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Took the survey. Anyone else concerned that "largest bone in the body" isn't very well-defined? Largest by volume, longest measurement, ... ?
I've noted this before, but I'll repeat it here: If the DC meetup could even occasionally occur on a Saturday afternoon instead of a Sunday afternoon, then I would probably attend. But you've coordinated on a time that never works for me. It's probably advantageous to always meet at the same time from the standpoint of consistency of attendance by the same people, but if you want to expand the number of people attending at least irregularly, variability in time would likely work better.
Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep this in mind. We sometimes have discussions about changing the structure of meetups, and doing regularly-scheduled day changes might be something to talk about.
I also might be setting up a hiking meetup on a Saturday sometime in the near future; is that something you'd be interested in?
In response to
How do you approach the problem of social discovery?
I'm part of the swing and blues dance scene in the Baltimore/DC area. There are a lot of nerdy/intellectual types in this scene so there's really no shortage of finding intelligent people to talk to. And the people I know who fit that type isn't limited to Baltimore/DC; I travel around a lot for dancing (Las Vegas, Montreal, London, etc.) and a lot of the same type of people are in the scene internationally.
I've been doing this for about 10 years so I'm also somewhat well connected. There's almost always some dance party to go to on the weekend in some city that I can drive to.
Lot of DC area people in this thread, it seems. Are you near enough that a plug for the DC LessWrong meetup would make sense? If so: consider attending your local DC LessWrong meetup, because we are cool and you are probably cool.
Also, which swing dances do you tend to go to? I have gotten part of our group together to go to the one on U St. a few times.
I sort of understand Zendo but what's the point of playing dominion at a LW meetup?
Pretty much just for socializing / fun.
Because it frequently conflicts with previous commitments and often, when I am free, it is playing board games, which I don't enjoy. No knock on those who do (including most of my friends) but I find them unbearably tedious.
Hmm, okay. What types of meetups would you enjoy?
(I'm asking this as a co-organizer. We try to ask people what they want and accomodate to the degree possible.)
In response to
How do you approach the problem of social discovery?
I live in DC and am an instigator of things (mostly theatre outings, debate, etc). That makes it easy to pull someone into my social circle, since there's usually a movie night, play outing, Shakespeare reading I'm hosting withing the next three weeks to invite them too. (And wanting to be invited to that sort of thing is an excellent filter from my end to see that I will like them).
Obligatory plug: If you want to be even more of a social supernode, why not increase your circle by attending your local DC LessWrong meetup? :-):-)
In response to
How valuable is volunteering?
Typo:
Factors that cut against volunteering have social value
should be "having"
In response to
Rationalist fiction: a Slice of Life IN HELL
Ehh... As the other commenters are saying, it's unclear how it would promote rationality, or what its Ultimate Effect would be...
But I think you should do it anyway. I'd read it.
Only about 10 percent of new social programs in fields like education, criminology and social welfare demonstrate statistically significant benefits in RCTs
This is a higher rate than I'd expected. It implies that current policies in these three fields are not really thoroughly thought out, or at least not to the extent that I had expected. It seems that there is substantial room for improvement.
I would have expected perhaps one or two percent.
Remember, you expect 5% to give a statistically significant result just by chance...
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How do you deal with people who are dominating conversations? I had a New Years party and it was basically 4 hours where either this one guy was talking or someone was talking to him.
The DC LessWrong group has a strong norm of splitting up conversations into multiple, which works well if people are being bored by a single person talking - one person will turn to someone else who looks bored and strike up a different thread with them. (Then if other people also are bored, they will join the separate thread or start their own.)
This fixes a few other conversational problems as well.