Have you been craving the creation of a new Less Wrong meetup on campus at Stanford? Maybe you have been searching for a more local crowd of rationalists to learn from, or a group of readers of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to talk to in person?

Well search no more! A Less Wrong meetup event on campus is in the works, and to gauge the size of the community, a crossover event will be held with the Monday Stanford Salon Series. The salon has been a regular event for some time, but this is the first time that it has been cobranded with Less Wrong. Come and express your interest in what you want to get out of your new less Wrong community.

Come to the Arillaga family dining commons, downstairs in the "study room", tomorrow night at 7:30pm. There will be introductions, lightning talks from a number of speakers, and plenty of time for mingling and having interesting discussions. If additionally you have a topic to talk about for 5-10 minutes, post about it below. The event officially concludes at 9:30pm.

The host of this event is Rafael Cosman, who you can reach on +1 (858) 775-2858 if you get lost.

I'm looking forward to kicking off a new community with you all!

Welcome to the end of 2013, a time of feasts and of plenty, and a time to celebrate the successes of the previous year and prepare for the next one.

Our traditional social meetup this month falls on the weekend of the 2013 Southern Summer Solstice. Lets take this opportunity to review our recent progress and bring a touch of ceremony into our lives.

Instead of our usual establishment in Carlton, you are invited to join me at the special location of my family home, in Eltham.

The focus for the evening will be on reflection and refocusing - What have we done in the past year that has lead to our successes? What could we have done differently? How can we improve our next year?

We will have an opportunity to look at these from both an individual and societal level. There will be reflections on the progress of humanity, and participatory exercises on self improvement.

In keeping with the tradition of feasting, we will have a pot-luck and BBQ dinner. All guests are encouraged to bring food to cook on the grill, a dish to share, or a contribution towards supplies. If you want to opt in, post what you are able to bring - be it meals, drinks, or deserts - to the Facebook event invitation (https://www.facebook.com/events/436330916489443). Please RSVP by Friday morning so I can make final arrangements.

Following the feast we can play some social party games, including a thematically appropriate Werewolf game, modified to include additional characters to make it even more interesting. If the clouds are clear I will bring out the telescope and we should have views of Venus, Jupiter's moons, our moon, and the milky way. We hope to end the evening with a mindfulness session.

Come to 54 Scenic Crescent, Eltham North. Parking is available up the driveway, and we will offer lifts from Eltham train station. Arrive from 7pm if you want to help with the set up, and we will kick off formal proceedings and dinner at 8pm. Sunset will be 8:41PM, and the day length will be 14 hours 47 minutes.

Let this be a ceremony to saviour, while the days remain long. I look forward to your attendance.

This month we will be discussing and doing exercises to do with communication.

For full details see http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Less-Wrong/events/143167052/

Please RSVP at the above link.

Dear Friends,

As we await the coming of summer, October in Melbourne is wet yet deceivingly warm. Thank heavens for food though! New friends and old are joining together for the much awaited Sunday Brunch Club. This time held our home, Isengard, in the Docklands with a lovely view of the city and harbour.

Come out for a good time on Sunday Oct 20 for a brunch (lunch?) we have cooked up just for you. Let this be one of the myriad of joyous occasions we choose to celebrate knowing and loving each other. Let us welcome summer, as we embark on our paths, wherever they may lead.

On to the details! Where: 2105 / 5 Caravel Lane, Docklands Getting Here: 12 minute walk from Southern Cross station, or catch a free tram straight to our front door. When: 11am-4pm You will be provided a seating time by Thursday based on your survey responses. Please be punctual so we can make sure it all works to plan! Suggested Contribution: $11-$15 per person to cover food costs, all excess proceeds to support GiveWell top rated charities. Guests: Please limit yourself to inviting one additional guest.

We need to receive all RSVPs via this form by 7pm on Thurs 16th October.

Wish you well and look forward to seeing you soon!

Your friends and hosts,

Adrienne, Allison, Brayden, Helen, and Thomas

Tentative À La Carte Menu Below STARTER

Homemade Pumpkin Bread Served with nutmeg and rosemary butter

MAINS

Patatas Bravas Latkes Apple creme drizzled sweet and savoury potato pancakes served with Gruyère cheese and rocket

Omelette du Fromage Fluffy omelettes with capsicum, ham, mushrooms, tomato, parsley, and, of course, cheese.

DESSERT Matcha Green Tea Crepes Roulade A Japanese-French fusion dusted with sugar and served with banana slices

Orange-Blossom Mead du la Glace Honey-fermented wine liqueur served with vanilla ice cream

DRINKS Sangria Blanco Spanish wine punch with chopped fruit

Practical rationality. This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month and is distinct from our monthly social meetup. We aim to improve our thinking and decision making techniques, and 'level up'.

