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Hi friends,
I'm Chris :D I've been lurking on and off for a few months now (after hearing about LW from some of my friends at uni, reading some SlateStarCodex, and devouring HPMOR in less than a week) and have decided it's about to take the plunge into the scary world of commenting. (It's a bit scary being a somewhat smart person among people who are much, much smarter)
My academic background: growing up in my family meant I picked up a lot of random stuff, but at uni I have been studying pure mathematics and a bit (pun intended) of computer science.
What motivates me: I'm very passionate about Raising the Sanity Waterline. If I learn - for the first time - something which I think is important, I get this sudden panic of "Why have I only learned this now?! Everyone should know this!". And I get very excited when I'm helping other people learn stuff I've learned.
Longer version of background: My parents have worked as Protestant Christian theological educators (i.e. training pastors and church leaders) in the Middle East since before I was born. They have always been very keen on learning as a lifelong project (a lot of my dad's work is applying evidence-based teaching research to theological education). So - somewhat like Harry Potter in HPMOR - our house has always been full of books. To add to that, I was privileged to get to meet a lot of people from very different worlds: from my Muslim close friends at school to some of my parents' suppporters in the US who have never gone far from their home state. This meant I encountered drastically different worldviews and cultural approaches to thinking, and often found it frustrating how poorly people understood each other. Thanks to my parents' influence, I also unconsciously gravitated towards people who were interested in how the world works.
Since leaving for Australia at 18 for study, I have spent much of my university life learning about things other than my specialisation, both from smart friends and from the internet. So this has meant I have changed my mind about quite a few things already.
I look forward to changing my mind about many more things, and learning completely new things!