How has lesswrong changed your life?

To put it bluntly, I think it made me smarter. Not more intelligent in the IQ sense - I remain between 125 and 130 - but quicker to notice confusion, see contradictions and avoid dead-ends. So I waste a little less time on predictably fruitless endeavors, my thinking is much more consistent (after a lot of house-cleaning), and I have clear priorities that help me decide right even when pressed for time. These changes have also made me more aware of mistakes others make, and more certain in rejecting them. I have had to learn to point out the mistakes of others more nicely and effectively, but I'm nowhere near good enough at that yet.

I learned a lot about artificial intelligence and machine learning, and am now introducing machine learning methods into my work environment.

I met a bunch of great people, especially at Secular Solstices.

I got a felt impression of how huge the smarter-than-me population actually is, and how sharply limited my abilities are. This helped me start an earnest search for the best task I can do at my level of ability. Similarly, I got an acute sense of how people at different levels of cognitive ability see the world entirely differently - independently of cultural and economic factors, just depending on the quantity and quality of interpretations and implications they're able to draw from their perception.

I got rid of a lot of false beliefs and a couple of people who continue to hold them. This freed up lots of attentional resources, which I partly reinvested into better beliefs and better people. From the latter I learned more good skills, such as standing up for my needs and empathetic communication.

The rest of the freed-up attention largely went into a huge art project that is incredibly satisfying.

I got better at modeling rational thought processes in other people, which helps in negotiations and got me a quite comfortable salary. I've come to rely on this quite a bit, and like to think it makes me an effective communicator. But at the same time, people where this sense fails (who I cannot model as rational agents) feel unsettling to me, and I more and more try to avoid them.

Perhaps most of all, I appear to make fewer stupid mistakes. The absence of something is always hard to notice, but it feels like I'm paying some kind of stupidity tax all the time, and that tax rate has gone down. Not an effect you notice after a day or two, but over the years, the benefits accumulate.

Hi everybody, first post , long time lurker. For the first few months after I discovered less wrong via HPMOR it was no more than a shiny distraction, until I read The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter which was mention in some post here, after I read it, it was clear for the first time that I could gain knowledge and skills in any(not really any) area I want, and things that I just wished to know before where became posibility.

More concrete since then I begin learning programing(Python, haskell, and currently java) by myself, and now i am a few mounths of launcing my first app for android and iOS, a skill I always wanted but take no action to adquire for no more reason that the choice was not even in my mind, learn German (currently medium level), planing to become a effective altruism after I get a more stable income, and taking various online courses of economic, neurobiology and programing, and finally thinking in terms of consequences of my actions instead of if it is my responsability or not. Doing almost all of it with the help of pomodoros, beeminder and, spaced retetition.

I think it was the combination of the Zeitgeist of less wrong and with a vivid example of someone taking action from reading The Motivation Hacker that help me develop a growth mindset.

P.S: sorry for the english, it's my second lenguague.

• Introduced to AI. I actually might not die. There's also a risk of unfriendly AI.
• Introduced to cognitive biases more formally, which has helped me become more aware of them in real life. In particular, the System 1 vs. System 2 analogy is something I think about a lot and is helps in any introspection I do.
• I now understand a lot of what I already thought about reductionism more formally, and was introduced to a good amount of new ideas as well. This has had a huge positive impact on me, and has allowed me to grow as a thinker. Along similar lines, I was introduced to the ideas of Bayesian reasoning more formally, although I've always reasoned in a similar way by default.
• I realized that there were way more smart people in the world than I had previously thought. Although people are still far from perfect.
• Introduced to the field of EA.
• Introduced to HPMOR. HPMOR has made me more strategic. In particular acting more "Slytherin" and taking advantage of stupid people instead of just becoming frustrated with them.
• LWSH has been helpful.
• Learned to take the approach of understanding the cognitive mechanisms behind confused thinking instead of just knowing that the thinking is confused and knowing the correct approach.
• There have been a ton of incredibly practical posts like Immortality A Practical Guide, Optimal Exercise, and How to Be Happy.
• Introduced to the ideas of Inside View vs. Outside View. I've learned that the way I approach things is way more "Inside View centric" than is normal, even here, and that this explains a lot of my unconventional beliefs.
• Introduced to Prediction Book and to the idea of being well calibrated.
• Understanding Your Understanding worded Level 3 to me in such a way that it "clicked" for me, and I strive to achieve it.
• Mundane Magic articulated really well how amazing the abilities we have really are, and has made me a bit more appreciative. But unfortunately this isn't something I think about too often.
• I was formally introduced to the idea of noticing confusion, and have since got very good at it.
• The ideas of Virtue Ethics and Cached Thoughts have helped me to understand how other people think.
• A lot more. LW has had a HUGE positive impact on my life. If this task involved recognition instead of recall, I'd be able to say a lot more.

