How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for three hours, or for longer if you know the eight secrets of the coven.

Discussion:

Can you give a specific example of abstract argument being more useful than a specific example? How about an abstract argument that specific examples are more useful than abstract arguments? The ladder of abstraction, from abstract to concrete, superficially seems unrelated to but is quite entangled with the other well-known dichotomy, that between the general and the specific. This mess is our focus. It is obvious that both "sides" have their place, but what modes are best for what purposes?

Recommended Reading:

• Up and Down The Ladder of Abstraction
• Skill of the Week: Be Specific
• The Virtue of Narrowness
• Hug the Query
• Leaky Generalizations
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible.

How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for three hours, or for longer if you are good at improvising.

Discussion:

ED-209: You have 5 seconds to comply. —RoboCop

Of all generalized rationality skills, this is the most important. If you cannot think the right thought in the first five seconds upon encountering anything, inertia will almost certainly carry you where you do not want to be. So the question for discussion is: what are the generalized principles for turning abstract principles into thoughts at the 5-second level? And how do we apply those principles to themselves, so that we use them on the 5-second level?

Recommended Reading

• The 5-Second Level
• Problems vs. Tasks
• 5-Second Level Case Study: Value of information
• The PNG of Rationality
• 5-Second Skill: From First Principles
• How an Algorithm Feels from the Inside

Prior exposure to Less Wrong is not required. However, if you show up without prior exposure to Less Wrong, you will be vaporized within five seconds.

How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (wee swashbucklers be welcome), in th' Westside Pavillion on the second floor, by the movie theaters. The sign thar say: "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours, or longer if ye be a scurvy dog.

Discussion: Ahoy! This week be a special convening. In celerberation of the world-renowned Talk Like a Pirate Day, we'll be forgoin' the usual manner o'speech, and adoptin a manner more befittin a lawless captain or squire on the high seas of yestercentury. Arrr, thar be nothin ter tickle a man's fancy more'n pretendin toward adventure n romance n camaraderie and what have ye. That's why we be announcin this meetin', rather than keepin it below-decks, as 'twer, as we bin doin fer half th' meetups. (Yar.)

Recommended readins:

• Yo Ho Ho, and a Bottle of Rum
• What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?
• An economic analysis of typical emotional transactions occurring in the moments before and during an impending death
• All for Me Grog
• Against Ninjas 1
• Against Ninjas 2
• Pyrats
• MooBeard
• Sailors' Language: A Collection of Sea-Terms and their Definitions

A priori exposure ter "Less Wrong" not even be recommended this time.

How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours, or for longer if you are a caitiff.

Discussion:

if we only care about desires we act upon, then we only respect preferences with optimization power, and thus might actually makes right

—drunken muflax

I no longer find the Hansonian construal of "care" tenable. Caring is feeling strong emotions, not magically becoming an agent.

—Grognor

Acknowledging that personhood is a nonbinary concept inspires questions. How do we measure how persony someone is? Are octopodes people? Birds are obviously people, but what about the nonhuman great apes? Is there a relationship between agency and qualia, and if so, what is it? Do persons with more intense qualia care more about things, or do people with more agency care more about things? Is the idea of being more-of-a-person coherent at all? Should we allow more intense experiences to count more on the utilitarian calculus, even though this can in principle be hijacked? How should we treat instrumental utility monsters? When does a baby become a person? Can you lose personhood through an act of will? Why do we think personhood is important? Why do we think importance is important? Who the Hell do you think I am!? We'll discuss all this and more, this Wednesday, at the Westside Tavern! Be there or be square!

Recommended reading:

• Personhood by Zack M Davis
• Reasons and Persons
• Reasons for Persons
• Hacking the CEV for Fun and Profit
• Vladimir_M's comment's on Yvain's Offense vs. Harm Minimization post
• The Truth Points to Itself, Part 1
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Prior exposure to Less Wrong is recommended but not required. That which can be destroyed by your presence at this meetup should be!

There may or may not be a whiteboard.

How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours, or for longer if you apply some advanced trickery.

Discussion: We will talk about whatever. No topic will be enforced. No presentation will be given. No one will be "playing host", and no games will be played.

Recommended reading:

• The Less Wrong Sequences
• Wiio's Laws
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
• The Strategy of Conflict
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• The Road to Reality
• The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. In fact, due to the Zen nature of this week's topic, it is unlikely that anyone will even be able to identify us as a Less Wrong meetup.

There will definitely not be a whiteboard.

How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours, or for longer if you apply some chicanery.

Discussion:

Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.—Eliezer Yudkowsky

Sometimes it feels more like going to clown school wearing a suit.—Catharine G. Evans

On August 7, #confessyourunpopularopinion made the rounds as a (perhaps ironically, very popular) Twitter hashtag.

Examples:

• "Someone who has not directly experienced a form of oppression can have useful knowledge about it "
• "Abortion is often morally the best choice"
• "objects are syllables in a message/one aspect of god's lonely edge"
• "Inheritance should be illegal. You deserve nothing from your parents' deaths."
• "hypocrisy is what makes us human and sincere "people" are monsters who should walk to the bottom of a lake "
• "What we call "art" is just proof-of-work, no more transcendent or special than hashing random bitstrings. "
• "If you vote, you're the one who doesn't have a right to complain."
• "Most of the time the faceless soulless bureaucracy is right"
• "no matter how I look at it it's your fault my opinion is unpopular"

This is an inherently LessWrongish thing to do, so this is what we will be doing. I don't expect it to be a problem, but just in case, I will be enforcing (with my fists) a rule: No one's opinions are to be ridiculed or mocked. The point is to profess unpopular opinions.

Recommended reading:

• Lonely Dissent and its prerequisites
• What You Can't Say
• I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. Because a few people didn't get the joke last time, I have been instructed not to pretend that you have to have memorized the core sequences in order to attend without getting kicked out. It's still a good idea to read the sequences, though.

There may or may not be a highly visible whiteboard, which may or may not have Bayes's Theorem written on it.

How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours, or for longer if you apply some skullduggery.

Discussion: The study of observer selection effects is called "anthropics" or "anthropic reasoning". As I am not an expert in anthropics, I will introduce the topic and some of its famous problems, clear up basic confusions, and caution against more advanced confusions.

Recommended reading:

• Anthropic Principle Primer
• Black Belt Bayesian posts tagged "anthropics"
• Katja Grace's Anthropic Principles
• Forcing Anthropics: Boltzmann Brains, Outlawing Anthropics, The Anthropic Trilemma
• No Anthropic Evidence, in which Vladimir Nesov proves that you can't update your priors with anthropic observations.

Prior exposure to Less Wrong is mandatory. If you haven't memorized the core sequences, don't even bother showing up.

There will probably be a highly visible whiteboard.