Christian_Szegedy comments on Less Wrong Book Club and Study Group - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Morendil 09 June 2010 05:00PM

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Comment author: Christian_Szegedy 09 June 2010 09:28:11PM *  4 points [-]

I think this could be a fun project.

Besides IRL (which is hard to organize) I think other real time communication could be tried out as well. What do you think about the following options:

  • Traditional IRC
  • Google wave
  • Skype conference call
  • Realtime desktop sharing (e.g. mikogo up to 10 participants.)

Does anyone know a good IRC infrastructure that allows for quickly entering and displaying TeX formulas?

Comment author: Kazuo_Thow 09 June 2010 11:36:43PM *  5 points [-]

Does anyone know a good IRC infrastructure that allows for quickly entering and displaying TeX formulas?

There's a plugin for Pidgin called pidgin-latex which handles just that.

ETA: If people start using this plugin (or, more generally, if we use TeX/LaTeX in any capacity for this study group), it might occasionally be helpful to use the detexify handwritten symbol recognizer - for when you want to use a symbol and can't quite remember the command that produces it.

Comment author: Morendil 10 June 2010 06:52:15AM 3 points [-]

Other LWers have used IRC before, so that would be a good option to prolong our discussions. The difficulty I anticipate is dealing with time zones. People who have responded to the post are from all over the map.

Comment author: Christian_Szegedy 10 June 2010 09:28:31PM *  1 point [-]

I think some interactive discussion would definitely help to keep up the spirit.

I'd definitely be interested in joining a real time discussion if there is enough substance for an clear agenda. Using IRC with pidgin-latex sounds good to me.

It is also not strictly necessary that everybody participates at the same time: we could have two meetings, for two different time zones discussing the same topic.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 11 June 2010 10:46:16AM 2 points [-]

I've set up an experimental Google Wave for this with Morendil. Eqygadget seems to be able to render Latex input in the Wave.

I can add people to the Wave so you can take a look. Just give your Wave account id here, on the #lesswrong IRC channel or mail it to rsaarelm at the Gmail.

Comment author: simplicio 16 June 2010 03:27:36PM 0 points [-]

Sorry I'm late too. ispollock at googlewave

Comment author: Stille 15 June 2010 05:56:51AM 0 points [-]

dimeforthepassingtime here. Sorry I'm late.

Comment author: RobinZ 11 June 2010 03:51:51PM 0 points [-]

I'm robin.zimm - let me know a time to get on to see how this will work.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 11 June 2010 11:27:57AM 0 points [-]

Cool.

I'm adelenedawner@googlewave.com

Comment author: nhamann 10 June 2010 01:57:50AM 1 point [-]

Google Wave could be excellent for this, because it acts in part as a wiki (as well as a bunch of other things), meaning we could archive our discussions and come back to them. Also, it has Latex, which is probably necessary.

Comment author: fiddlemath 10 June 2010 02:15:52AM 1 point [-]

Also, it's federated. Thus, if our hosts wanted to set up a Less Wrong Wave they could do so without needing to rely on Google storing our discussions. On the other hand, setting up a federated Wave certainly isn't necessary.

Comment author: RobinZ 10 June 2010 01:37:50AM 0 points [-]

Any thoughts on an appropriate IRC host?

Comment author: Jack 10 June 2010 01:53:17AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: RobinZ 10 June 2010 01:58:56AM *  0 points [-]

Nope! Edit: Running a test of Adium on the channel now. Edit 2: Done - nobody online.