” (whatever that was in my mind really) a lot. In fact, there were times in my life where I, weirdly, regarded emotions as weak. Even now, Intellect is a large part of my identity, but at the same time I feel terribly lacking in actually rationally applying that and having a direction for advanced thought. I sometimes struggle with taking agency and doing something that I would myself call “productive”. I also value conversation and abstract thinking / arguing tremendously, but I often find that it results in confrontation where non was intended. This might both warrant work on my social circle and my rhetoric.
Of course, I’m as interested in the concept of Artificial Intelligence as the next person, but I have yet invested the time necessary to learn anything but the basics. Especially at this time, where I’ll soon be thinking about my future education again, having found a community interested both in Rationality and AI is delightfully helpful for my situation.
I hope to read from many interesting people here and learn (perhaps from each other) in the process. I’m still unsure about most of the M.O. of this community, so I hope that was of interest to anyone. If it did, I’m looking forward to getting to know you all!
Hello there, just saw this. I’m Hans, a 22-year-old Software Engineer. I’ve been reading cursory here for a while, but to be perfectly honest, I have no clue how I stumbled upon it. This page is bookmarked since January, a time at which I was working on my Bachelor’s Thesis, so I reckon I found it after taking one to many (or perhaps the exact right amount of) tangents while researching. Another hypothesis has just formed in my mind since gwern wrote about the Libera channel lower, and I faintly remember stumbling upon Libera at the same time. (Not as a tangent to research, but as a procrastination)
I haven’t read much here yet, but the Sequences are firmly on my to-read list. What convinced me to stay was the fact that I devoured Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality—I’ve read it over the course of a few days, whenever I was bored and was SHOCKED when I saw how long the PDF-version would have been. (I did not perceive it that lengthy)
When looking back, I’ve always valued “Rationality” (whatever that was in my mind really) a lot.
In fact, there were times in my life where I, weirdly, regarded emotions as weak.
Even now, Intellect is a large part of my identity, but at the same time I feel terribly lacking in actually rationally applying that and having a direction for advanced thought. I sometimes struggle with taking agency and doing something that I would myself call “productive”.
I also value conversation and abstract thinking / arguing tremendously, but I often find that it results in confrontation where non was intended. This might both warrant work on my social circle and my rhetoric.
Of course, I’m as interested in the concept of Artificial Intelligence as the next person, but I have yet invested the time necessary to learn anything but the basics. Especially at this time, where I’ll soon be thinking about my future education again, having found a community interested both in Rationality and AI is delightfully helpful for my situation.
I hope to read from many interesting people here and learn (perhaps from each other) in the process. I’m still unsure about most of the M.O. of this community, so I hope that was of interest to anyone.
If it did, I’m looking forward to getting to know you all!