I use my real first name on here. I’m trans, and developing as a rationalist was instrumental in realizing that, so the two things are kind of tied together and the name partly symbolizes the rational part of me. Also, I had a hard time thinking of a good username and didn’t really like the idea of hiding behind one on here due to a variety of factors.
And I don’t use my last name because I don’t want this account tied to real life me. Real life me has to deal with normal people, whose idea of rationality is AI and emotionless robots. It’s much easier to just quietly use rationalist techniques and frame things in normal terms than try to explain all that inferential distance.
For other sites, I use my full real name if I want the account to be discoverable (github/gitlab, linkedin). For games I use my first name where possible because it’s one of the few areas where people use it a lot to refer to me and I really like being called Raven. My writing has a realistic pseudonym. And for everything else I use usernames.
I use my real first name on here. I’m trans, and developing as a rationalist was instrumental in realizing that, so the two things are kind of tied together and the name partly symbolizes the rational part of me. Also, I had a hard time thinking of a good username and didn’t really like the idea of hiding behind one on here due to a variety of factors.
And I don’t use my last name because I don’t want this account tied to real life me. Real life me has to deal with normal people, whose idea of rationality is AI and emotionless robots. It’s much easier to just quietly use rationalist techniques and frame things in normal terms than try to explain all that inferential distance.
For other sites, I use my full real name if I want the account to be discoverable (github/gitlab, linkedin). For games I use my first name where possible because it’s one of the few areas where people use it a lot to refer to me and I really like being called Raven. My writing has a realistic pseudonym. And for everything else I use usernames.