How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: A problem for people trying to be precise is that words tend to take on additional meanings over time, and seldom lose meanings. It is good policy to avoid habits that promote this tendency. We will discuss why this is so, and how to implement this policy in daily conversation.

Recommended Reading:

• Avoid Inflationary Use of Terms
• Similarity Clusters
• Sneaking in Connotations
• The Worst Argument in the World

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: The hierarchy of requests is a useful way of thinking about many situations. I will present it and emphasize certain things.

Recommended Reading:

• The Hierarchy of Requests

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible.

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room.

Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.

Discussion: Yvain has done it. He has gone beyond the impossible and kicked reason to the curb! He has written Peak Essay, a persuasive epic, a poem in prose of hope and despair. For there is an Enemy; its name is Moloch, the Creator, Moloch the Destroyer, Moloch the Devious Maw! We will be discussing his post Meditations on Moloch.

Recommended Reading:

• Meditations on Moloch.
• Meditations on Moloch again. Read it four times.
• Update: Misperceptions on Moloch, a follow-up post intended to dispel illusions caused by the original essay.
• Read everything Yvain has ever written, on his old blog, on Less Wrong, on his current blog.
• Don't read the comments.

No prior exposure to Less Wrong is required; this will be generally accessible. But you may be changed beyond repair, and the better for it.

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. I will bring a Rubik's Cube. The presence of a Rubik's Cube will be strong Bayesian evidence of the presence of a Less Wrong meetup.

Parking is completely free. There is a sign that claims there is a 45-minute time limit, but it is not enforced.

Discussion: Honor, next to courage, is the manliest virtue, but manliness and chivalry are dead, and so one wonders (when one is not me) whether honor matters anymore, whether it brings goodness to the world or whether it is merely another status signal. I claim that it is still a virtue even in these depraved and decadent times, that the function of honor is a commitment device: it is the ability to make promises, to fail gracefully if one should fail, to be punished with harm rather than death when one makes a reasonable mistake, and to grow in reputation and in stature. But while it can be true and beautiful, it can be exploited, by mountebanks and scavengers alike. For honor is inextricably tied to reputation, and no commitment device can give a man enough control over what others think of him to reliably prevent atrocities.

Recommended Reading:

• Duel
• Homo Hypocritus
• Parfit's Hitchhiker
• revenge as charitable act by Yvain
• Honor killing

NB: No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. However, I will tolerate no slights nor aspersions on my ancestry.

You must thoroughly research this.

How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. I will bring a Rubik's Cube. The presence of a Rubik's Cube will be strong Bayesian evidence of the presence of a Less Wrong meetup.

Parking is completely free. There is a sign that claims there is a 45-minute time limit, but it is a lie.

Discussion: Expert at vs. expert on is a fairly important distinction. It's also a really simple one, which makes it conceptual low-hanging fruit. It's not totally without nuance; for example the terminology implies either total mastery or encyclopedic knowledge, but it applies just as well at any level of competence.

Recommended Reading:

• Expert At Versus Expert On. I know of no other writing that is explicitly on this topic. Robin Hanson emphasizes the signaling aspect (of course he does), but I do not.
• It is well-known that you learn to play baseball by playing baseball, not by reading essays about baseball. However, it is not usually made explicit that the former makes you an expert at baseball, and the latter makes you an expert on baseball.
• Another nuance: Being an expert at something helps you become an expert on it; the vice versa may be true also. For example, you are probably a better linguist if you speak many languages.

NB: No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. Also, we may or may not play a card game.

How to Find Us: Go into the Del Taco. I will bring a Rubik's Cube and put it on a table, in case you require visual confirmation that You Are In The Right Place before asking anyone whether you're in the right place.

Parking is, well, I don't actually know. There's a sign that says the local lot allows only 45 minutes, but that may or may not be enforced. Others have reported that it's easy to find less time-unlimited parking nearby, although not as guaranteed.

