Where are we?
I'm enjoying lesswrong.com a lot so far, and it sounds like the last LW/OB meetup was a lot of fun. MBlume asks:
So far there've only been LW/OB meetups in the Bay area -- is there any way we could plot the geographic distribution of LW members and determine whether there are other spots where we could get a good meetup going?
I don't think that there are so many of us that we need an automated system for this; the threading system should be enough.I'll post a few top-level comments for various parts of the world, and encourage you all to follow up and tell us where you are. Ideally, find a comment that has where you live in it already and add "me too".
I'll try to keep this post updated with useful things. I can't wait to play Paranoid Debating!
Edit: Please don't post where you live in a new top-level comment! Try to find a comment referring to the rough geographic region you live in and post under that; it'll make this post easier to navigate. I've divided the world into three (North America, Europe, everywhere else); posting under those comments will help. Thanks!
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Comments (294)
Post in this thread if you live in the US or Canada.
Post in this thread if you live in California
Post in this thread if you live in Southern California
Post in this thread if you live in Santa Barbara County
I attend University of California, Santa Barbara, and live on campus.
I'm in Isla Vista
Awesome, I'm Mike, I'm a physics grad at UCSB
I'm having some trouble responding to your PM, so:
I'm working for prof Richman, though more "trying to get up to speed" than "working" right at the moment. I just had Nelson for my particle class the last two quarters -- it was a lot of fun.
So I was thinking if Hal was up for it the three of us could grab some dinner in the next week or so -- that work for you?
Also: LW SB group
Sounds good to me.
I live between Goleta and Santa Barbara. I am 54.
Awesome, if you and jimmy are up for it, maybe we could all get some dinner in the next week some time
also, just created a Less Wrong in SB group on Facebook
Post in this thread if you live in Orange County
I live in Lake Forest
I could catch a train down to OC pretty easily.
I'll be at Chapman University in Orange for 6 weeks this summer. I imagine The city of Orange is in Orange County, but correct me if I'm wrong.
yes indeed it is =)
it's about half an hour north of lake forrest, if memory serves.
Which six weeks? That might be a good time to shoot for a so-cal meetup
June 29 to August 7
Irvine, CA here
EDIT: I now live in Palo Alto
I live in San Clemente, but I'd be willing to drive anywhere in Orange County for an occasional meetup.
I'm in pasadena
I've started a meetup group for LessWrongers in Southern California
Playa del Rey, by the beach just south of Santa Monica and West of LA proper.
Post in this thread if you live in the Bay Area.
I live in San Francisco.
I live in Berkeley.
I live in Redwood City, at least for now.
I live in Marin County.
I live in Santa Clara, but I don't have a car, so...
Post in this thread if you live in New England
Post in this thread if you live in Massachusetts
I live in Bedford, MA
I live in Amherst, MA.
Should we also be posting how mobile we are? I rely on the bus system and the goodwill of my roommate to get around. I couldn't attend an event in, say, Boston unless there was carpooling.
I live in South Deerfield, MA and work in Northampton
Contact me at EconomicProf@Yahoo.com
Cambridge, MA. Rarely venture beyond Boston metro area.
However, I'll in the Pioneer Valley on Apr. 17-19, if anyone is interested in a meetup that Sunday (19th), say NoHo or Amherst.
The bus is less friendly on weekends, but I could get as far as Amherst Center (and back) without spending unduly long waiting for multiple buses.
Medford, MA. Enjoyed the OB meetup on the MIT campus, which was convenient since I work across the street. I'd be up to renting a car and driving to Amherst or New Hampshire for a meetup on a weekend, especially if there was time for hiking.
I attend the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH, and live on campus.
I am in Massachusetts about every other weekend on average, and I considered posting this in "Massachusetts." I could easily make a MA meetup.
New Haven, CT. I go to Boston and NYC sometimes so a meetup either place might be possible. Or here as the in-between spot.
Post in this thread if you live in the midwestern USA or nearby areas of Canada, ideally roughly within a day's drive of Chicago.
EDIT: For anyone in this area, Penguicon may be a good location for a meetup. It's a mixed sci-fi/open-source/general-geekery convention in the Detroit area, and just might possibly have at least one guest that LW readers would be interested to meet. I probably won't be there this year, though.
Chicago, IL.
Detroit, MI.
I'm Detroit...ish area, and actually I am planning to go to Penguicon this year
South Side of Chicago
Me too. U of C affiliated?
Yep! I'll get in touch.
Near St. Louis, MO or Ames, IA, depending on the time of year.
Columbus, Ohio
Bloomington IN, Chicago area native, so I'm back that way fairly often anyway.
Near St. Louis.
Champaign, IL
"Me too." I'm in Chicago.
I'm in Peoria, IL. In Chicago pretty often though.
Algoma, WI (about 4 hours north of Chicago)
Post in this thread if you live within what you consider easy driving distance from New York City.
