There will be a meetup for Southern California this Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 4PM and running for three to five hours. The meetup is happening at Marco's Trattoria. The address is:
8200 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90046
If all the people (including guests and high end group estimates) show up we'll be at the limit of the space with 24 attendees. Previous meetups had room for walk-ins and future meetups should as well, but this one is full. If you didn't RSVP in time for this one but want to get an email reminder when the February meetup is scheduled send me a PM with contact info.
For those interested in carpooling, see comments for: San Diego, Lake Forest.
The format for past meetups has varied based on the number of attendees and their interests. At various points we have either tried or considered: paranoid debating, small group "dinner party conversations", structured rationality exercises, large discussions with people sharing personal experiences with sleep and "nutraceutical" interventions for intelligence augmentation, and specialized subprojects to develop tools for quantitatively estimating the value of things like cryonics or existential risk interventions.
People at these meetups are generally up for being subjects of fun experiments in group or individual rationality. Also, past experience indicates that interesting top level articles are inspired by conversations that happen at meetups. Expect something awesome to happen... or bring something neat to make something awesome happen!
I will be driving from Lake Forest/Irvine. Message me if you want a ride.