Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Paris Meetup

I will be starting as a freshman at UIUC this fall, as a Math/CS major. The only interest in a Less Wrong meetup I've found is this /r/uiuc thread from 8 months ago. I would like to possibly start a google group of interested people so that we can hit the ground running with a meetup group in the fall. If you will be at UIUC in the fall and are interested, PM me or post in this thread. Thank you! I'm really excited about this.

Discussion article for the meetup : New York Summer Festival Megameetup

WHEN: Saturday, June 23rd 2012, 1 PM (as well as additional meetups the surrounding days)

WHERE: Central Park, New York, NY

The weekend of June 23rd, the New York Less Wrong community will be hosting a summer festival. Less Wrongers from around the world are invited to intend. Features include:

• A Saturday of sun and fun in Central Park. (Unless rain is forecast, in which case this will be on Sunday).
• Picnic Lunch. Share food and swap stories with Less Wrong folks. Engage in intellectual discussion while stimulating your monkey brain's desire for tribal bonding.
• Compete in feats of strength and sport.
• Singing and dancing.

This post is part of the Cambridge LW meetup group's attempt to publish what works for us, and try to make good meetups easier.

Breaking the ice and topic selection

A consistent problem has been starting discussion, and more generally breaking the ice. Last week, an Execute by Default style hack was used to reduce social inhibitions (everyone danced for 30 seconds), which was highly successful, though awkward. It was proposed again this week, and there was sufficient collective laughter at the recollection to effectively break the ice. This may also have been helped by a change in room, which replaced chairs with couches.

A new algorithm for selecting a topic was used: One person proposed a (deliberately easy-to-beat) topic, and running around the group, each person proposed a alternate topic or passed. This was followed by multiple passes for people to affiliate with any proposed topic. Amongst 7 people, the first pass produced a 5-2 split, and the group of two merged into the main topic.

The topic chosen was involuntary signalling. The others are here so as to keep them salient for future meetups.

Signalling by Dress

It was observed that most people seem to react to dress, and that as a group (largely mathematicians or similarly inclined) there is a tendency not to optimise the reactions we generate. Several people asked what might work better, and checked to see whether the social status of others in the social group of mathematicians correlated with their appearance or dress. It appeared that if it did, we are insufficiently good at observing our cognitive processes to notice. As a corollary, it wasn't clear that feedback from other members of the group was likely to contain much signal.

A concrete mechanism to extract information on how other people perceive dress was made: Generate multiple photos in various styles, and then use OKCupid's "MyBestFace" or similar services to get some information back

Signalling for Access

There was some discussion of how one might present in interview; this was confounded by a lack of access to interviewers. Discussion was more productive when moved to aspects of social engineering. Specific examples raised were accessing a hospital outside of visiting hours, entering a college without being challenged by porters, or avoiding inconvenience in airports. A combination of speed, posture (head level, back straight, shoulders back) and contextual dress was the extent of noted tricks.

Signalling by Posture

Considerable time was spent discussing how posture signals. Some people went around the group, saying what they would draw from other people's body language. Some postural changes were noted as very saliently causing a change in perception of the correctness of statements made at the same time (in particular, straightening the back and lifting the head). Extant scholarship was not discussed, but extensive experimentation occurred targeting specific received signals and querying specific postures. The dynamics of norm violation were also discussed, in the context of taking the communal coffee table as a footrest.

Specific suggestions to use a mirror or camera to analyse oneself or attempt to analyse other people in general were made.

Pre-commitments

All of the public commitments made last week were done, which seemed to be a cheap win. We reran the procedure:

• Jonathan: Post meetup feedback etc. by midnight
• Adam: Get last two years of past papers done by next Sunday
• Adam: Email parents by Wednesday midnight
• Ben: Finish list of definitions by next Sunday
• Ben: Continue Diary until next Sunday

List of proposed and unused topics:

• Concoct childish example of Bayes' Theorem (to motivate better alternatives)
• Self-sabotage, noticing and avoiding.
• Fermi estimate game
• Examine week 1 of Ben's diary to try to help in debiasing.
• Non-real valued utility functions

At today's Cambridge UK meetup I made an observation: It seems that LW meetups are very good at having meta-discussions. But they are not so good at acting effectively on them.

The point of meta discussion is to make object level discussion better. The meta questions aren't themselves interesting and dont automatically produce win. Object level discussions are themselves interesting and do produce win (if not then stop talking about boring things). So if one has a meta discussion it should be such that the improvements made to the object level discussions outweigh the cost of the meta discussion.