Topics for this month will be announced on our group's meetup page. http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Less-Wrong/

Discussion can be found on our mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong

All are welcome from 6:30pm. If the door downstairs is locked, call the phone number on the door and we'll let you in. Any formal activity will likely kick off at 7:30pm sharp an g until 9pm. Following this there will be informal discussion and rationality life advice.

Please RSVP at the meetup page above so we can be aware of numbers.

This event will give us a chance to improve out prediction and updating skills, and we have prepared 90 minutes of group exercises as formal activities for the night, which kick off at 7:30pm. This event is open to interested members who are less familiar with the LW material, and you are invited to bring a friend who might be interested. All attendees are kindly requested to RSVP via the group meetup page, where you will find more information about the event: http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Less-Wrong/events/137079922/

Comfort Zone Expansion, or COZE, is a technique pioneered by CFAR that aims to get participants to better understand themselves by having an opportunity to get outside their comfort zone in a controlled environment.

COZE participants regularly report significantly increased social benefits following the training and practice sessions, and personally it has lead to a life improvement for myself.

I am planning to run a workshop this month to give everyone a chance to learn a little which hopefully becomes a powerful technique you can call upon when required.

We will be meeting in the city at Ben's house on Saturday Morning for a training workshop, finishing in the early afternoon following a practical excursion to the Queen Victoria Market.

The excursion activity suggestions are tailored for people of all confidence levels, and feeling reluctant is normal. If you want to talk first then I will be at the monthly social event tonight, or on facebook or mobile.

The plan is as follows: 10:30am - 11:30am Meet at Ben's House for the workshop session. We will cover the theory behind the point of comfort zones and when to consider the value in moving outside them. Go over the material on playfulness cultivation and vulnerability investigation. Cover the concepts of stress, including Sympathetic Nervous System activation, and techniques for understanding and controlling your state of stress. Discuss previous experiences with COZE and benefits that have been observed. Run through possible things that you might be valuable trying at the COZE excursion, and what you should be paying attention to in terms of your state of mind and body.

11:30am-12:00pm Improv Games! Practice things you are uncomfortable with in a controlled environment with friends. We will be playing some 'whos line is it anyway' style games together. Use this as a trial run to re-enforce the concepts from the morning workshop session.

12:00pm-12:30pm Final discussion and COZE safety talk in preparation for the excursion.

1:00pm-2:15pm Break off in partners for the walk to Queen Victoria Market. Separate individually for the exercise itself, and regroup after the time period has finished.

2:15pm-3:00pm COZE debrief! Share stories and lessons learned.

It will be chilly outside, so dress appropriately.

Brayden McLean - 0407943917

Matt will be away for the July meetup, so I am taking charge of this month's Practical Rationality event at the newish venue (TrikeApps: Level 2, 491 King St West Melbourne) from 6:30pm to late. The first structured activity for the evening will be a discussion of rationality outreach in Melbourne. The three topics up for investigation are: -Planning to run Less Wrong events that appeal to newcomers who have not read the sequences -Discussing what would be required to bring a CFAR workshop to Melbourne within the next 12 months -Starting a Melbourne Effective Altruist community You can join a discussion about whichever of these you are most interested in. We will start with whichever one interests the first people to show up, and split when the group size increases.

By the end of the discussion I hope for us to have obtained a clearer picture of the benefits of outreach, what events should look like, and how we can target high value potential members.

Please consider which of the topics above you are interested in working on, and bring at least one idea along on the night.

The second activity later in the evening will be Rationality Therapy, where you bring problems or doubts you are having to discuss in small groups, with the aim of generating solutions to specific issues in your life.

We will be experimenting with a new incentive: making a takeaway order at 7:30pm for anyone who wants dinner. This will hopefully make it easier for you to come along early without having to worry about finding food beforehand.

If you need to reach me, for example if you want to come earlier, you can contact me on 0407943917.

This event replaces the cancelled rock climbing event.

Come to my place this Saturday 29th June at sunset for an casual evening of astronomy. I will host a tour of the solar system and the cosmos from 5:30pm to late. We should be able to see Venus, the Milky Way and Magellenic clouds, the rings and moons of Saturn, and a bunch of nebulae and clusters. There is a 30% chance of cloud cover according to http://www.skippysky.com.au/Australia/ and http://weatherspark.com/#!dashboard;q=melbourne, so we will have backup plans if it clouds over. We have a big house so if you want to bring food to cook for dinner and/or a sleeping bag and gear to stay the night then feel free. Plenty of car parking at the top of the driveway, and use a GPS to avoid getting lost. If coming by public transport call my mobile and I'll pick you up from Eltham train station. Guests can stay until 8:30am Sunday morning. Please call me on 0407943917 for last minute RSVPs, or for directions.