There's a Less Wrong meetup at my house in Berkeley this Saturday, the 25th of December, at 6PM. Celebrate the winter season, the Solstice, and the birth of Sir Isaac Newton among friendly aspiring rationalists, including Eliezer and other SIAI staff and volunteers.
I will cook for everyone in the style I call "paleolithic gourmet" which is cooked meat and raw produce.
I'd like to satisfy everyone's preferences as reasonably as I possibly can without getting vastly more food than will be eaten.
Default menu:
Steak
Lamb Burgers
Bacon
Salad of Berkeley Bowl produce and parmesan
Grilled Portabello and chanterelle mushrooms
Cheese selection
Pita + hummus
Cookies
Feel free to bring a potluck dessert or if you like, an alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage.
The food is free, but if you can afford to, in the spirit of Newtonmas, I suggest a $10 or $15 or $500 donation to SIAI (which will be matched). Please don't not come because you prefer not to pay; no one will be excluded from food or shunned for not paying. I really mean that. Consider the donation not an admission fee and more of a gentle nudge and reminder that optimal philanthropy starts around $10 and that you should positively associate giving money with the fuzzies of eating delicious food.
Please post here if you plan on attending and RSVP on Facebook. You can also post here or PM me with your thoughts on the menu and tell me what you want to eat the most of. I wasn't planning on cooking fish or chicken but can do so if people let me know they want fish or chicken or something else (like a carbohydrate).
My address is 1622 Martin Luther King Jr Way Apt A, Berkeley CA. It's the ground floor apartment around the side, not the upstairs one.
I find it rather disheartening that my comment received five downvotes in less than an hour. Perhaps it was badly received because it came across as rude to many people. If so, let me be clear that I didn't mean to criticize LW as such, but instead to point out that even a community built around the goal of overcoming bias--and composed of members unusually smart and truth-oriented--can be quite blatantly biased towards certain classes of beings. Given that even very honest and able people have exhibited similar biases in the past (men against women; slave owners against slaves), one would expect lesswrongers not to dismiss such criticisms so quickly.
I would appreciate it if those who still believe that my comment is worthy of downvoting could add a brief comment explaining why this is so. Thanks.
God forbid someone should dare offer to go to the effort of making and providing free food at their expense without it being the food you personally prefer.
I would suggest you got downvoted for several reasons, breathtaking rudeness definitely amongst them.