I do hope you asked some particular person to watch your bag for you, which dramatically cuts down on the probability that someone would steal it: ordinary people really do take such an assignment seriously, so you'd be reducing the chances from "someone in the bar is a thief" to "either this particular person is a thief, or this particular person is indifferent to social expectations and someone else is a thief".

I am glad to see there is interest, even if you can't make this one.

I'm happy with outside 9-5, but I know some would-be regulars have other events on several weekday evenings. How about Sundays?

Aspen is unlikely to be too crowded on a Friday lunchtime and I think will be happy to have any custom from our group. I am open to alternatives, but it has the advantages of: public place, free entry, big group tables, bright, cheap-ish food and coffee, (hopefully) uncrowded.

I am happy to host in future, but I thought a public place is better to start with.

When you come to move, and a thing you're planning to move is still in a box since the last move, throw it out.

If you are keeping a thing 'because it might come in handy' and the occasion arises when it WOULD have been handy except you forget you have it, throw it out.

On smaller purchases I note that I have a danger zone of between £3 and £8 where it's easy to just spend money without discernible benefit (it's no coincidence that this equals about a coffee and a bun in Starbucks). So I have a rule that unless it's something I actually need Right Now, I make a maximum of one such purchase per non-working day.

Sadly I can't make this even though I am extremely keen to attend a regular local meetup. I think it could be worth organising a meeting outside normal working hours and avoiding talking about students in the announcement. What do you think?

I'd also love to meet somewhere quieter that doesn't require expenditure, but that may be asking a bit much to start with...

Is there such a thing as a desire that's actually just stupid? I'm not sure that's possible in a world where humans are just one possible sort of evolved intelligence and metamorality is per-species. But within humanity, can we say someone's values are in fact stupid? Irrational?

Hi, I'm Alison - I used to be a professional tarot reader and astrologer in spite of having a (fairly average) science degree. I recovered from that over 15 years ago and feel it would be valuable for more people to understand how I came to do it and how I changed my mind. I am also a 45 year old woman, which makes me feel in a tiny minority on LW.

I've been reading large chunks of the sequences for the last year, as well as books like Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear and a bunch of rationalist blogs (and been thoroughly sucked into HPMOR).

Topics I'm particularly interested in include day to day rationality, tackling global warming, rationality from the perspective of people with mental health issues and tackling irrationality while maintaining polite and less arrogant discourse.