Discussion:

Look at your Internet argument. Now look at http://ow.ly/nt1B3 Now look at your Internet argument. Your Internet argument is now stupid. Actually, your internet argument was already stupid.—St. Rev

If you have political opinions, you are a fool. If you think your political opinions matter, you are doubly the fool. If you think it's important that other people share your political opinions: fool. If you actually spend a significant portion of your time trying to get people to have the same political opinions as you, you cannot be redeemed. These are the facts that we must face, because you and I are but human and do not understand society. Metapolitical opinions, of course, are completely rational and not at all subject to these considerations.

We will be discussing Michael Huemer's paper In Praise of Passivity, of which section 4 is practical advice given its conclusions. Hence practical Taoism: useful inaction.

Recommended Reading:

• Politics is the Mind-Killer
• A Fable of Science and Politics
• The Coalition Politics Hypothesis
• Rah Local Politics
• In Praise of Passivity, by Michael Huemer

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. However, I would very much like it if someone, anyone, anyone at all, were to read the material beforehand.

WARNING

THE BAD THING WILL HAPPEN IF YOU GO TO THE OLD LOCATION

YOU WILL BE ALONE, AND SCARED

WE HAVE MOVED

We are now meeting in this Del Taco.

Parking is completely free, no chicanery required. This is because we have relocated to a Del Taco where parking is free.

Discussion: We have relocated. Do not go to the old location. We are now meeting in a Del Taco near Santa Monica Blvd. and Sepulveda Blvd. It is not a very classy place, but there is cheap food and plenty of room.

Recommended reading:

• Please, do not go to the old location. Go to the new location. Seriously.

No prior knowledge or exposure to Less Wrong or Del Taco is necessary; this will be generally accessible. Only suffering and death awaits those who go to the wrong place.

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 24 hours a day. Sorry, I mean three hours. Just three.

Discussion: Previously discussed on Less Wrong, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett, is a remarkable and short book from 1910 about how to make the most out of your time. Hustle and bustle have increased a tad since then, so it it is my goal to compress the book's 24-hour methodology into a paltry 22. Bennett gives you two hours with which to deviate from his programme—I am giving you two more.

Recommended reading:

• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett. I highly recommend reading this book, either before the meetup, so that you are prepared to discuss it, or after the meetup, when you've been sufficiently oiled for it. Either is fine, as I will prepare a summary.

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. It's been a while, comrades; this will be our first meetup of 2014! Might I say, welcome back, returners, and welcome, new-folk!

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 have ascended.

Discussion:

ＯＰＴＩＭＩＺＥ ＬＩＴＥＲＡＬＬＹ ＥＶＥＲＹＴＨＩＮＧ

—rejected t-shirt idea

We are going to talk about the way we talk about things. We are rationalists, and that means we make things, such as conversations, better than they are. When should we allow topics to drift? How do we determine who gets to speak, and when? How do we prevent useful technical discussions from decaying into talking about movies or the weather? What is the best topic? Why won't anyone listen to me? Where is everyone going? Come back!

Required reading:

• A commentary on Wiio's Laws

Recommended reading:

• How to always have interesting conversations
• Having useful conversations
• How to have high-value conversations
• Wait Culture vs. Interrupt Culture
• A Human's Guide to Words

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 worked long and hard to figure out how to get it for free for longer.

Discussion:

So8res's excellent post On Learning Difficult Things has inspired this meetup. Less Wrong is about learning brutal and unforgiving topics like what your brain is actually doing and what the objectively correct way to interpret evidence is and how to reason about reason

Since this is post is so great, you are all going to read it, and since not all of you are going to read it, I'm going to summarize it for you, and then we'll talk about maybe actually doing something involving the learning.

Recommended reading:

• On Learning Difficult Things
• How habits work and how you may control them
• shev's comment on learning to program
• Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., and Clark, R. E. (2006) Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: an analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching.

Non-recommended reading:

• I don't know, you can read The Art of Learning if you want, but be warned it's much more a book about how great it is to be Josh Waitzkin than it is a book designed to teach you how to learn.

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible. Do note that if you show up without exposure to Less Wrong, you will leave with exposure to Less Wrong. For this reason, do not show up if you do not wish to be exposed to Less Wrong. However, if you are reading this, you probably have been exposed to Less Wrong, and as such, it is too late for you, so you might as well show up.