Even ignoring all of the benefits the actual training had for my life (perhaps I'll post about those below), I was glad I went for the people. The right Christian retreat probably could have had this aspect as well, for a certain kind of person; I'm always hearing about how amazingly friendly and productive and successful Mormons are. But so what?

I didn't go to a Christian retreat because Christianity is false. It would have bothered me the whole time, and I wouldn't have been able to take it seriously. For someone like me, finding these deep connections at a Christian retreat is probably impossible.

Finding people who could converse at a high level about the most important topics in the world was more fulfilling than I could have imagined. You can get some of this at a meetup - and I've been to meetups in Chicago, St. Louis, and the Bay - but the level of fulfillment I got at the mini-camp was the greatest by far.

Again, forgetting all the rationality training - there were moments at mini-camp when everyone was hanging out and I would literally have trouble deciding where to stand in a room because every conversation going around me was so ridiculously interesting that I couldn't stand choosing where to place myself. I felt like a wealth of knowledge was being spilt around me, and if I didn't scramble to consume as much as possible I'd miss some lifechanging insight and regret it forever. It was so beautiful it hurt.

I remember another minicamper remarking to me at the time - "Isn't it ridiculous that no matter where you stand in this room, you're going to hear one of the most interesting conversations you've ever heard?"

It's like this quote:

Thank goodness this wasn't a restaurant where you had to order only one thing and you never found out what all the other things on the menu tasted like. Harry hated that, it was like a torture chamber for anyone with a spark of curiosity: Find out about only one of the mysteries on this list, ha ha ha!

Except it was one of those restaurants. More accurately, it felt like a convention where the Illuminati had gathered to unveil the secrets of the universe, but all the secrets were being explained at the same time at different tents across an enormous convention center. (This wasn't because of bad planning; it would have been insane for the participants to try too hard to control the wellspring of amazing conversation.)