I notice we have meta discussions which (like a lot of discussions in LW groups) dont resolve themselves into actions. This means that improvements to the meetups aren't in fact implemented. This is a double fail: first because the object level discussion isn't improved, and second because the unresolved meta took resources away from the body of the meeting.

We could cheaply improve this with the internet. Doodle polls solve the problem of when to schedule a meeting far more efficiently than verbal discussion. Likewise the time-consuming question of "what shall we talk about" can be thought about outside the meeting where there are far fewer constraints on time. Both these problems should be outsourced to the google group and not mentioned in the meeting itself.

A point that was raised is that it is very easy for the group to decide that such and such a thing must be done, that does not automatically translate into the actions of specific people. Someone mentioned the parable of the rabbi raising funds, and we started the following pre-commitment game. 

The Napkin

We got out a napkin and Douglas drew a table of "who, what, by when" on it. He was the first to write down a commitment so as to overcome everyone's reluctance to be the first to act. We then went round and asked for commitments that would be made public in front of the group. I'm now posting those commitments online.

• Douglas: "Post a meeting format to discussion" Wednesday midnight
• Paul: "Kahneman AD/BC* example on LW wiki" Thursday midnight
• Paul: "David Styles" Monday midnight
• Adam: "Post this list, post on meta/object interaction" Wednesday midnight
• Jonathan: "Directions to JCR" Tuesday midnight
• Ben: "Keep diary for 1 week, identify biases" next Sunday

What are easy ways to overcome the reluctance of people to be the first to act?

How can we have meta-discussions that are targeted at concrete actions?

Lots of meetups recently - great to see!  We hear surprisingly little about them here on LW.  Did you attend or host a meetup recently? How did it go?

Meeting fellow LessWrongians in meat space is a great opportunity to participate in interesting discussions and to make new friends. But there aren't that many places in the world (hopefully, yet) where regularly active meetup groups exist. Here is a story of how I realised that setting up LW meetup groups is much easier than I thought; and an idea of an approach to help build more LW communities in real life.

When I co-organised the LW meetup group in Cambridge, there was already a group of friends irregularly discussing LW related topics. Strangely, it took us some time before we actually realised that we should announce a meetup on the LW website. Once we did that, our group exploded in numbers and we have had regular meetups almost every week.

Of course, Cambridge, UK is a place where we expected to be successful in forming a meetup group. It is small and the concentration of usual target audience of LW is extremely high. I thought we were lucky with the location that creating a regular meetup group proved to be so easy.

Then I had an idea of an experiment. I was travelling to Budapest last week for 3 days to visit my family and I thought that I would simply try to organise a meetup there. In the worst case, I would spend a couple of hours in a cafe reading a book. My guesstimate was that 3-4 of my friends (whom I reminded several times) and maybe 1-3 people I don't actually know would turn up.

I was surprised to find that 14 people attended the meetup, two of them travelling all the way from Bratislava to Budapest. We spent almost 4 hours in a fantastic discussion, a mailing list was created, and a second meetup is happening tomorrow. My experiment produced a result I didn't expect.

One data point is not sufficient to draw conclusions, but this result suggests that further experiments should be tried. It may just be that many cities have reached a critical number of active LessWrongians and regular meetups can start happening. Which is trivially of positive net effect.

Therefore, I would encourage people to consider getting out there and trying to set up meetup groups in their areas. But since this requires individuals actually willing to assume the role of organisers, this may not be as easy as it sounds. Fortunately, there is a document currently in development that aims to provide some help with this: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/bak/draft_how_to_run_a_successful_less_wrong_meetup/. But there might be something else that can be done - a pioneering approach.

If you have some experience of attending/organising LW meetups, next time you are in a different city (even if only for a couple of days!) try to devote a couple of hours to organising a meetup there. Be a "pioneer". Here is what I learnt from the meetup in Budapest:

