I came here following Eliezer when he left OB. I think the main reasons why I am not participating more are:
I am an undergraduate student just starting to learn about rationality. I often struggle to understand the main posts and I am quite far from being able to contribute useful knowledge, new insights or a qualified opinion to any of the discussion here.
But why not ask more questions? I usually consider asking questions an extremely important thing to do. The problem is, although I have pretty much read all of the current posts, I have not yet caught up with all the older material. So I think I do not have the right to ask questions and bother you with things that you might already have explained elsewhere in full detail. I feel like I should first do my part of the work before I can expect others to take the time and explain things to me.
I am from Germany and not an English native speaker. Writing something in an environment with such high linguistic standards is additionally intimidating (I regularly come across words in LW posts that I have never seen before and have to look them up—to me a sign that my language skills are not appropriate to write here. Coming to speak of it: please excuse my bad language!)
the karma-system clearly conveys the message that the community only wants the most qualified contributions—I simply do not feel fit to provide them.
By the way: I was a silent reader for quite a long time. Then I finally signed up a while ago to vote for a comment that I thought should get more attention. This did not work because as a newly registered user I did not have enough karma to vote and so I gave up. Apparently the community does not even consider me fit to vote, so I won’t do it.
Thank you all who are contributing to this site, lurking here and knowing one is not alone is such a pleasure!
I agree with the commenter who said that your English is more than good enough to post here. I almost certainly wouldn’t have realized you are a non-native speaker if you hadn’t mentioned it in your comment.
I suggest experimenting with asking questions, and see how they go over.
My high school chemistry class (about thirty students) got two scores of 795 and six of 800 (the maximum) on the PSAT test, and I’m convinced that while some of the credit goes to the reasonable and sensible teacher, a lot goes to one of the students who kept asking questions—at least for me, many of his questions were things I wanted to ask, but couldn’t quite get to asking.
I have several similar experiences, often myself being the one who asked most of the questions. When teaching I always try to encourage asking questions as much as possible. I am well known for the many questions I am asking in class—even to the extend that others get quite annoyed by me.
But if i did not listen to the teacher for a single moment I do not think I am allowed to ask questions any more. I did not bother to listen, so why should my teacher bother to answer? Maybe I would already know the answer if I just had listened...
That is a bit how I feel here, not having read through the vast archives of LW...
Writing something in an environment with such high linguistic standards is additionally intimidating (I regularly come across words in LW posts that I have never seen before and have to look them up—to me a sign that my language skills are not appropriate to write here. Coming to speak of it: please excuse my bad language!)
Don’t worry, your competence in English, and SovietPyg’s, who expressed a similar sentiment, far exceed mine in any language but English.
And the English language is so vast that even native speakers keep discovering new words.
I suspect that I may have missed some point, though. As far as I know, the primary language on this website is English, and the secondary language would be the language of mathematics (if I may call it a language); and so I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.
On a side note, I think that for many linguistic perfectionists the main source of intimidation would be the very process of writing a comment or article (as opposed to being aware of the likelihood of having committed a number of grammatical or semantic mistakes). It is true for me personally. In writing a text in any language but Russian—my native language—I don’t feel confident enough to proceed without consulting various corpora and dictionaries. Then I end up with a comment composed almost entirely of expressions which I saw in dictionary samples and liked better than my own expressions. This is a rather strange experience in its own. Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own: “you know that I know that you know that I know et cetera ad infinitum”, this sort of thing; and so the amount of information would be exactly zero. Why increase the entropy? :-)
“I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.”
I believe the point that RichardKennaway was making was this one, which I’ve heard before: Many English speakers do not know, or are not fluent in, any other languages. We therefore should not feel entitled to criticize the English skills of someone who took the effort to become fluent in English as a second language.
Also, your English skills are quite good. :-)
“Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own”
I definitely have this problem too. I end up posting maybe half the comments I write.
Many English speakers do not know, or are not fluent in, any other languages. We therefore should not feel entitled to criticize the English skills of someone who took the effort to become fluent in English as a second language.
Agree completely. But still I’m typically impressed with how well they can communicate, and so have little reason to criticize to begin with.
On a slightly related note, I’ve had the opposite problem of people thinking I’m not a native English speaker (when yes, I am one). This only happens for in-person conversation: for some reason, they think I’m from Europe, usually Germany. (I speak German, but only from having learned it in school and having done a short exchange.)
It happened again recently: I went to a meeting of a group I hadn’t been to before, and, as is common, someone asked me where I was from, and was suprised to hear my answer of Austin, TX. He said he assumed I was from Germany from how I talk, which I would dismiss as a fluke except that he was the ~15th person to say that. I certainly admit that I don’t sound Texan at all—never picked up an accent for some reason.
(I would link my youtube page, but I’m not sure any of the videos give a characteristic example of what I sound like in conversation.)
Your English (as shown in your comment) is more than good enough, but I don’t know how much effort it took for you to write that comment.
