This post summarizes response to the Less Wrong Book Club and Study Group proposal, floats a tentative virtual meetup schedule, and offers some mechanisms for keeping up to date with the group's work. We end with summaries of Chapter 1.

Statistics

The proposal for a LW book club and study group, initially focusing on E.T. Jaynes' Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (a.k.a. PT:TLOS), drew an impressive response with 57 declarations of intent to participate. (I may have missed some or misinterpreted as intending to participate some who were merely interested. This spreadsheet contains participant data and can be edited by anyone (under revision control). Please feel free to add, remove or change your information.) The group has people from no less than 11 different countries, in time zones ranging from GMT-7 to GMT+10.

Live discussion schedule and venues

Many participants have expressed an interest in having informal or chatty discussions over a less permanent medium than LW itself, which should probably be reserved for more careful observations. The schedule below is offered as a basis for further negotiation. You can edit the spreadsheet linked above with your preferred times, and by the next iteration if a different clustering emerges I will report on that.

• Tuesdays at UTC 18:00 (that is 1pm Bay Area, 8pm in Europe, etc. - see linked schedule for more)
• Wednesdays at UTC 11:00 (seems preferred by Australian participants)
• Sundays at UTC 18:00 (some have requested a weekend meeting)

The unofficial Less Wrong IRC channel is the preferred venue. An experimental Google Wave has also been started which may be a useful adjunct, in particular as we come to need mathematical notations in our discussions.

I recommend reading the suggested material before attending live discussion sessions.