I live in central New Jersey.
Me too: Princeton.
I said Princeton above, since it's my mailing address (and recognizable to non-locals.) Close enough, I guess, and anyway I've recently been spending most of my time (here) in Frist.
ay, North Kersey for me and I am in the city 3-4 days a week
I visit NYC several times a year - whatever that's worth. I live in Chicago though.
I live in NYC proper.
Brooklyn
NYC area: Rob Zahra, AlexU, and Michael Vassar sometimes...
Manhattan
Driving distance? I live in Manhattan, sans car.
Princeton, NJ. Easy train ride up. I visit NYC every other weekend.
Canada, Ottawa.
I'm mostly a lurker, but I'm in Toronto.
Phoenix, Arizona
Wohoo! Glendale.
Washington DC.
Im in ur capital advizin ur prezident.
glad I'm not the only Bayesian who loves OotS
rest assured...
Me too.
In the NoVA/DC area as well.
likewise - DC
Likewise, in the DC area.
Ottawa, Canada.
I'm moving to Ottawa on May 1st.
How many people do we need to have quorum?
Ottawa, Canada
One representative from each of the twelve colonies.
Can I be Caprica?
Certainly! And I shall be the Vogon representative.
Montreal, Canada
Québec, Qc, Canada.
Me too: Montreal, Canada.
Calgary, Alberta.
Seattle, WA
Waterloo, Ontario.
Post in this thread if you live within driving distance of Dallas, TX.
I live in Richardson.
I just caught this when I saw Silas post in the sidebar. I don't know if you're still around LW, but I live in Richardson as well, although I plan to move to the Bay Area soon.
I'm currently in Tyler, TX.
Sugar Land (Houston area), not exactly day trip material but with sufficient notice I could make something.
We do seem to be thin on the ground in Texas.
I live in Mount Pleasant, TX.
Waco, TX. (Prompt reply, I know...)
Post in this thread if you live in the Pacific Northwest.
I live in Redmond, WA.
Montana
Salt Lake City. Seems we're the entire mountain time delegation.
Victoria, BC
Vancouver, Canada.
Pittsburgh, PA
Fairfield, Iowa.
Post in this thread if you live in Europe.
I live in London, UK.
I'm in London, and till we organize something I recommend the UKTA/ExtroBritannia meets.
Reading, UK, and UKTA is excellent.
Another Londoner here. By power of statistics there should be enough of us to organize it even the next weekend if we wanted.
If anybody else wants to organize that, go ahead, I don't really have much experience in this. But in case there are no other volunteers I'll do it. So if any Londoners interested in rationalist meetup in some coffeeshop or pub, just email me at Tomasz.Wegrzanowski@gmail.com If there will be 5 or more interested people, I'll suggest some times and places and hopefully we can set the first meetup this way.
The first one is always the hardest, the next one will hopefully be less ad hoc than that.
I'd go for a weekday evening in a pub in town to kick off...
Weekdays are useless to anyone not actually in London - even close by, it would take too long to travel in after work.
Also, pubs are hugely overrated for serious talk, where you want less echoes, less music, less TV and less shouty people. Try a Starbucks?
Edit: meeting near a station or at least Zone 1 tube is also a plus.
I'm in London
I'm also in Edinburgh, Scotland.
me too, University of Edinburgh
Devon, UK. London meets are a bit far at the moment, but I may be moving.
Yay London
Guildford, UK. Definitely up for any London meetups.
Eastbourne, East Sussex
Edit: Also Oxford, UK in termtime.
Another Eastbourne, East Sussex.
Norwich, UK.
Cambridge, UK.
Me too! (But gjm knew that).
I'm mildly surprised that so far there's only the two of us.
Newport, South Wales (Casnewydd, De Cymru). Rarely in London, willing to travel to Bristol or Swansea.
Post in this thread if you live in Finland.
Tampere, but a Hungarian.
I live in Oulu.
Oulu as well.
Helsinki here.
Post in this thread if you live in France.
I live in Paris
Right next to Paris myself, Palaiseau en fait.
Yvelines, next to Paris
I'm in Paris
Germany, NRW, Gütersloh
Rostock, Germany.
Post in this thread if you live in the Netherlands.
I live in Amsterdam.
Copenhagen (city, not snuff).
People of Belgium, unite behind me ... if any.
Post here if you live in Sweden.
Stockholm, Sweden.
Umeå, Sweden.
Post in this thread if you live outside Europe, the US, or Canada.
Shanghai, China
Any other African expats? Rwanda? In fact, I'll see your small central African nation and raise you a Burundi, Uganda, or Eastern Congo if it's not buried in lava by next week.
Lahore, Pakistan
I can't be the only guy to generate the 410 hits from Israel... if I am, that is very sad.
I'm from Israel. Currently live in Jerusalem studying at HUJI.