• Announce the meetup on the website well in advance.
• Choose a weekend evening, a public place in the centre - a cafe or equivalent, with some food and drinks works well.
• Bring some friends with you if there are any in the area, even if they are not very actively LessWrongian.
• Arrive earlier than the announced time - some people may turn up early.
• Get a sign saying "Less Wrong" and put it on the table.
• Get people to do some introductions first.
• It is possible that some people turning up might not be speaking the local language so switching to English may be necessary.
• People don't know what to expect from a LW meetup, so the organiser has to feel confident leading the discussion in the beginning. It probably will take off when people relax into it. Taking turns in answering some basic questions can lead to interesting discussion. Examples of questions: How did you become interested in Less Wrong? Which particular aspects of the range of LW topics you are most interested in? How does being a LessWrongian translate into your everyday life? 
• If the group becomes too large, divide it into two. Optimal size is probably between 4-7. Move between groups, to encourage active discussion and participation (some groups may get stuck not knowing what to talk about). Rotate some people between groups from time to time.
• Circulate a piece of paper to get people's email addresses, create a mailing list and sign them up to it.
• Identifying one or two very active and keen members and talk to them about helping you with organising some further events.
• Even if you don't expect to be back in the area in the near future, help with choosing a time, a venue, discussion topics and activity ideas for the next meetup through the mailing list. Announce it on the website. Get the chosen organisers to help you and gradually let them do it.
• Refer the people on the mailing list to http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/bak/draft_how_to_run_a_successful_less_wrong_meetup/.
• Hope that the group lives on.

How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup is a guide that I've been working on, based on lukeprog's instructions, for the last week and a half. As it says in the beginning:

This document is written for anyone who wants to organize a Less Wrong meetup. We expect that this document will help you regardless of whether you want to start a new group or improve an existing one. We have tried to write each section so that it applies in either case.

Here's the table of contents:

• Why organize a meetup?
• How to build your team of heroes
  • The organizer
  • The welcomer
  • The learning coach
  • The content provider
  • The visionary
  • The networker
• How to announce and organize your meetups
  • Choosing a venue
  • Making the announcement
  • The first meetup
• Long-term meetup group maintenance
  • Retain members by being a social group
  • Conflicts within the group
    • Learn to recognize status conflicts
  • Group norms and epistemic hygiene
• Meetup content
  • Discussions and Presentations
    • Presentations
    • Topical Discussions
    • Meta Discussion
  • Games and Exercises
    • Aumann’s Thunderdome
    • Biased Co-operation
    • Behavioral Analysis
    • Bluffing Games
    • Bust-a-Distortion
    • Calibration Game
    • Cause and Belief
    • Five-Minute Debiasing
    • Hypothetical Apostasies
    • Paranoid Debating
    • Precommit to Updates
    • Rationalization Game
    • Rejection Therapy
    • Repetition Game
    • Status Exercises
    • Zendo
  • General Bacchanalia
  • Example activities at real meetup groups
• Projects

This is a draft version, so feedback would be most welcome, particularly on things like:

• Is this useful?
• Is there something that should be covered isn't covered at all yet?
• Do you have new games & exercises to suggest?
• Do you have any other content to suggest to any other section?
• Do you disagree with some of the advice given?
• Do you disagree on way something has been worded?
• Etc.

The link above will take you to a Google Docs copy of the document, with the ability to add comments to the draft. Feel free to comment on the guide either as traditional LW comments or by attaching comments to the document itself: both are fine.

EDIT: Here's the most recent version, though without the commenting ability.

EDIT2: The most recent version as of April 11th, with commenting enabled.

EDIT3: First non-draft version; see also this thread.

For over a year now I have been visiting this site, reading and learning about rationality, and meeting other rationalists sounds like a wonderfully positive experience. Sadly, there are no meetups in my area -- I looked at the RI skeptics society website, but their news page seemed focused on religious-people-bashing to a point that seemed mean and spiteful to me (at least at the time, it was awhile ago. Yes, we know people do dumb things because of religious beliefs; how about focusing on improving ourselves instead of pointing at them?).

Maybe there are a lot of others in the area like me who have been lurking on the site, longing for a chance to meet likeminded people but too shy to speak up. Of course, not all of them may be checking the discussions page but I'm not sure what else to do.

So, anyone out there in Rhode Island or close to the borders of Massachusetts and Connecticut that would like to start a local rationality meetup with me?

I am also interested in any advice for getting this to its target audience, as not everyone may be looking at the discussion page.

I am also also interested in anywhere I can talk with lesswrong folks in real-time -- it's hard to establish friendships through posts, and this discussion forum doesn't seem like the place for random chatter with people.

