“I am personally convinced that the LW Sequences / AI to Zombies gave me something, and gave something similar to others I know, and that hanging out in person with Eliezer Yudkowsky, Michael Vassar, Carl Shulman, Nick Bostrom, and others gave me more of that same thing; a "same thing" that included e.g. actually trying to figure it out, making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experience; using arithmetic to entangle different pieces of my beliefs; and so on.”