Hi guys, my name is Luka, and I’m 20. I study physics at University of Vienna.
I follow LW since February, and I went probably through all core sequences, and good chunk of the rest. I did not gained too much, because I was kinda always eager to argue with good arguments and resistant to bad arguments, even from elder (which brought me into trouble quite a few times). My biggest win is that I remained strong in the moment when I started to fall: I started drowning in irrationality (because of lack of rational people in my surrounding), and started using passwords without noticing, I started learning at cost of thinking, instead of using them both. LW gave me structural knowledge of what I already used, and thus made me stay that way. AND HOPE! How did I forget that, it was big...
Which leads me to more interesting topic, and that is: what will I give to you?
I had strong education in mathematics, physics and informatics during high school, since I attended specialized high school. There I developed strong logical thinking, but even better, I always tried to implement that into my every-day-life. Since I do feel material from sequences on gut level, I will try to teach you how to do it, too (as soon as I understand what exactly I do different xD). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t try to show off, I just hope to give you insight from other perspective, and with help from more experienced members (because you guys know much more about cognitive science, teaching and writing then I do) to write good materials to help people move on from understanding rationality to actively using it. If someone of the experienced members live in Belgrade or Vienna I will be glad to meet you to discuss how to write all the things I would like to.
I strongly believe I did manage do actualize my self (in Maslow’s sense (I just needed the term to express myself, I don’t have so good knowledge in psychology to state that any of his theories is true or false)), and I will argue it has a lot to do with becoming rationalist in time.
I will try to diversify this community, since it is mostly devoted to development of friendly AI, and I think there are other things how to help our world (more) effectively. We should not put all eggs in one basket.
To tell you more about me, I believe I posses wide knowledge (and I invest time to make it wider): I am really good in mathematics, physics and programming(there i went in-depth the most), and I have some basic knowledge in finance, economics, psychology. I play guitar in free time, attend choir, play video games… I am not a native English speaker, which you probably already noticed, so please, send me private message if you notice some big errors, I will appreciate it. I speak Serbian (my native language) and German as well (since I study in Vienna).
I look forward to making this world a wonderful place!
Glad to hear you’ve already started digging in to some of the literature and found it to your liking. Yes, it’s easy, when you have no community that encourages improvement, to fall into passwords, caches, and generally “not thinking.” We can even forget to hope that we can make things better, as you’ve discovered. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people who can relate here and who are glad to help each other not fall back into those habits.
Since you seem to have such a focus on self-improvement and applying rationality to personal habits, don’t hesitate to write about your experiences using rationality or your own personal improvements. Personal anecdotes are, of course, not verifiable experiments, but they are still experiences. The Group Rationality Diary may interest you in that regard. You can share your own experiences, see what others have done, discuss personal habits and experiments.
If you’d like a bit more discussion, you can go to the Open Thread or make a new Discussion post, though you might want to save that latter option for a more developed, researched topic. Starting in the Open Thread will not only help give you a chance to experience LW conversation and habits, but it can also help develop an idea you have before you present it as a full post.
Applied rationality, or, as some refer to it around here, “the martial art of rationality,” is one of our big projects of interest. It’s right there in the title of the blog itself after all. We want to improve our abilities to improve the world. So we sharpen each other, and we develop new methods, find new discoveries, perform new experiments on using our tool kit in the larger world. We certainly welcome a new voice and new perspective to the conversation. Given your wide background, your voice will be a wonderful addition.
Hi guys, my name is Luka, and I’m 20. I study physics at University of Vienna.
I follow LW since February, and I went probably through all core sequences, and good chunk of the rest. I did not gained too much, because I was kinda always eager to argue with good arguments and resistant to bad arguments, even from elder (which brought me into trouble quite a few times). My biggest win is that I remained strong in the moment when I started to fall: I started drowning in irrationality (because of lack of rational people in my surrounding), and started using passwords without noticing, I started learning at cost of thinking, instead of using them both. LW gave me structural knowledge of what I already used, and thus made me stay that way. AND HOPE! How did I forget that, it was big...
Which leads me to more interesting topic, and that is: what will I give to you?
I had strong education in mathematics, physics and informatics during high school, since I attended specialized high school. There I developed strong logical thinking, but even better, I always tried to implement that into my every-day-life. Since I do feel material from sequences on gut level, I will try to teach you how to do it, too (as soon as I understand what exactly I do different xD). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t try to show off, I just hope to give you insight from other perspective, and with help from more experienced members (because you guys know much more about cognitive science, teaching and writing then I do) to write good materials to help people move on from understanding rationality to actively using it. If someone of the experienced members live in Belgrade or Vienna I will be glad to meet you to discuss how to write all the things I would like to.
I strongly believe I did manage do actualize my self (in Maslow’s sense (I just needed the term to express myself, I don’t have so good knowledge in psychology to state that any of his theories is true or false)), and I will argue it has a lot to do with becoming rationalist in time.
I will try to diversify this community, since it is mostly devoted to development of friendly AI, and I think there are other things how to help our world (more) effectively. We should not put all eggs in one basket.
To tell you more about me, I believe I posses wide knowledge (and I invest time to make it wider): I am really good in mathematics, physics and programming(there i went in-depth the most), and I have some basic knowledge in finance, economics, psychology. I play guitar in free time, attend choir, play video games… I am not a native English speaker, which you probably already noticed, so please, send me private message if you notice some big errors, I will appreciate it. I speak Serbian (my native language) and German as well (since I study in Vienna).
I look forward to making this world a wonderful place!
Hello and welcome to LessWrong!
Glad to hear you’ve already started digging in to some of the literature and found it to your liking. Yes, it’s easy, when you have no community that encourages improvement, to fall into passwords, caches, and generally “not thinking.” We can even forget to hope that we can make things better, as you’ve discovered. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people who can relate here and who are glad to help each other not fall back into those habits.
Since you seem to have such a focus on self-improvement and applying rationality to personal habits, don’t hesitate to write about your experiences using rationality or your own personal improvements. Personal anecdotes are, of course, not verifiable experiments, but they are still experiences. The Group Rationality Diary may interest you in that regard. You can share your own experiences, see what others have done, discuss personal habits and experiments.
If you’d like a bit more discussion, you can go to the Open Thread or make a new Discussion post, though you might want to save that latter option for a more developed, researched topic. Starting in the Open Thread will not only help give you a chance to experience LW conversation and habits, but it can also help develop an idea you have before you present it as a full post.
Applied rationality, or, as some refer to it around here, “the martial art of rationality,” is one of our big projects of interest. It’s right there in the title of the blog itself after all. We want to improve our abilities to improve the world. So we sharpen each other, and we develop new methods, find new discoveries, perform new experiments on using our tool kit in the larger world. We certainly welcome a new voice and new perspective to the conversation. Given your wide background, your voice will be a wonderful addition.
I hope to read some of your ideas very soon!
Thank you for warm welcome and thorough information!