I'll be editing this as I think of more things.

I give more to charity and use spaced repetition systems heavily.

I discovered the idea of Bitcoin early, made a life-changing amount of money.

I've learned that it's probably optimal to strive for the most high-earning high-productivity career you can accomplish and donate your extra income to effective altruism and that I'm not going to go and try to do that.

Less than a month in I guess, but not drinking booze (drank for 20 years) and more vigorous in my training. I was always an atheist but I now understand better why.

I don't really understand when Scott Alexander writes new people expect superpowers. Are there any? Did anyone do anything really unusual with it? I don't really expect a huge change, because rationality is all about aiming the arrow better, but it does not change how strong you pull the bow or how many arrows you have in the quiver.

I am probably of the minority who does not read HPMOR. I just don't understand the point, why mix two incompatible worlds. Isn't rationalism obviously a better candidate for SF than F? Like Larry Niven's Neutron Star? Or that is precisely the point? I like my fantasy irrational and my sci-fi rational, it just feels like the proper way how things should be... I probably lack a certain sense of humor here.

A short burst of optimism that I may not die (the Kurzweil phase), followed by the realisation that there's a significant chance that humanity might die in my lifetime.

So, in terms of effects my life as in what I've done differently: Not much.

The biggest change, I think, is that I no longer feel alone. Not in the sense of not having anyone in my life, but rather that I now know people who think in roughly the same way I do about roughly the same things I do. To put it in jargon, I have, for the first time, an in-group, a tribe. This is not an effect you should underestimate.

I have also changed my life in some ways and my outlook on the world has grown more realistic, I think. I think about things differently and am more willing to make trade-offs rather than just be paralyzed with indecision. I'm more attentive to opportunities (in all areas of life) and I'm more willing to go for those opportunities.

The most specific change I can point to is that I use my free time a lot better. Used to be that I just sat around playing videogames I didn't really enjoy in full. I can now notice when that is happening and stop doing it, which is a huge improvement on several levels. (Sometimes I then start playing a game I'll probably enjoy a lot more or continue learning to program Python or work on my math skills in Khan Academy.)

My father-in-law became suddenly more tolerable once I decided to look for evidence discomfiting my impression of him as an overbearing, condescending, deaf [noun]. It's not like I can find it often, but now I have a sport of looking! (And value evidence that confirms my hypothesis far less.)

I've gone from hoping we find life in the solar system to really hoping we don't.

I notice I am confused a lot.

I can use Bayes theorem well enough to calculate that the probability of me fully understanding Bayes theorem is 0%.

My thoughts about my future have changed from wondering aimlessly about how I can change my life and the world for the better and not being able to do anything about it to knowing quite well how I can change my life and the world for the better and still not doing anything about it

I changed my intended college major from biomedical engineering to neuroscience+compsci.

I give more money to better charities than I probably would have otherwise.

I have a regular exercise habit that I cultivated with ideas I got from LW.

I might never have read Gödel, Escher, Bach if not for LW.

LW recommended Good and Real, the book that convinced me to become vegetarian and then vegan.

I've picked up various other good habits of thought, and a much better understanding of metaethics, but those are the concretely visible ones.

ETA: also, LW convinced me that I should sign up for cryonics, but I haven't yet because I'm still in school and don't have the money, so I don't know if it counts.

Yes

1)Mealsquares & Romeo and Yvain's advice(sleep apnea & fitness)

2) Meeting intelligent people without needing to pay for it if my life didn't work out in that fashion

3) Having the chance to say the word epistemic without people thinking I'm crazy

4) A whole bunch of other stuff that I'll edit in later

Very thankful for the bay area rationalist community

I know I posted before that I didn't think I got that much out of the sequences. But now I'm studying philosophy and a lot of questions that I used to think were very challenging now are questions that I can answer. In particular, I manage to dissolve a lot of philosophical paradoxes or arguments much quicker than I used to be able to. This gives me more time to devote to my other subjects.

I also think that some of the rationality discussion has helped to improve some of my decisions, but it is very hard to pin point which.

