I'm resigning as Meetup Czar. What's next?

post by Screwtape · 2025-04-02T00:30:42.110Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

Contents

  FAQ
None
2 comments

After ~3 years as the ACX Meetup Czar, I've decided to resign from my position, and I intend to scale back my work with the LessWrong community as well. While this transition is not without some sadness, I'm excited for my next project.

I'm the Meetup Czar of the new Fewerstupidmistakesity community.

We're calling it Fewerstupidmistakesity because people get confused about what "Rationality" means, and this would create less confusion. It would be a stupid mistake to name your philosophical movement something very similar to an existing movement that's somewhat related but not quite the same thing. You'd spend years with people confusing the two. 

What's Fewerstupidmistakesity about? It's about making fewer stupid mistakes, ideally down to zero such stupid mistakes. Turns out, human brains have lots of scientifically proven stupid mistakes they commonly make. By pointing out the kinds of stupid mistakes people make, you can select for people who feel smugly superior about making less of those stupid mistakes. This makes for fun house parties, but Fewerstupidmistakesity aspires to do more than just have fun parties! It aspires to have people in the community actually make fewer stupid mistakes! Winding up with groups based on pure socialization that spend all their time having house parties and none of their time studying how to make fewer stupid mistakes would be a stupid mistake, so we won't be making it.

Selection effects are the key to achieving this. Allowing people in the community who 

• make lots of stupid mistakes
• don't care about whether they make stupid mistakes
• don't consider themselves Fewerstupidmistakesists or even adjacent

would be a stupid mistake. 

We considered teaching people to make fewer stupid mistakes instead of just hoping selection effects did all our work for us. One idea was creating exercises to practice making fewer stupid mistakes, then charging people lots of money for us to run them through the exercises, and lastly measuring whether the exercises actually got people to make fewer stupid mistakes. However, we worried that the measurements might show we didn't actually get people to make fewer stupid mistakes and then nobody would want to pay us money. We also considered teaching more people how to run the exercises, but that also seemed like it might result in other people measuring whether the exercises got people to make fewer stupid mistakes and finding out it didn't do anything.

We have settled on the following strategy. Our CEO has undergone extensive training in the art of conflict resolution; namely, blocking people who make stupid mistakes. Our approach is to write down how to not make any stupid mistakes, and if anyone makes a stupid mistake like disagreeing with us, we ban them.

Since humans make lots of stupid mistakes, this strategy might end with banning literally everybody except the CEO. Since that would be a stupid mistake for a community to make, if it happens we expect the CEO to ban himself for making it.

FAQ

Q. Are you seriously expecting people to make no mistakes at all?
A. Here in the Fewerstupidmistakesity community, we're mostly concerned with the stupid mistakes. If your crypto firm goes under because market conditions changed fast, we get it, high speed trading is hard. If you commit murder because there was five chickens on one trolley track and one human landlord on the other trolley track and Omega asked if you'd flip a lever in the second box, we understand, ethics can be tricky sometimes. Making fewer complex mistakes is not our department. 

On the other hand, if your crypto firm goes under because you were doing your billion dollar trading budget in an excel sheet, that's a stupid mistake. If you pull a gun during a routine traffic stop before shooting a cop and getting shot, that's a stupid mistake. The aspiring Fewerstupidmistakesist tries to at least be using Quickbooks and to not get into shootouts with the cops. 

Q. Who is in charge of Fewerstupidmistakesity? 
A. It would obviously be a stupid mistake to have a grand goal for society and nobody who was particularly in charge of making it go well. While anyone can contribute to the project, we intend to hire only the best; people with deep connections to the various subcultures with relevant knowledge, the kind of person married to their work. Unfortunately, since actually taking this role is obviously a stupid mistake because everyone complains to you about every little stupid mistake anywhere in the community, we've had a hard time keeping people. We had one, but they decided they were tired of being yelled at by squalling infants and so decided to quit for a much more rewarding job and now you're all stuck with me.

Q. Do you actually think people can learn to make fewer stupid mistakes?
A. Children sometimes blame the dog for eating their homework, but since this doesn't usually work they eventually learn not to make that stupid mistake. Instead, they blame the computer for deleting their essay, which sometimes works a little better. 

Q. Do you actually think making fewer stupid mistakes matters in the real world?
A. Surgeons find that medical procedures improve if they follow checklists that include items like "Confirm the patient's name, procedure, and where the incision will be made." Sure seems like not checking what procedure you're about to do on a surgical patient is a stupid mistake! And don't get us started on the mammogram problem, where the obvious answer is "ask a computer."

Q. I want to run a Fewerstupidmistakesist meetup. How do I do that?
A. You need to fill out a form that asks for a time, a place, and a description of how to find you. If you can do this without making any stupid mistakes, you can run a meetup. If you make stupid mistakes when filling out the form, you're banned.

Q. I really think I'm more of a post-fewerstupidmistakesist. 
A. That's not a question.

Q. Fine. Shouldn't everyone else realize they should become a post-fewerstupidmistakesist like me?
A. Are you still making stupid mistakes? If yes, then you're not really 'post' fewerstupidmistakesism, are you?

Q. How is Fewerstupidmistakesity funded?
A. People keep talking about having a diverse funding landscape. We here at Fewerstupidmistakesist organizations are having none of that. Diversification in practice seems to means spending less time asking grantmakers with lots of money to give us some, and instead asking normal people who only have some money to give us some. Therefore we intend to try and be funded entirely by Elon Musk, since he has the most money. We anticipate no conflicts of interest with this plan.

Q. How do I become a Fewerstupidmistakesist?
A. Make fewer stupid mistakes. Tell people you're trying to make fewer stupid mistakes, unless that would be a stupid mistake.

2 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.