why I'm here now

enjoyed your writings

Thanks.

I find Yudkowsky's writing very elegant and so felt drawn to LW as a result

My main issues with the early writing on LessWrong were:

• uncertainty is often more Knightian than Bayesian which makes different things appropriate
• some criticisms that David Chapman later made seemed obvious
• unseen correlations are difficult to account for, and some suggestions I saw make that problem worse
• sometimes "bias" exists for a reason

My main issue with the community was that it seemed to have negative effects [LW · GW] on some [LW · GW] people and fewer benefits than claimed.

My main issue with Yudkowsky was that he seemed overconfident [LW · GW] about some things [LW · GW] he didn't seem to understand that well.

If not the above, which intellectuals do you find compelling

When I was in elementary school, people asked me who my role model was and I'd reply "Feynman" but I don't think that was true in the sense they meant.

It's a common human tendency to want to become exactly like some role model, like a parent or celebrity, but I think it's healthier to try to imitate specific aspects of people and with a limited degree. Yes, maybe there are reasons for everything that you don't understand, but maybe what you'd be imitating is a fictional character. I started reading Feynman in 3rd grade, but it wasn't until later that I realized how different the person was from the character in the books. Kids can try to copy Elon Musk or PewDiePie but that's unlikely to work out for them.

So, in my case, your question is similar to asking what books I liked. The answer would be something like: "The Man Without Qualities, Molecular Biology of the Cell, March's Advanced Organic Chemistry, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia..." - but to quote that famous philosopher Victor Wooten:

every action under certain circumstances and for certain people may actually be a stepping stone to spiritual growth