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison Monday Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison Monday Meetup

This Saturday is the Reason Rally in Washington DC, a gathering of people promoting secularism, skepticism, rationality, atheism and other related topics. It's a good opportunity to meet people who are close to but not familiar with the Less Wrong memeplex. There will be a Less Wrong meetup later in the evening.

http://reasonrally.org

The Rally itself starts at 10:00 AM, running till 4 PM.  Shortly thereafter (i.e 4:15) Less Wrong folks will meet up by a (currently unchosen) distinctive landmark, and plan the evening. (Any plan we make in advance will likely change, since we don't know how many people are coming, don't know who else we might have met who was interested in hanging out with us, and there will probably be various other things going on we can't anticipate).

If you're coming, you may want to send me a PM with your phone number so we can find each other during the Rally. (I'll be posting the chosen landmark here when we figure it out, but it may be easier to communicate by phone or text)

Maia and PhilSchwartz had some crash space available. Send them a PM to inquire if they still have space

The original meetup post is here.

I think we need to have more discussion of meetup tactics on LW. At my local meetup, we've been feeling a bit lost about what works best, so I hereby propose that we have semi-regular meetup tactics discussions like the open and quotes threads.

So here's a few questions to start us off:

• What activities or topics of discussion have been particularly productive? What is not?
• Have fun adventurous things like hiking or climbing worked?
• What is your opinion on the purpose of the meetups? Is it about community? Additional discussion and learning? Practice?
• Is it a good idea to have different types of meetup (discussion night, fun day, social, ???), or should everything be scheduled into regular meetups?
• What things have worked for building community? There should have been some community disasters by now as well, what caused them?
• What has worked for actual practice and leveling up? What hasn't?
• What topics produce good discussions? How much structure should discussions have?
• How does your meetup get more people to come out (recruitment, attendance, etc). What works, what doesn't work?
• What untested ideas do you have for any of the above?

TED is live broadcasting one day of the TED conference to sites around the world. Entrance to the viewings should be free. I thought many LWers would be interested in this opportunity. It would also make a great meetup activity.

Here is the website with the info: http://www.ted.com/pages/tedxlive

>The idea for TEDxLive grew out of a question we at TED were asking ourselves: What would happen if we made the TED Conference more open, its impact more immediate and tangibly global? What would happen if communities around the world gathered to engage with -- and build on -- the TED Conference experience while it happened live?

You can find a local viewing by clicking on the "Find an Event" tab at the top.

If you think your city is too small to be hosting this, check anyway! Here in Columbus we have two viewings, one hosted by TEDxColumbus, and another hosted by TEDxOhioStateUniversity. They are at slightly different times-- Due to the time difference, they both decided to show the broadcast the next day, rather than exactly live.

The Downside- The broadcasts are all either on Wednesday or Thursday, and in about a week.

Awesome Idea- A chat room or Skype conversation of LWers from around the world watching the broadcast simultaneously (depending on whether other places are going with the "not quite live" idea or not).

I won't be able to go to most of this, due to work, but am interested in knowing if other people are planning to participate. (And if so, how was the experience?)

I have started the Tel Aviv Self-Improvement Meetup Group. It is not about rationality or LessWrong per se, but it is heavily influenced by rationality dojos and LW posts in the applied rationality, personal optimization and anti-akrasia cluster. As the description says, it is

A group of people helping each other apply rationality to our everyday lives, in order to improve our skills, make the best decisions, become productive and achieve our goals.

If you're interested and in the area, you're welcome to join. If you have any comments or suggestions, based perhaps on experience with similar groups, please share.

The last East Coast Megameetup was awesome, and people wanted to do another one.

So let's do another one?

Vision:

• Primarily a social event, with some skill transfer
• Meet people within the LW community, make friends, get contacts
• Get people together for our mutual benefit
• Informal focused discussion/teaching, people in the community know a lot about stuff that's useful to know
• Help lone rationalists be part of the community

What I want from you, East Coaster:

• Bring this up at your meetup or mailing list
• Select someone in your meetup group as a point of contact for the group. They should be able to represent and effectively communicate with the rest of the meetup group.
• Have them email me at aarondtucker <at> gmail.com
• You can always arbitrarily designate yourself to be that point of contact to keep things moving, and then figure out with the group who it should actually be.
• Try to figure out if you want to attend.

Discussion article for the meetup : Columbus or Cincinnati Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Columbus or Cincinnati Meetup

Several months ago jwhendy called for people who can't make it to regular LW meetups (or just can't get enough of the LW crowd) to meet online instead. Several months later, a small number of us still do, on a near-weekly basis. We socialise, teach each other about our fields, throw theories around and discuss LW material. We're looking for fresh blood after losing some of our regulars to real life commitments.

