Dear all, this week Swimmer963 will give a presentation on Nick Winter's new book The Motivation Hacker:

http://www.nickwinter.net/the-motivation-hacker

Nick Winter is a community member, startup founder, and CFAR workshop alumnus. Thanks to Swimmer963 for giving this presentation!

Doors open at 7:30pm on Wednesday; the presentation will start at 8pm and take roughly half an hour. Stick around afterwards to chat. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Dear all, the topic of tomorrow's meetup is to-do lists, Getting Things Done, and other systems for managing time and tasks. I used to think of this as a mundane topic, but then I realized it's only as mundane as your goals are! I will be especially interested in learning about the systems or habits you employ, if you'd like to share.

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

This week's meetup is about Munchkinism:

"A Munchkin is the sort of person who, faced with a role-playing game, reads through the rulebooks over and over until he finds a way to combine three innocuous-seeming magical items into a cycle of infinite wish spells. Or who, in real life, composes a surprisingly effective diet out of drinking a quarter-cup of extra-light olive oil at least one hour before and after tasting anything else. Or combines liquid nitrogen and antifreeze and life-insurance policies into a ridiculously cheap method of defeating the invincible specter of unavoidable Death. Or figures out how to build the real-life version of the cycle of infinite wish spells."

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

Come and bring your strange and zany ideas for exploiting the structure of reality at the expense of the Protestant work ethic. I suggest you look at this recent Less Wrong thread on Munchkinism beforehand, although it is not required:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/h9b/post_ridiculous_munchkin_ideas/

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Abstract: A Bayesian definition of surprise is as follows: Given a distribution P over models M and some observed data D, the surprise of D is the Kullback-Liebler divergence from the prior to the posterior:

http://goo.gl/cKE6w

A good experiment or a good conversation is one that has a high expectation of surprise, E[S(D, M)]. In this meetup we will practice having good conversations by using the strategy "Ask the question whose answer will surprise you most."

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

This week's meetup is about Scott's philosophy RPG Dungeons and Discourse. Here is the comic strip that inspired Dungeons & Discourse:

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/01/27/advanced-dungeons-and-discourse/

Scott's rulebook is available here:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/22/dungeons-and-discourse-third-edition-the-dialectic-continues/

It includes an epic narration of the first campaign/musical, The King Under The Mountain. There's an html version of that here, complete with music: http://lesswrong.com/lw/8kn/king_under_the_mountain_adventure_log_soundtrack/ I'm going to print out a couple copies of the rulebook. The purpose of the meetup is to do some combination of the following:

• Look at the rules.
• Kibitz about the rules.
• Ask each other to explain all the references.
• Ask each other how role-playing games work.
• Make characters (just for fun).
• Listen to Less Wrong filk.
• Decide whether or not to join a group to play Scott's upcoming campaign Fermat's Last Stand.

We will not be starting a campaign at this meetup this week. You can have fun at this meetup even if you don't intend to play or DM the campaign! If you do want to play the campaign, I encourage you to post to the coordination thread on Scott's blog:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/26/fermats-last-stand-coordination-thread/

There are people interested in playing in Berkeley and in the South Bay.

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Hello all! This week's meetup will be a board games night. Come meet people and play a board game from Zendo's library, or bring a game that you want to play. I will not be there but Alex will be hosting.

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

This week's Berkeley meetup will have the format of a focus group. On behalf of CFAR I will be asking you (yes, you!) what kinds of things you would like from the Center For Applied Rationality. Your input will be passed on to the organization and will help direct its course.

Doors open at 7pm, and the focus group begins at 7:30pm. The focus group part of the evening won't take too long, and afterward we'll just hang out. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Hello, all! Zendo will host its first Less Wrong meetup of the year on Wednesday at 7pm. Come and play a game from Zendo's library of board games, or bring a board game that you particularly want to play. I look forward to seeing everyone again. If anyone is interested I will share stories about the Solstice Eve ritual that Raemon from Less Wrong put together.

For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png