How was Less Online for you?

post by Gordon Seidoh Worley (gworley) · 2024-06-03T17:10:33.766Z · LW · GW · No comments

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I was going to write a post that was something like "Personal Reflections from Less Online", but lots of us who were there probably have reflections on it, so I created this question post to invite people to offer their reflections in one place.

Answers should be reflections from people who attended. Comments could be from anyone.

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answer by Gordon Seidoh Worley · 2024-06-03T17:25:18.741Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

A few thoughts I had about the weekend. May think of more later:

  • I really missed hanging out with rationalists in person. Since I moved from Berkeley to San Francisco I don't spend as much time in person with rationalists.
    • One of the big things I missed is related to communication style. I feel extremely free to say whatever I'm thinking with rationalists, thanks to high decoupling norms that are much more robust than they are anywhere else. In almost all other conversations I have to at least think about censoring myself, even if I don't in practice always have to. With rationalists I can turn off the censoring check.
    • I also missed having deep, in-person intellectual conversations with the subset of the community who are into the same stuff as I am. It's a really great experience to have high-bandwidth conversations with people whom I have short inferential gaps with.
  • I learned about some lines of AI safety work that I'm really excited about and give me some hope.
  • Food was tasty and plentiful.
  • I enjoyed having a number of conversations with folks who resonated with my experience being a religious rationalist. It gives me the sense that I have developed something of a "unique perspective" that lets me bring missing value to conversations.
    • I know there were even more people who wanted to talk to me about spirituality and Zen than I got to. If you were one of those people whom I failed to meet up with, please DM me and we'll find some time to chat!
  • I was kind of put off by how disorganized and messy things were around the venue. Partly this is just because thing get messy when there's lots of people, but one thing I like about EA Global by comparison is that the aesthetics are often better in little ways, like chairs are consistently arranged neatly and common spaces stay cleaner. I find it's harder to think clearly when I'm surrounded by mess.
  • I wish I had arranged my schedule to take today off to allow for some decompression from the weekend rather than jumping straight back into work!
↑ comment by davekasten · 2024-06-05T18:22:07.236Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I personally did not find it messy compared to similar events I have gone to; not going to tell you your opinions are wrong to feel or to hold, just wanted avoid having one person's opinion get fossilized as everyone's opinion :)

↑ comment by Nisan · 2024-06-05T04:42:34.775Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Interesting, it felt less messy to me than, say, rationalist-adjacent research retreats.

lsuser says that as a result of his spiritual journey, "now if there is so much as a cardboard box on my kitchen counter, it bothers me" [LW · GW]. Has your spiritual practice changed your tolerance of clutter?

Replies from: gworley
↑ comment by Gordon Seidoh Worley (gworley) · 2024-06-05T16:18:35.482Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Clutter is fine in the sense that everything is fine, but clutter also creates noise that I have to process (unless I close my eyes), and that eats up some brain capacity.

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