Meetup details:

Time: Saturday, 19th November, 9pm EST

Location: Skype (add me as erratio1 on there)

Format: Variable. The last few meetups have been text-only due to connection problems at my end, but since the overall quality of the meetup was much higher when we had voice chat I'd like to get back to that if possible. Although if a majority of interested people would prefer text-only, we can do that too.

For those who can't make it to this meetup but are interested, comment with your availabilities here or at our Google Group so we can potentially accommodate you in future weeks.

We're meeting up in London tomorrow. Sunday 21st August, at 2pm, in the Shakespeares Head (official page) on Kingsway near Holborn Tube station. See you there!

Not all of us live near big cities. I know of only one Less Wronger in the Grand Rapids, MI area apart from myself, and the nearest existing meetup is in Madison, WI, across Lake Michigan. I'd like to go to a Less Wrong meetup with more than just a couple of people, but I don't want to have to drive six hours each way.

I have tried Google+'s "Hangouts" feature, and it's really quite nice. It's a many-way video chat system, so it goes without saying that if you've tried video chat before, Hangouts will be quite similar. It also lets you play YouTube videos in synchrony. In short, if you like sitting on the couch with people watching TV, Hangouts are perfect for you.

So, I propose having a meetup on Google+ on Saturday, August 27, at 5:00 PM EDT (21:00 UTC). The date and time can be changed, of course, but I don't want to commit to anything on the 20th. Search for my name (Tanner Swett) at that time, and hopefully you'll see a hangout listed. I will try to be around for at least an hour.

Naturally, ideas for stuff to do would be appreciated. Perhaps we could watch some TED talks, or chat about a specific subject, or play some game. I don't really have much hanging-out experience to go on here.

Any thoughts? Should we meet at a different time? What should we do?

When: Saturday, September 10th, 2PM.

Where: Munich Central Station, Coffee Fellows cafe, Bahnhofsplatz 2, First floor. I will be there with a Lesswrong sign. If you can't find it, you can call me: 0160-93132663 .

According to this doodle-survey 5 people (including me) could attend. And of course you are welcome too!

If the cafe sucks, we could easily go elsewhere. I've merely chosen the place, because it's relatively nice, near the central station and easy to find.

Lurkers and newbies are very welcome!

We're holding what I believe is the first San Diego meetup on Sunday, July 31st starting at 1pm at the K&B Wine Cellars near San Diego State University:

6380 Del Cerro Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92120

The phone number for the place is 619-286-0884.  This is one of a number of places along a strip that's attached to a grocery store of sorts.  It's something like a coffee house only with beer, wine, & liquor instead of coffee.  (Underage attendees should be fine; you just won't be able to get alcohol.  There's food and some non-alcoholic drinks if you like.)  We're meeting in a semi-hidden room in the far back.  When you walk in, go as straight as you can while staying close to the left wall.

This will be an introductory meeting so that those in the San Diego area can meet one another.  We'll talk about what we want to get out of these meetups and hammer out some specific plans for how to accomplish that.  From some initial conversations, it sounds like we'll have monthly meetups, though that stands a fair chance of changing depending on what we discuss here.

Feel free to bring friends, significant others, or anyone else who's interested in rationality.  Also, give some thought to what you'd like out of these meetups.  It doesn't have to be profound; camaraderie or "I don't know" are fine answers.  But if you give it a bit of thought ahead of time, you might find it easier to envision and articulate more precisely what it is that you'd like to see these meetups become.

I should also mention that this location has a projector setup, so if there's something you'd like to share PowerPoint style, feel free to bring that.  I haven't gotten details from the restaurant as yet about how to use the projector setup (e.g. is it transparencies or a laptop hookup?), but I'll edit in that clarification once I get it.

Let me know if you have any questions.  Also, if you could either reply here or give me a quick PM to let me know you're coming, that would be helpful.  That way I can let the place know how many to set the space up for.

ETA: I should add that I do have some material on practical uses of mindfulness that I'm quite willing to offer.  I've been teaching this stuff for about seven years now.  But I don't want to say that that's definitely what this meeting will be about since I want to find out what everyone is looking to gain from these first.

ETA #2: Also, please, PLEASE don't bring smokers.  My wife is coming, and she's asthmatic in a way that reacts severely to cigarette smoke even if it's lingering on others' clothing.  If someone shows up with a lot of smoke on them, my wife and I will have to leave right away.  I doubt this will be an issue with this group, but it's significant enough to be worth making explicit.  Thanks!