Bangalore, India, honest confession, a lurker more than a commentor. I feel i don't know enough.
hey.. am from Bangalore.. on/off lurker.. had an acct for long.. but this is my first comment.. -Srikanth Thunga
Taipei, Taiwan.
Auckland, New Zealand
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Anyone from Russia? I live in Moscow.
I live in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, that's Florida, not Russia. Which is a shame, because I'm always impressed by your comments, and usually learn something. спасибо.
Me too.
Rostov-na-Donu here :)
I know a couple of guys here in Rostov (was quite surprised to discover them!) who are interested in That Which Cannot Be Named Yet. They could definitely learn a lot from reading LW and the OB corpus, but unfortunately their English isn't good enough.
(BTW, I didn't think you were from Moscow, thought you're an immigrant -- your English is way too good for a regular Russian.)
This post is a good idea, but wouldn't it be easier for everyone to join the less wrong facebook group? I'm not positive, but I think the geographical sorting can then be easily viewed automatically. You could then invite the subgroups to their own group, and easily send group messages.
I thought of that, but quite a few folk seemed to object to the idea of using Facebook here, so I thought this was the safest option. I'm in the Facebook group too, as Paul Crowley.
Why are people voting the comments on this post up and down? 7 completely neutral comments expressing where people live have been voted down to zero. That's crazy.
cipher and I removed the upvotes from our own comments since we were making lots of comments to give structure to the thread, and did not feel it was fair for us to earn karma from them.
Don't worry about it, we'll get rid of karma for self-upvotes later.
So (in other words) you want to require actual upvotes (from others) to earn karma, rather than merely avoiding downvotes. Are you sure this is a good idea?
Why shouldn't one's own vote count?
Because right now user karma correlates more strongly with post count than with post quality. You get what you measure, so that needs to be fixed.
But why shouldn't it correlate with post count? That way the incentive structure encourages active participation; under the system Eliezer prefers, people might be tempted to hold back.
Is this there a need to correct things in this direction? Are we getting too many low-quality posts and comments?
(I also think that the automatic self-upvote makes sense on the grounds that making a comment should itself be considered a statement about what sort of comments the user would like to see more of. If not, the user can always undo the upvote.)
That depends on whether or not total karma is supposed to indicate anything meaningful. As is, it will mostly indicate how early a member joined and how active they've been.
Since comments tend to get upvoted more often than downvoted, why would people hold back? A comment's 'expected karma' would still be positive :)
We can still add an extra "post count" to a user's profile if anybody needs to know that.
And no, I don't think that this site is glutted with low-quality comments, but it's young and I already can't keep track of all that's being said, so a gentle nudge in the "quality over quantity" direction would be a Good Thing.
Unless you're confident that later will be soon, it still seems to make sense to work around the system for now.
BTW, MBlume, nice bit of mind reading, I was impressed by that!
lol, thanks =)
I downvoted a few comments on the same principle yesterday, but I see those have been repaired. Hope people didn't take it as disapproval.
Okay seriously, don't worry about this, it'll get fixed eventually and then we don't want to have to run back and change everything back around. A few points of temporary karma are not important.
I'd love to meet any of you near Atlanta, GA!
Yup, me too.
Canberra, Australia.
Sydney, Australia
But I could make it to Canberra ;)
Melbourne, Australia
Another.
Canberra, Australia, too.
Los Angeles, Ca
hey, just so you know, there's some other southern californians hanging out down-thread
Dublin, Ireland.
New Jersey! Arent there enough OB/LWers to make a greater new york area meetup once in 2 months possible?
Princeton area. I'm good to meet up in NYC too.
The Less Wrong visit map:
And some more detail:
(edit: credit to Google Analytics for all of the heavy lifting in this comment)
This map would be better if it was based on visits divided by population. Currently it shows America as much darker than Britain even though Britain has about the same per capita LW readership... (and a considerably higher readership per landmass).
(Of course, getting the population for each country would be a right pain, so I don't blame you.)
This map would be best of all if it were an LW cartogram!
Great stat visualization and breakdown! But it's not in first normal form: There's two Bellevues, and the St. Petersburg entry doesn't specify whether it's Florida (which has a blob in the St. Petersburg/Tampa area, and no entry for Tampa) or Russia (which seems to be the origin of a few prominent LW'ers). I'm not sure of the most efficient way to resolve the ambiguities.
All of the heavy lifting here is done by Google Analytics.
(The St. Petersburg entry in the "US visitors by city" pdf is the one in the US).
Post in this thread if you're female. (I'm not; just wondering.)
I'm female. Why is this a matter of interest?
I'm curious about who reads the site, I guess.
It would be neat to know the distribution. (I'm F.)
Would it be a good idea to bump this to the front page every now and then?
Maybe a link to it in the text of the monthly open thread?
And to the Welcome thread.