Hiya I’m Oliver, I’m 21 and I’m here because I want to be stronger.
I’ve got a degree in Engineering, £600 and a slowly breaking laptop which I would send off to get fixed if I could do without the internet for the time that would take. I am, in essence, a shattered mass of broken stereotypes. I am a breakdancing, engineering, rock climbing, food roasting, anime watching, arrow-shooting intelligent fool from near London, UK. At the minute I’m living near Bath and I’m trying to force myself to look for engineering work: hopefully biotech, probably something else.
Until recently I had just enough knowledge to screw myself over repeatedly and forcibly. I’ve ended up with a large pile of akrasia and unhelpful habits as a result of an insufficient understanding of how things work. I was guilty of picking a position based on whatever and then googling studies to defend my hastily erected viewpoint. The internet being what it is I could always find a study defending my viewpoint, and I thought this made me scientific. Like I said, just enough rope to hang myself intellectually speaking.
About 3 months ago someone linked me to HPMOR and I devoured it. Then I turned to Thinking, Fast and Slow and devoured that. Then I came here and I’m half an Elizer sequence and half of the other people sequences away from having devoured this place. Call me a ravening monster from before time because I am a hungry for sanity. I have a feeling that all this knowledge has allowed me to hit intellectual critical mass and my interventions into my own psyche have started to be a lot more effective now that I understand better the flawed lens I’m working with. That said, I have a huge pile of beliefs that I created unscientifically over the course of my life which need to be slowly rectified over time.
I feel that I’ve made progress on epistemic rationality, but now I need to do better at applied rationality. I need to change my habits towards work and effort, because for a while I’ve been reinforcing unhelpful habits and ways of thinking. It’s time for me to win.
Bravo! It all starts with finding the crack in the lens. Now comes the hard, fun, terrible, numinous part of living better than before. Since you’ve already bootstrapped yourself through the sequences, you might want to consider branching out into real space. I say this because it sounds like you’re looking for the practical, real, hands-on experience. A LessWrong meetup, such as the one held near London, might be the very thing you need. A group of like-minded people, engaging in rationality exercises, swapping notes, and basically helping each other get a little bit stronger and feel a little bit better.
You might also be interested in the Rationality Diary. It’s a good place for starting out tallying yourself, making a record of the real behaviors you’ve done, the real plans you’ve made, the real successes and failures you’ve had.It’s a useful tool for keeping yourself honest and seeing how far you’ve come.
And, of course, if you’d just like to participate in the discussion… well, there’s certainly a place for that too.
Glad to have you join the conversation! Hope to see you around soon.
Thanks for the welcome and the useful links, you’re right about the tendency towards meetups which is why I’m going to the one in Bath tomorrow. The rationality diary seems like it should be a useful and interesting addition to my attempts at self improvement, so cheers.
Edit: That open thread is fascinating. I’ve never seen a community with such a high standard of discussion in real time. Even bestof archived depthhub threads don’t touch it. I am going to have to think very carefully about any comments I might make to avoid accidentally eternal septembering this place. I can see I will also have to limit how much time I spend in such threads. I can fully imagine spending an inordinate amount of time on them learning fascinating things.
Hiya I’m Oliver, I’m 21 and I’m here because I want to be stronger.
I’ve got a degree in Engineering, £600 and a slowly breaking laptop which I would send off to get fixed if I could do without the internet for the time that would take. I am, in essence, a shattered mass of broken stereotypes. I am a breakdancing, engineering, rock climbing, food roasting, anime watching, arrow-shooting intelligent fool from near London, UK. At the minute I’m living near Bath and I’m trying to force myself to look for engineering work: hopefully biotech, probably something else.
Until recently I had just enough knowledge to screw myself over repeatedly and forcibly. I’ve ended up with a large pile of akrasia and unhelpful habits as a result of an insufficient understanding of how things work. I was guilty of picking a position based on whatever and then googling studies to defend my hastily erected viewpoint. The internet being what it is I could always find a study defending my viewpoint, and I thought this made me scientific. Like I said, just enough rope to hang myself intellectually speaking.
About 3 months ago someone linked me to HPMOR and I devoured it. Then I turned to Thinking, Fast and Slow and devoured that. Then I came here and I’m half an Elizer sequence and half of the other people sequences away from having devoured this place. Call me a ravening monster from before time because I am a hungry for sanity. I have a feeling that all this knowledge has allowed me to hit intellectual critical mass and my interventions into my own psyche have started to be a lot more effective now that I understand better the flawed lens I’m working with. That said, I have a huge pile of beliefs that I created unscientifically over the course of my life which need to be slowly rectified over time.
I feel that I’ve made progress on epistemic rationality, but now I need to do better at applied rationality. I need to change my habits towards work and effort, because for a while I’ve been reinforcing unhelpful habits and ways of thinking. It’s time for me to win.
Hello and welcome to LessWrong!
Bravo! It all starts with finding the crack in the lens. Now comes the hard, fun, terrible, numinous part of living better than before. Since you’ve already bootstrapped yourself through the sequences, you might want to consider branching out into real space. I say this because it sounds like you’re looking for the practical, real, hands-on experience. A LessWrong meetup, such as the one held near London, might be the very thing you need. A group of like-minded people, engaging in rationality exercises, swapping notes, and basically helping each other get a little bit stronger and feel a little bit better.
You might also be interested in the Rationality Diary. It’s a good place for starting out tallying yourself, making a record of the real behaviors you’ve done, the real plans you’ve made, the real successes and failures you’ve had.It’s a useful tool for keeping yourself honest and seeing how far you’ve come.
And, of course, if you’d just like to participate in the discussion… well, there’s certainly a place for that too.
Glad to have you join the conversation! Hope to see you around soon.
Thanks for the welcome and the useful links, you’re right about the tendency towards meetups which is why I’m going to the one in Bath tomorrow. The rationality diary seems like it should be a useful and interesting addition to my attempts at self improvement, so cheers.
Edit: That open thread is fascinating. I’ve never seen a community with such a high standard of discussion in real time. Even bestof archived depthhub threads don’t touch it. I am going to have to think very carefully about any comments I might make to avoid accidentally eternal septembering this place. I can see I will also have to limit how much time I spend in such threads. I can fully imagine spending an inordinate amount of time on them learning fascinating things.
Hey Oliver,
The Bristol EA society meets pretty regularly (weekly/fortnightly), which might also be of interest if you are in the Bristol/Bath area.
Welcome and I’ll see you at the Bath meetup!
See you on tuesday