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Hey, I'm dirtfruit.
I've lurked here for quite a while now. LessWrong is one of the most interesting internet communities I've observed, and I'd like to begin involving myself more actively. I've been to one meetup, in NYC, a few months ago, which was nice. I've read most of the sequences (I think I've read all of them at least once, but I haven't looked hard enough to be super-confident saying that). HPMOR is cool, I enjoyed reading it and continue to check for updates. I've tried to read most of what Eliezer has written, but gave up early on anything extremely technical, as I don't have the background for it. EY seems like a righteous dude to me. I dig his cause, and would like to make myself available to help, in what ways I can.
I'm currently 21 years old. I was born and raised on the west coast of the united states, and am now attending a college on the east coast studying fine art, with a concentration in drawing. I've always read a lot. When I was young; analog fiction, mostly. Now I most often find myself reading nonfiction online .
I'd like to find ways for artists (specifically me, but also other interested artists(to a lesser degree)) to be useful to the general cause of rationality; raising waterlines and whatnot. I believe there exists a general feeling among lesswrong users that artists can be fun, but are not very instrumentally useful to their particular cause. If this belief is misplaced, I'd be overjoyed to adjust it properly. I'm obviously biased, but I believe this feeling to be more than a few shades off from correct. Pictorial communication can be super intuitive. It can communicate very quickly relative to the written word, can be very memorable, and is capable of transcending many written/spoken language barriers. It's main downsides include: time-expense (drawing a picture generally takes longer than describing something verbally(spoken or written)); and scarcity of expertise - drawing and painting's difficulty curves seems roughly similar to that of writing, but they are practiced far less often than writing, and (nowadays, in the fine art world at least) held to very different standards. Experts in visual communication should be very instrumentally useful, for clarifying concepts not well suited to words, and also for attracting/aiding/communicating with those beyond the reach of literacy. I'm not claiming expertise (I'm still building my skills as a student), but at the very least I have some experience in crafting understandable, detailed pictures to something of a high standard. I'm also somewhat talented with words; integrating textual communication with visual communication (and visa versa) is something I'm sensitive to and interested in.
I also just really like the spirit and conventions of debate here, and would very much like to hear any and all thoughts about what I just wrote. :D thanks!
(also I think we need a new welcome thread? either that or I failed to find the proper one. This thread has far exceeded 500 posts...)