"Hack your psyche" was Daenerys' phrasing, but I'd approximately endorse it. Basically, there are ways that are brain works, badly. For example, we tend to want to shy away from harsh truths, and look for excuses not to do a lot of work. Reading Litanies of Tarski is explicitly supposed to build into yourself the idea that you are a person who IS capable of re-evalulating beliefs, regardless of how comfortable they are. Reciting the litany may or may not actually be useful for this, especially in group settings. I actually lean towards it NOT being that useful, but being harmless and fun. (More on this later)

In "The Value and Danger of Ritual" I go into how I used the ritual-development process to make myself the sort of person who cared about the world and was willing to work to improve it, even if it meant accepting math that felt intuitively wrong to me.

If any of my friends suggested doing any of this at any holiday party I've been to, I (and most other people present) would look at them as if they had spontaneously gone stark raving mad. If the host of the party were the one suggesting this, and if they managed to make it happen, I would seriously consider never attending any of their holiday parties again.

I do understand your visceral response to this (I can easily imagine similar visceral responses of my own to things that are only slightly different), but you make a leap from "the host does this thing which I am not used to" to "the host appears stark raving mad." There's a big gap there where I think you think something actually bad happened, but which you haven't articulated any negative consequences beyond your instinctive aversion.

I recognize that this is asking a fairly hard question, and don't feel obligated to respond right away. But I'd like to you to articulate, if you can, which of the following, you feel revulsion to:

Singing songs
Singing songs about things you believe strongly in
Singing or reciting things in groups

Making any deliberate effort to build group cohesion and signal tribal loyalty
Having candles
Deliberately lighting and extinguishing candles to produce an effect
Deliberately manipulating lighting to produce an emotional effect

Reading excerpts from authors you like
Reading excerpts from authors you respect a lot and who have shaped your worldview
Reading excerpts from only one particular author you respect (I share this concern, I'll address it in an upcoming post)

Giving a speech in deliberately manipulated lightning (taboo "sermon")
Giving a speech in to an audience whose emotional state has been deliberately altered
Giving a speech whose goal is to build group unity
Giving a speech whose goal is to call people to action towards a difficult goal

Having some meetups featuring group activities that some portion of the potential community won't enjoy (examples include music, as well as strategy games, presentation on material you don't care about)
Having some group activities that some portion of the potential community actively dislikes

Deliberately provoking emotional responses (without attempting to build group cohesion or call to action)

Do any of those trigger a response individually? Can you identify which ones either cause a visceral response, or you feel would cause a negative consequence to occur? Either individually, or collectively?

I had this post in mind. I see no reason to link behavior that 'seems moral' to the internal sensation of motivation by those terminal values, and if we're not talking about introspection about decision-making, then why are we using the word motivation?

This post seems to be discussing a particular brand of moral reasoning- basically, deliberative utilitarian judgments- which seems like a rather incomplete picture of human morality as a whole, and it seems like it's just sweeping under the rug the problem of where values come from in the first place. I should make clear that first he has to describe what values are before he can describe where values come from, but if it's an incomplete description of values, that can cause problems down the line.

Several times, I've tried to get a meetup started at Purdue. However, each time I post on LW that there might be a meetup if enough people comment and say that they want a meetup, only 3ish people will even comment. However, I know that there are at least 8 people at Purdue who read LessWrong, so I've decided to leave this meetup up on the site for a long time so that people on the site will see it.

Good plan. I'm the organizer in Vancouver, and It took me a while but I learned that you just have to make something happen and tell people to show up. Not "let's do something, who's interested?" not "When should we do this thing?", but "I'm going to be holding a meetup here at this time; see you there."

Then of course you adjust for what information you can squeeze out of them about convenient times and places, but again, don't put anyone else's actions on the critical path to something happening.

As I see it, the job of the organizer is to take responsibility for all the agency and do-ness that the group requires. Even expecting people to show up of their own accord has a mediocre success rate; you get much better results if you get people's contact info and specifically bug people like "Hi [person], how's that [thing you're working on] going? It was good to have you at the meetup that time. We're have a meetup at [time and place], you should come!". Seriously, direct orders are way more successful than vague suggestions. (keep it polite of course).

My biggest obstacle has probably been all the little cultural aversions against siezing power and treating other people like they don't have agency. That fact is people really appreciate having leadership, and they want to use their agency on other stuff. Make it easy for them. Build it and they will come.

Are you on lw-organizers? Do you have a mailing list or some other means to organize outside of these meetup posts?

I hope my ramblings are useful to you in your noble quest to build a meetup. More meetups are always good. Good luck!