It sounds as though those racing thoughts are at least partially habitual. The only way to find out whether they are in fact redundant is to try posting—and maybe even to ask whether a post you’re unsure of is contributing anything new.
Hi.
I came here following Eliezer when he left OB. I think the main reasons why I am not participating more are:
I am an undergraduate student just starting to learn about rationality. I often struggle to understand the main posts and I am quite far from being able to contribute useful knowledge, new insights or a qualified opinion to any of the discussion here.
But why not ask more questions? I usually consider asking questions an extremely important thing to do. The problem is, although I have pretty much read all of the current posts, I have not yet caught up with all the older material. So I think I do not have the right to ask questions and bother you with things that you might already have explained elsewhere in full detail. I feel like I should first do my part of the work before I can expect others to take the time and explain things to me.
I am from Germany and not an English native speaker. Writing something in an environment with such high linguistic standards is additionally intimidating (I regularly come across words in LW posts that I have never seen before and have to look them up—to me a sign that my language skills are not appropriate to write here. Coming to speak of it: please excuse my bad language!)
the karma-system clearly conveys the message that the community only wants the most qualified contributions—I simply do not feel fit to provide them.
By the way: I was a silent reader for quite a long time. Then I finally signed up a while ago to vote for a comment that I thought should get more attention. This did not work because as a newly registered user I did not have enough karma to vote and so I gave up. Apparently the community does not even consider me fit to vote, so I won’t do it.
Thank you all who are contributing to this site, lurking here and knowing one is not alone is such a pleasure!
I agree with the commenter who said that your English is more than good enough to post here. I almost certainly wouldn’t have realized you are a non-native speaker if you hadn’t mentioned it in your comment.
I suggest experimenting with asking questions, and see how they go over.
My high school chemistry class (about thirty students) got two scores of 795 and six of 800 (the maximum) on the PSAT test, and I’m convinced that while some of the credit goes to the reasonable and sensible teacher, a lot goes to one of the students who kept asking questions—at least for me, many of his questions were things I wanted to ask, but couldn’t quite get to asking.
I have several similar experiences, often myself being the one who asked most of the questions. When teaching I always try to encourage asking questions as much as possible. I am well known for the many questions I am asking in class—even to the extend that others get quite annoyed by me.
But if i did not listen to the teacher for a single moment I do not think I am allowed to ask questions any more. I did not bother to listen, so why should my teacher bother to answer? Maybe I would already know the answer if I just had listened...
That is a bit how I feel here, not having read through the vast archives of LW...
Don’t worry, your competence in English, and SovietPyg’s, who expressed a similar sentiment, far exceed mine in any language but English.
And the English language is so vast that even native speakers keep discovering new words.
Thank you.
I suspect that I may have missed some point, though. As far as I know, the primary language on this website is English, and the secondary language would be the language of mathematics (if I may call it a language); and so I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.
On a side note, I think that for many linguistic perfectionists the main source of intimidation would be the very process of writing a comment or article (as opposed to being aware of the likelihood of having committed a number of grammatical or semantic mistakes). It is true for me personally. In writing a text in any language but Russian—my native language—I don’t feel confident enough to proceed without consulting various corpora and dictionaries. Then I end up with a comment composed almost entirely of expressions which I saw in dictionary samples and liked better than my own expressions. This is a rather strange experience in its own. Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own: “you know that I know that you know that I know et cetera ad infinitum”, this sort of thing; and so the amount of information would be exactly zero. Why increase the entropy? :-)
“I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.”
I believe the point that RichardKennaway was making was this one, which I’ve heard before: Many English speakers do not know, or are not fluent in, any other languages. We therefore should not feel entitled to criticize the English skills of someone who took the effort to become fluent in English as a second language.
Also, your English skills are quite good. :-)
“Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own”
I definitely have this problem too. I end up posting maybe half the comments I write.
Agree completely. But still I’m typically impressed with how well they can communicate, and so have little reason to criticize to begin with.
On a slightly related note, I’ve had the opposite problem of people thinking I’m not a native English speaker (when yes, I am one). This only happens for in-person conversation: for some reason, they think I’m from Europe, usually Germany. (I speak German, but only from having learned it in school and having done a short exchange.)
It happened again recently: I went to a meeting of a group I hadn’t been to before, and, as is common, someone asked me where I was from, and was suprised to hear my answer of Austin, TX. He said he assumed I was from Germany from how I talk, which I would dismiss as a fluke except that he was the ~15th person to say that. I certainly admit that I don’t sound Texan at all—never picked up an accent for some reason.
(I would link my youtube page, but I’m not sure any of the videos give a characteristic example of what I sound like in conversation.)
Your English (as shown in your comment) is more than good enough, but I don’t know how much effort it took for you to write that comment.
It sounds as though those racing thoughts are at least partially habitual. The only way to find out whether they are in fact redundant is to try posting—and maybe even to ask whether a post you’re unsure of is contributing anything new.