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naraburns  nihil supernum  11mo ago (text post)   3995 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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If you were able to meet your past selves with perfect recall of yourself at the time, how far back (what age) could you go without feeling cringe at and still be satisfied with your character/intellect/overall decision making?

Facetiously: Last Friday night. I am not a smart man when plastered.

Being a bit more serious, pretty much exactly 19 years old. I have a pretty extensive online footprint on various forums (civfanatics, criticalsecurity, various IRC servers... good times), so I can pretty accurately pinpoint when I stopped being super cringey and more or less myself.

(Tangentially around there I can also pinpoint when I discovered and consumed the Sequences, which purged me of a whole bunch of blatantly flawed thinking that I'd never have today)

What are the sequences? A book series?

Less Wrong sequences, by Great Yud himself, the original scriptures of the rationalist movement.

disclaimer: reading may give you various super powers, proceed at your own risk

https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/original-sequences

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