I went from being dead set on physics to a joined major of math and physics, following up with a master in math in a while, and instead of thinking "I should learn programming some time", I am currently sitting at a lecture in Python. Had I not encountered lesswrong, I would have been a quirky, regular physicist who lives their life, thinking of some Big Questions, but not actually coming to an answer. I would also not have become atheist quite as quickly. I intend to keep being less wrong in the future, and I've seen results - positive, as well as negative due to what some people consider too much honesty. But all in all, I have improved my odds of reaching my goals.

I've probably spent slightly more time on this site and slightly less time on other sites. Other than that, I've been introduced to a few e-friends, and found a few good blogs to follow.

The weirdest aspect is that the general mood is more useful to me than the list of methods. I constantly feel like given encouragement to have the courage to not repeat tribal-membership-signalling truths but try to find out real ones. I constantly feel like being encouraged to have the courage to not think like "I must say X because Y people already dislike me and I need the support of X people" but "come out of the closet" as an independent thinker without allegiances.

A very good place to practice is https://www.reddit.com/r/purplepilldebate/ the whole color coding is encouraging people to don a tribal jersey and say things like "I as a bluepiller think..." "you redpiller guys think that..." injecting a "no-pill" attitude into this takes quite some courage, is useful for exercising and growing this kind of courage-muscle, and with LW I feel I have a non-tribe tribe at my back who understands what I am trying to do and useful to lean back to when I feel like redpillers think I am bluepill, bluepillers think I am redpill and both distrust me. (I am not using this nickname there.)

And another useful thing is that I feel I am being encouraged to not simply adopt a lofty "I am above both" attitude which is very, very tempting but fruitless and narcissistically smug, as feeling superior to mud-wrestling tribes is a textbook classy intellectual move but totally vacuous, rather I feel encouraged to go down into the mud, and fish truths out of it, some red, some blue.

Made me think more explicitly in terms of Bayesian epistemology. I think this would be the biggest boost I got from being a LW member. It helped tons. I'm now significantly better at evaluating evidence and handling uncertainty. In a more general sense than this, the field of probability as a whole and the importance it has in our lives also increased in salience to me.

LW also made the idea of mental models of the world more salient to me. I had it before as well, but not as sharply defined and applicable to everyday situations.

Another nifty benefit was that LessWrong is an important node in a network of very interesting websites, blogs, and thinkers, and it opened up basically a whole new realm full of smart people.

LessWrong is probably the first website I visit daily that can be broadly considered "intellectual" in theme; the rest of them are hobby stuff. It's an important contributor to the fact that I haven't yet let my brain rot.

(This list turned out longer than I expected; only the first item on it was salient to me, but the more I thought about it, the more contributions I could think up.)

• I was able to evaluate some of my behaviors in a more rational fashion, from a better cost/benefit viewpoint, and I was able to cognitively model and evaluate my behavior better, which was a significant help in getting rid of some unhealthy habits.
• LessWrong helped a lot with my self-education too, being a source of inspiration and motivation and pointing me towards some cool educational resources I didn’t know about previously.
• Found quite a lot of interesting fiction to read through LessWrong, too.
• Useful advice on combating akrasia.
• Helped me to systematize what I know about philosophy.

Overall, I feel that LessWrong made a noticeably significant positive impact on my life.

sd

How has LessWrong changed my life? I would say that I have learned a lot in regards to Bayesianism and epistemology. I became a transhumanist and developed an interest in cryonics before I knew LessWrong existed.

I've gone from rock-bottom self-esteem and hopeless crying, to... rock-bottom self-esteem and StepfordSmiling. LessWrong has helped me become much less self-centered by providing the skills to quantify exactly how I am not, in fact, worth anything to anyone, and am, in fact, entitled to nothing.

I talk about transhumanism and cryonics instead of nihilism and suicide.

I went from feeling like I'm always in hostile territory waiting to die, to feeling like I'm always out in the cold looking in on something beautiful that will never include me.

I get much less enjoyment and relaxation from my passtimes because I've internalized the fact that escapism isn't.

It took an hour to compose this post instead of ten minutes, because I have a more realistic expectation of the results.

Made life-changing amounts of money. (If you include the coins.)

I discovered the idea of Bitcoin rather early on, via LessWrong.

From there, the Cypherpunks mailing list. The Hal Finney connection. The Wei Dai connection.

This was interesting stuff. I did some mental arithmetic. Started optimizing for coins. (Thanks, Clippy!)

With only limited success, or so it seemed. Some time passed.

And with every passing day, Bitcoin didn't die.

And here we are.