It's time to gather together and remember the true Reasons for the Season: axial tilt, orbital mechanics and other vast-yet-comprehensible forces have converged together to bring another year to a close, and as the days grow shorter and colder we remember how profoundly lucky we are to have been forged by blind, impersonal forces into beings that can understand, and wonder, and appreciate ourselves and each other. This year's East Bay Rationalist Winter Solstice will be held in the center of Berkeley, bringing 300 rationalists together in a theatre hall for food, songs, speeches, and conversations. We encourage other Bay denizens who can't make our solstice to put on their own show. Or even if you do come, we encourage people to try out their own ideas. The East Bay Solstice celebration will be on Saturday, December 17th, in the Anna Head Alumnae Hall in Berkeley. Acquire tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2016-bay-area-winter-solstice-tickets-27853776395 We are coordinating with the Bayesian Choir and will be coordinating with various speakers, as in previous years. An MC and schedule will be posted as details solidify. Kids are welcome. Vegetarian food will be available. Let us know if you have specific accomadation requests or have questions.

"Value of time" is often employed by utilitarians. It can be hard to determine one's value of time for a variety of reasons. This talk will be about different currencies of personal life like time, money, and pleasure; and how choices are implicit trades between them.

The talk will focus on when it's appropriate to treat these resources as liquid currencies and when it's not. After discussing the theory, and some examples, we'll practice. We'll individually come up with our own exchange rates for personal currencies, then fix one another's estimates in small groups.

I hope everyone walks away from this talk with a concrete number for their value of time.

The meetup is at a KTH academic building and the room is on the 5th floor, two stairs up. If you want to influence future meetup times, fill out this poll

Note: most our members join meetups via other channels. Still, the correlation between "found out about Moscow meetups via lesswrong.com" and "is a great fit for our community" is very high. So we're posting just a short link to the hackpad document with the schedule here instead of the full translation of the announcement into English.

Pad with the details about 30.10.2016 meetup.

We're meeting at the "Kocherga" anticafe, as usual.

We’ll be meeting to play board (and other) games!

I have Dominion, Suburbia, and standard playing cards. Please feel free to bring other games you’d like to play.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

We will be meeting at the residence of one of the meetup regulars for a Halloween party. The host promises "[f]ood, friends, fun, and possibly, the gory ritualistic sacrifice of a giant squash. Potluckery encouraged." If you are planning to attend, please email Richard Bruns (richardbruns[at]gmail.com) so he can add you to the Facebook event.

Directions:

Take the metro to the Prince Georges Plaza metro stop, or park in the metro garage there.

As you come up the metro escalators, you will be facing a traffic circle, and Belcrest Road. Go around the circle, continue, and take a right on the next street (Belcrest Road); the building entrance will be on your right. Call or email Richard Bruns (richardbruns[at]gmail.com) so he can let you in or send someone to do so, or tailgate behind someone else.

Upcoming meetups:

• Nov. 6: Fun & Games
• Nov. 13: Gardening

Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Permit parking designations do not apply on weekends, so park pretty much wherever you want.

We'll be meeting to tell each other stories! Ideally, come with a story from your life (doesn't have to be about anything in particular) that you want to tell other people.

For help getting into the building, please call (or text, with a likely-somewhat-slower response rate): 301-458-0764.

Format:

We meet and start hanging out at 6:15, but don’t officially start doing the meetup topic until 6:45-7 to accommodate stragglers. Usually there is a food order that goes out before we start the meetup topic.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

We will be meeting in the courtyard to chat about tools people use to get information from one place to another, both in the past and in the present.

Upcoming meetups:

• Oct. 30: Halloween Party
• Nov. 6: Fun & Games

Hello all, new month, new LW meeting. After the nice meeting last month we had an idea of discussing cognitive biases in conspiracy texts. As always everyone is encouraged to suggest own topics or articles.