Cached Selves is a really good post! There's time yet before tomorrow evening, and it's not very long. I think this gives a plausible, partial reduction of the idea that "labels of identity" are "dangerous". Also, the post makes some suggestions about how to avoid having this effect twist your beliefs. Any other ideas that might work?

Anyhow, for tomorrow, let's read this and discuss. (Also, I'll bring some games. I like games!)

I'll run a handful of problem-solving games for small teams, each of which should take between 5 to 30 minutes. I'll start the first of these games at 7:30 sharp. Hopefully, this will offer a chance to practice some of the practical skills we've discussed in the past few months.

Chatting and coffee, before and after these events.

I'm excited about this. I've been bouncing it around in my head for at least a month now. I think this might be awesome.

Note: If it's convenient, and you have a smartphone, laptop, or tablet, bring it. We'll want to be able to all look up data efficiently, and I want some folks to run races against calculators. :)

I have a whole slew of stuff I'd like to talk about, and possibly even some things to test.

Short topics we'll cover:

• Fermi problems: How to get rough numbers for things you're interested in, without actually knowing much hard data.
• Fast mental math: How to compute Fermi estimates in your head, quickly.
• Value of information: How to estimate when doing more work to find more information is likely to be useful.

Some tests/experiments/kind-of-games I'd like to try:

• Is fast mental math actually useful if you have a glowing rectangle handy? I suspect it is, and will happily race some calculators to see if it is so.
• In what situations do Fermi estimates even make sense? Do we have questions that are actually better answered with roughly-guessed numbers, rather than data from the nearest source of internet?

I'll run a probability calibration exercise. How confident are you? How confident should you be?

I'll bring my Zendo pieces too, if folks would like to play, or maybe just build stuff with pyramids.

I have a specific topic in mind that I would like to discuss: The illusion of control appears to be both a psychological need and a common, viewpoint-distorting bias. Are there other biases like this? How ought we handle them? Further suggestions for discussion topics are, as always, warmly welcomed.

Also, I'll bring stuff to play The Resistance and Zendo. :D

See you there!

Last week, we discussed the first half-or-so of the Human's Guide to Words, going so far as to brainstorm some methods and habits that'd be useful to learn to handle these and similar failures.

I'll take the notes that we made and attempt to form actual exercises and games out of them. At the meetup, we'll try some of these, and, perhaps, refine them until they're fun, useful-seeming, or both.

I plan to run a couple of nascent exercises on explicit specificness, a la http://lesswrong.com/lw/bc3/sotw_be_specific/. This seems like a deeply useful skill to turn into a habit.

Further suggestions, of course, are warmly welcomed. :)

See you then!

Two suggestions, both which we can do on Monday:

1. I'm pretty sure there are major life hacks that folks are using that we didn't get around to describing. Email the list, or email me, or mention at the meetup that you'd like to talk about one, and I'll make sure that you actually get a chance to describe it. ;)

2. Let's play Zendo! (http://www.koryheath.com/games/zendo/) Because it's an awesome game, and because it teaches relinquishment of false hypotheses better than anything else I know.

See you there!

Show and tell, of various minor hacks and life improvements. Bonus points if you can actually demonstrate them. :)

The idea: try to think of at least one clever trick that you've tried that has made your life better, and which you think would probably work for at least one or two other people in the meetup. This could be for pretty much any goal that several of us share: ways to improve diet, get better exercise, focus better, notice mistakes more readily, stay on task longer, become better motivated... whatever people might care about.

The format:

1. State the goal of the hack.
2. Explain the overall hack.
3. Tell about its benefits and downsides.
4. Explain how, in some detail, someone else could try the same thing. (Break this, of course, if you have a really good reason to.)

Try to keep each thing somewhere between 2 and 20 minutes. If there's any specific item that you can demonstrate, bring it. (Does this make sense? Let me know if I can better explain something.)

See you there!