Never been to one of [the meetups][1] before, but I'm thinking of showing up to this one. What can I expect?

The summer interns I have met are all nice, interesting and extremely bright. unless I am severely mistaken, the summer interns are mostly college age, 18-22, though Roko is probably a few years older than that. Some are under 18, and the dad of one of them came to pick him up during the last meetup. Most of the summer interns live in the big house where the meetup will take place.

There will be four to six full-time employees of the Singularity Institute in attendance. Most of these have science and math as their strongest skills or are full scientific generalists with a mastery of all the sciences, natural and social, and of important social skills like philanthropic networking or running a technology startup. You can tell how wondeful Eliezer is just by studying his vast body of written public communications. What you might not yet know is that Eliezer's standards for whom he works with are extremely high in the intellect department and in the altruism department.

In case you are now intimidated, rest assured that there will also be a few less scintillating intellects in attendance, like my pal Richard Karpinski and I, who although welcoming and well-meaning are not extremely bright, but rather only very bright, that is, only 2 standard deviations above the human average [insert: in IQ :insert] and who now suffer from the inevitable mental decline that comes with our being old farts.

(In case you are wondering, I did clear this paragraph with Richard Karpinski before posting it!)

Probably because the attendees have spent little of their lives trying to conform and to be similar to the people around them, the individual personalities vary more than they do at most gatherings.

In summary, if you get pleasure from discussing the world from an atheistic scientific perspective and from an altruistic or selfless/global perspective and if you are even remotely presentable, then there is a good chance that this meetup is among the best opportunities to experience that particular pleasure you will ever have.