NOTE: This post is a stub for the comments below. Please don't participate in the voting unless you think it likely that you will attend the next Melbourne, Australia meetup (Friday Aug 5, 7pm).

The next Melbourne meetup may feature a moderated, rationality-policed not-debate. Anyone willing to participate as an interlocutor should post topics below that they think are likely to split the group fairly evenly - one comment per topic. Anyone willing to take an opposing view should reply to that comment saying so. Anyone attending should indicate their interest in hearing and policing that topic by voting up the topics in which they're interested.

From Tim's summary:

Some people will be in the discussion and others will be observers, who will point out defects of rationality such as ad hominem attacks, ignoring arguments, unstated premises, etc. Be prepared to change your view (if all else fails!).

Reminder: we're meeting in London this weekend: Sunday 3rd July, at 2pm, in the Shakespeares Head (official page) on Kingsway near Holborn Tube station. We usually have a big picture of an extra-swirly paperclip on the table so you can find us (and some of us even have paperclip-buttons!).  Hope to see you there. :)

The Less Wrong Marin group has been happening for over a month now, and can be declared a regular meetup. Our typical meeting includes some version of dinner at Nevin's house, 665 Northern Ave, Mill Valley on Tuesdays at 6:30pm. Each meetup is announced on the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list.

The group size is usually around six. This is what we look like right now:

WHEN: 2 Jule 2011, 16.00 Moscow time
WHERE: Moscow, Novokuznetskaya subway station, Klimentovskiy pereulok, 1/18 (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology's building aka Fiztech). 1 (2 in Russian) floor.

This first meeting will be of somewhat experimental character and will be devoted to general topics of rationality and transhumaism. We will face each other in meatspace and discuss future vision for LW-Moscow. The main language of the meeting will be Russian, but English speakers are welcome.

Next Meetup: Wednesday, February 29th.

When: 7pm - 9pm every other Wednesday.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar, located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters.

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Whether you're a regular reader or totally new, here for the theoretical musings or the practical things, come by and say hello! If enough people want to change the time or place for future meetups, we will - send me a message.

See also: Irvine weekly meetups, SoCal google group.

Last week's meeting was a success, with two people in attendance who had read most of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality as well as the Sequences.

I'm assigning a 50% chance of a successful meeting this week at the Bean Cycle.

Next week will be the last meetup I organize until August, when I expect to return to weekly meetings.

Evelyn

When: Friday 1st July, 19:00  (recurring on the first Friday of each following month)
Where: TrikeApps office, lvl 2, 55 Walsh St, West Melbourne 3003 (http://trikeapps.com/contact)

Directions:
Enter the somewhat unfriendly building, climb the stairs to the top (2 floors), and turn left. If the front door in locked, look for a sign that includes my number, and someone will let you in.
No wheelchair access (sorry).

Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

Note: This post duplicates the fancy new meetup post.

As usual, it will be at the Delhi Cafe.

Concerning the Grand Meetup: This has now been moved to the last Saturday of each month. (This month's will be next week). Do let me know if you prefer something else.

See you there!

Research Triangle Less Wrong Meetup #4:

Saturday, June 18th, 2 p.m.
Morrisville Outlet Mall Food Court
1001 Airport Boulevard, Morrisville, NC
(map link)

At the Bean Cycle, downtown. I'll have a Less Wrong sign.

Let's exchange anti-akrasia tips.

This is the second meetup being organized in Bangalore. 

The previous one had two attendees and at least 6 more people in Bangalore and a few in other cities have expressed an interest for another one in the comments. Since the discussions petered out without reaching a consensus on the date for the next one, I'm going ahead and proposing 19th June 4 pm at Cafe Coffee Day on Brigade Road (this is the one on the Brigade Road/Magrath Road junction - close to Eva Mall.)

Do respond in the comments if you'd like the date/time/place to be changed. I hope there'll be a good turn out this time! 

Saturday 2pm at the Delhi cafe

The reason why this announcement is so minimalistic is that it's bowing in humility to the yet-to-be-born Once In A Month Meetup.

Here's the story: last week, orthonormal suggest we create a Schelling point around meetups at the beginning of each month. Just so that people would then expect lots of each other to come, and hence they would in fact come. But this is only possible if we distinguish that meetup from the others in the month you see?

Make no mistake, this meetup will also be attended by stellar folks, it just won't be as great the July 2nd one.

See you there!