Hey, it's the post that started it all in Ottawa, four years ago to the day!
How we and Less Wrong have changed! The lives of the Ottawa regulars have seen great developments during this quadrennium and Less Wrong has played a surprisingly influential and positive role in many. Some personal reflections follow.
With my interests in computer science, atheism, seasteading, microeconomics, polyamory, philosophy of personal identity, futurology, life hacks, etc., it was just a matter of time until I followed a link to lesswrong.com in about 2010, and once I did of course I was hooked. Here I found an awesome convergence of fascinating new and old big ideas from practical to theoretical and back, truly brilliant people, intense curiosity, munchkinism, transfixing personalities, and grand quests, all with a maximal signal-to-noise ratio. I've been continually delighted to discover that thinkers I respected from outside Less Wrong have been drawn in to the site or its social sphere. Thinking back to when I attended my first meetup on April 28, 2011, I can't help but be moved by the journey we've been on together since then.
Over years of personal intellectual progress my relationship to the site pivoted. My "philosophical" questions were "answered" in the Wittgensteinian sense. Reverence for Eliezer's intellect gave way to a taste for parody and frustration with his roundabout writing style; FAI concerns, CEV, and fun theory gave way to moral nihilism, CEV criticisms, David Pearce's Hedonistic Imperative, and not wanting to live a life constantly fretting about vague future doom. Unfortunately, the SIAI visiting fellows program was terminated before I could take part and more art less stink never materialized. Most recently, my interest in AGI modeling concluded with the statement of the zero prime program.
Activity on the site has decreased in recent years as people have found more specialized communities. However, I still very deeply cherish the friendly, altruistic culture of Less Wrong and the network of people it connected. Lesswrongers are my people and I love you all.
I'd love to go, but I'm repainting our new apartment on that day and we already have people coming over to help so it's very hard to reschedule. I'll definitely be there the next time if it's announced long enough in advance. Thank you for taking the initiative!
On a side note, I clearly won the pillow fight. Could one of the NYC gang please inform the organizers and collect my prize?
My trip to New York City provided the spur I needed to get the LW Ottawa1 Chapter off the ground. My aspiration for the group is to provide a social milieu for improving thought patterns/processes and for providing feedback on setting goals, planning tactics and strategies, and tracking progress. I also intend to incorporate random fun -- while I was in NYC, a stunt class event was pre-empted by the 6th Annual NYC Pillow Fight Day, and how awesome is that?
Location: 349 Preston St. The meeting will be held in a small sitting area to the right of the security station in the lobby. The lobby is reachable through the Starbucks.
Time: Saturday, April 16th, 1:00pm. I commit to being there until
3:00pm4:00pm.1 That's Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. My apologies to any Ottawans located in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and/or Kansas.
Update: I'm really pleased with how our first meeting went. XFrequentist, Swimmer963, wiresnips, wmiles, and I attended (wmiles was a late arrival due to previous plans). We introduced ourselves and then did an impromptu goal-setting/mutual help exercise in which we described (i) our skills and abilities and (ii) our aspirations and goals. Then we went around the table to see what resources we had to help each other, with an eye to crossing out the easy stuff so we can focus on the tough stuff. We actually didn't finish before I had to go, so we'll take it up again next time.