I’m a CS undergraduate, newly registered 2+-year lurker, and HPMOR acolyte. Can you imagine my surprise as I the article I’m reading casually describes me?
We hadn’t been expecting it, but many advisees asked us questions related to procrastination, social skills, and other life skills.
I had a lot of trouble with procrastination in my high school career, and did on one occasion look on Less Wrong for answers. It’s not surprising to me that the smart kids who are interested in the topics discussed here would have problems with self-control and video game addiction. I am, of course, projecting.
It’s not clear to me why they don’t participate more actively on LessWrong. Maybe no special reasons are needed: the ratio of lurkers to posters is huge for most Internet fora.
That is true for the electronics forum I lurk for answers to my simple questions, or for some other site I met while researching some topic. However, the community here is so brilliant that I feel like anything I would add would be seen as inexperienced and petty, and my youth obvious. I can’t speak for all of the other high school and college students lurking here, but that is the case for me. Make it clear that this site isn’t an ivory tower where they’ll defenstrate you if you say something stupid.
TakisMichel said it well: The discussions and comments here is (or were) intimidatingly high-quality. In the same way I wouldn’t speak out in a physics convention full of PhD holders, I wouldn’t do so here.
I’m a CS undergraduate, newly registered 2+-year lurker, and HPMOR acolyte. Can you imagine my surprise as I the article I’m reading casually describes me?
I had a lot of trouble with procrastination in my high school career, and did on one occasion look on Less Wrong for answers. It’s not surprising to me that the smart kids who are interested in the topics discussed here would have problems with self-control and video game addiction. I am, of course, projecting.
That is true for the electronics forum I lurk for answers to my simple questions, or for some other site I met while researching some topic. However, the community here is so brilliant that I feel like anything I would add would be seen as inexperienced and petty, and my youth obvious. I can’t speak for all of the other high school and college students lurking here, but that is the case for me. Make it clear that this site isn’t an ivory tower where they’ll defenstrate you if you say something stupid.
TakisMichel said it well: The discussions and comments here is (or were) intimidatingly high-quality. In the same way I wouldn’t speak out in a physics convention full of PhD holders, I wouldn’t do so here.
You still succeeded to write a great first post, which makes me trust your other posts will also have good quality.
(Possibly relevant: The Sin of Underconfidence. Not just for you, but also for other lurkers reading this.)