Buffalo-area Less Wrong meetups on the first Sunday and Third Thursday of every month. (although you should always check out the meetup page for up to date information: http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-Buffalo/)

Hi everyone, I was thinking we could try holding a meetup outdoors for once (weather permitting) at Bidwell Park. If its raining, we'll meet at the Elmwood Panera Bread instead.

Often times, we use "obviously wrong" beliefs as examples of what to avoid and why having correct beliefs is important. Beliefs like homeopathy or creationism are really tempting punching bags, but as Scott Alexander points out in the cowpox of doubt (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/), focusing on these easy targets can make it seem like most wrong beliefs are easy to spot and easy to avoid. With this in mind, let us kick off the spring with our own version of a spring cleaning: "epistemic spring cleaning"

Buffalo LW meetups occur twice a month (even when I fail to post on LW). Visit the meetup.com page for details: http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-Buffalo/

Buffalo-area Less Wrong meetups on the first Sunday and Third Thursday of every month, in 31 Capen Hall at the University at Buffalo - North Campus.

Hey all, We're going to be talking about inferential distance. We'll have a few articles to demonstrate the idea and how it effects arguments (and perhaps what you could do if you notice its happening to you). As always, don't worry if you haven't read the article, we'll either read it beforehand or give a short cliff notes version of it.

PS. James is doing a lot of the organizing for this one, so we should all give him major brownie points for it!

Buffalo-area Less Wrong meetups on the first Sunday and Third Thursday of every month, in 31 Capen Hall at the University at Buffalo - North Campus.

Hey Guys, Today we'll try some practice with Fermi Estimates. Primary Purpose: Sometimes you will have to make decisions without perfect data and having a way to get a decent ballpark approximation can be good enough to help you decide. Secondary Goal: Keep track of how confident we are in our predictions so that we can make our confidence match more closely with our true accuracy.

Location: 31 Capen Hall is on the ground floor of Capen (under the main floor of the Capen Library). It is also near the Capen Cafe.

Hey Everyone, We are delving back into the sequences and next in line is The Virtue of Narrowness (http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/). Its a pretty good read and I've got some good ideas for activities/games we could do to illustrate it.

On side note, I also came across this image recently (http://measureofdoubt.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/simplified-map.jpg) which got me thinking about our individual goals. Currently, we're focusing a lot of our time on Epistemic Rationality, while not really focusing any attention on Instrumental Rationality. Look it over and let me know what you guys want to work on for future meetups.

See you at UB!

Place: Meet at the Capen Cafe (its on the ground floor of Capen Hall below the Capen Library). We may decide to move into a classroom (31 Capen worked pretty well last time). In case you're unfamiliar with UB and can't find us, Contact me at 716-341-9042

We'll kick the meeting off with ASK LESS WRONG. Think of something in your everyday life that's bothering you and we'll help you smooth it out. Purpose: increase the fun in each others' lives through the magic of friendship. Secondary purpose: train ourselves to notice things that are suboptimal and view them as problems that can be solved.

The main part of the meeting will be a RATIONAL DEBATE. (I totally got this idea from another meetup group.)

I'll be chairing, so don't worry about keeping track of this vast list of meta stuff - that's my job. It'll go something like this:

In a conventional debate, you win by sounding more plausible than the other person. In a rational debate, you win if and only if you end up believing the truth. This makes it a cooperative game - it's possible for everyone to win or for everyone to lose. (Incidentally it also means you don't actually know whether you've won or not).

Initially, each person answers the question separately, choosing how they wish to frame their answer. If people come up with very different ways of framing the question, we will take each one in turn and try to approach the question from that direction. (The point of this is to avoid fighting over the framing of the discussion and instead address the issues directly).

I'll keep track of structural stuff - different ways of framing the question, agreed subtopics of discussion, and binary chopping to find points of disagreement (which involves lists of statements and verbally how plausible we each think they are).

If you didn't attend the meetup on combat reflexes, I'd strongly recommend reading what we covered that day: http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-Buffalo/pages/Combat_Reflexes_%28Meetup_Jan24%29

When arguing against something, construct a steel man first - rephrase the opposing argument in your own words, making it as strong and plausible as you can, before you try and defeat it.

Be bold and specific - make sure you're saying something substantial, even if you're not completely sure it's true.

