Helsinki LW Meetup - Sat March 5th

6 Post author: Erebus 21 February 2011 10:10PM

According to the statistics, out of all the cities in the world without a Less Wrong meetup yet, Helsinki has the third largest LW readership. I know I would certainly like to get to personally know more people interested in rationality topics, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. My preliminary suggestion was met with positive responses, so I think we're good to go.

Time: Saturday 5th of March, from 15:00 onwards

Place: Cafe Aalto in the second floor of the Academic Bookstore in the center. SEE EDIT 2.

EDIT: The meetup is getting closer, so the time and place can now be considered fixed.

EDIT 2: Cafe Aalto was too full, so we have moved to Cafe Picnic at Yliopistonkatu 5.

Comments (16)

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 06 March 2011 07:37:46AM 4 points [-]

Thanks to everyone for the great meetup.

Comment author: djcb 06 March 2011 10:50:12AM 1 point [-]

Good to hear -- I found out a bit too late that the meet-up had moved to another place... - so I hope this wasn't the last one...

Out of curiosity (never having at such a meet-up), what happened during the meeting? Thanks!

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 06 March 2011 11:07:58AM 0 points [-]

We talked about a bunch of random stuff, like what people are up to, how active are they on LessWrong, why would you use random fractals when doing physics modeling and what's the deal with the wings and halos in Haibane Renmei. The meeting lasted until Cafe Picnic closed at 18:00. Also it turned out that I was the only one who'd been in both the Overcoming Bias Helsinki meetup a couple of years past and in this one.

Comment author: typo 22 February 2011 09:00:07AM 3 points [-]

I'm a newb here at LW, but I'll still be at the meetup. Maybe then I won't be quite as newb anymore!

Comment author: Kevin 21 February 2011 10:08:03AM 3 points [-]

But would Helsinki still be top 10 if we subtract out Kaj's refreshes?!?!?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 21 February 2011 10:45:31PM 1 point [-]

I don't know, but I'll be at the meetup.

Comment author: Kevin 22 February 2011 04:28:59PM 0 points [-]

(the correct answer is yes, and that you probably aren't being double counted unless you spend your day running from university lab computer to lab computer refreshing LW on new IPs)

Comment author: Erebus 07 March 2011 07:17:23PM 1 point [-]

Thanks to everyone who attended!

For the next meetup we should probably think of discussion topics in advance. Risto asked about the concrete benefits of having read Less Wrong. At least I feel that I wasn't able to articulate a satisfactory answer, so that might be one topic for next time. Since most of us were quite young, another thing that comes to mind is optimal career or study choices.

Comment author: djcb 22 February 2011 04:10:57PM 1 point [-]

Sounds good! Are there any specific topics to discuss, or maybe someone who would like to present something?

Comment author: Erebus 02 March 2011 07:12:56AM 0 points [-]

I didn't have any specific topics in mind when proposing the meetup. Since this is the first Helsinki meetup, I think it might be a good idea to start with something like rationalist origin stories to get the discussion started.

Comment author: CannibalSmith 22 February 2011 12:23:46PM 1 point [-]

Riga reporting. Will the meetup be in English?

Comment author: Erebus 22 February 2011 01:19:56PM 1 point [-]

I wouldn't expect that having the meetup in English would be a problem for most of the prospective participants.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 22 February 2011 01:19:41PM 1 point [-]

Anybody showing up and speaking English will probably get everybody talking in English.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 22 February 2011 04:38:01AM 1 point [-]

Marked my calendar.

Comment author: TraditionalRationali 04 March 2011 05:03:59PM 0 points [-]

I will show up.

Comment author: Jonii 02 March 2011 03:08:56PM 0 points [-]

I'm interested, and most likely I'll be there.