Update: We're up to 9 participants. Per jsalvatier's suggestion, I have created a Google Group for this. It looks like we have 8-9 total, and the move toward finalizing groups and dates/times is now at the Google Group thread HERE.
I plan to ask if I may take meeting minutes for whatever group I end up in and report back on how it goes. If we have multiple groups, we could all combine notes afterward and give a summary. Perhaps interest will grow in this type of activity.
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There's been a decent amount of talk lately about whether or not people have read the sequences, the costs and benefits of reading the sequences before posting, bringing back the sequences, other formats of "sequence-intake," and potential exercises coming down the pipes.
In other words, it seems that many are still interested in the sequences.
I happen to be 1 out of about 19 who has not read the sequences. (Gasp!) I'm working on remedying that.
Something else that's been frequently discussed as of late is the importance of community (and the desire/need for it).
Well, something occurred to me that might be of interest: combining interest in the sequences with the need for community. I'm inquiring about interest to have video (or audio) online conferences about the sequences, particularly for "n00bs" like myself who may not have been through the sequences. I'm in the midst of Map & Territory myself and am currently working though the Intro to Bayes.
Is anyone in a situation where they'd like to read a chunk of these and then have an online discussion? No one seems to be near enough to meetup in Minnesota, so perhaps the "online" route might work for others physically isolated from LWers.
I can see some hangups for this: bandwidth, moderating/getting off-topic, law-of-diminishing-returns, etc. I'm thinking a group of 3-5 per virtual discussion might be best to start. Skype or some other protocol (iChat, jabber, etc.) should work for most people.
Lastly, while my initial thought was to have some post-processing discussion regarding specific sequences... I could also see this as being a neat idea for those with no meetup groups near them, like myself. I thoroughly enjoy discussing with others here, and suspect that even were the discussions not to be explicitly on rationality, it would be very enjoyable to "meet" others here, hear about their lives, share about mine, and discuss, say, goals in life, how we're applying rationality to daily life, etc.
Pretty much anything could go -- start a discussion post for a virtual meetup on a particular topic, see how many are interested in the comment thread, and then perhaps divide people into groups of 3-5 based on availability, time zone, etc.
So, what's the interest in this?
Obviously, also share critiques, pitfalls, objections, or whatever else comes to mind!
Make sure to make some kind of mailing list or other forum (I personally like googlegroups) for discussing times etc. and link to it on the meetup group wiki article so that other interested people can find out information.
You are in Group B; please post HERE to coordinate with the others in your "virtual meetup."
(I didn't know if you were really wanting to do this or just suggest; if you want to join in, you've been put in Group B)