The social aspect: make sure we're providing status and rewards for the right things. Changing your mind should be rewarded rather than discouraged. Likewise, being good at admitting fault is a strength, not a weakness.

Leave a line of retreat. What would I do if I was wrong about this?

Try to notice when you're replying to somebody's cached thought with a cached thought of your own. I'll try and do the same.

Try to find something to change your mind about, even if it's something small.

Separate out disagreement about facts from disagreement about values (and disagreement about strategy, which combines both). Separate out semantic confusion.

If possible, identify which of these techniques you're trying to put into practice. I'll do the same. (By drawing attention to this we'll help keep things purposeful, and also hopefully learn which techniques seem particularly useful).

Resources on rational debate:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/3k/how_to_not_lose_an_argument/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/85h/better_disagreement/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/o4/leave_a_line_of_retreat/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gm9/philosophical_landmines/

Here are some possible topics we can debate:

"will rationality make you rich"

"Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe"

"Should you vote"

If anyone has some good ideas on debate topics, Reply in the comments, I'd love to here them for future debates.

Hope to see you all at UB on Sunday! Let me know if you can come.

So I recently read Jackdaws' "The Eighth Meditation on Superweapons and Bingo" and I think it would be a great discussion topic.

I would also like to practice finding errors in reasoning. But in order to specifically combat the habit of motivated skepticism, I would like to find articles or blog posts where you actually agree with the conclusions of the paper, but still find fault with the reasoning used to support it (Brownie points if you can find an argument you were once a strong proponent of).

New Location: Rooms 123-125 Capen are in the Capen Library. These are "group study rooms" located in the computer section on the first floor. There is no way to sign them out in advance, so I will try to get one of them early. If I can't, I will leave a note on the door that will lead you a some other location (there are group study rooms on the 3rd floor too, and often empty class rooms also)

Hey everyone,

The next post linked in this series is "Focus you Uncertainty" ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/ia/focus_your_uncertainty/ ). It seems to be a sort of warm up for Bayes' Theorem. I think its about time we did a whole lesson on Bayesian Reasoning.

Instead of reading the next post in the series, I'd recommend you read "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem" http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes OR "Bayes' Theorem Illustrated" http://lesswrong.com/lw/2b0/bayes_theorem_illustrated_my_way/ which both do a good job explaining Bayes' Theorem in different ways. Different people learn in different ways, so if one explanation isn't working for you, try the other post and see if that makes more sense. In any case, we'll cover it at the meetup and why its important to know.

P.S. Since Buffalo Lab is not clearly visible from the road, I recommend using google maps satellite view to make it a bit easier to find.

(Apologies, for the short notice.) Last meetup we talked about making sure your beliefs "pay rent " by constraining anticipation. This time we'll talk about specific examples of ways some beliefs may not even really count as beliefs at all:

Belief in Belief - http://lesswrong.com/lw/i4/belief_in_belief/ Professing and Cheering - http://lesswrong.com/lw/i6/professing_and_cheering/ Belief as Attire - http://lesswrong.com/lw/i7/belief_as_attire/

The concepts are pretty similar so I thought I'd just lump them together for this meetup. Read what you can (3 posts is a lot, so don't worry about it if you don't get around to it). In any case, I'll do a cliff-notes summary for everyone. Anyone can attend. Feel free to invite friends who might be interested. We'll also play some cool games too. We're meeting at SPOT this time (I'll have a sign so you can find us easily).

Hi everyone!

For those of you who couldn't make the last meetup because it was on a Thursday, vote in the doodle poll: http://doodle.com/gvxedzauw37b8ryt57t63h45/admin?#table Every vote counts. (I promise to make the next meetup on a different day of the week, although I don't know which day I will have it yet.)

For this meetup, we'll be talking about Making Beliefs Pay Rent : http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/ Its a great article so I strongly suggest reading it. If you can't, don't worry, I'll do a cliff-notes summary for everyone. Anyone can attend. Feel free to invite friends who might be interested. I'll bring some snacks and stuff as well. We'll also play some cool games.

P.S. Since Buffalo Lab is not clearly visible from the road, I'd recommend using google's satellite view to get a good idea of where to go. (it'll be second building from the road -a white building with 2727 in large print - second door. Look for the Buffalo Lab gear logo and we'll have some blinking lights to make it more visible.)