New (proposal for) monthly thread: Meetup Reports

I run the Montreal Less Wrong meetup, which for the last few months has started structuring the content of our meetups with varying degrees of success.

This was the first meetup that was posted to meetup.com in an effort to find some new members. There were about 12 of us, most of which were new and had never heard of Less Wrong before; although this was a bit more than I was expecting, the meetup was still a really good introduction to Less Wrong/rationality and was appreciated by all those that were present.

My strategy for the meetup was to show a concrete exercise that was useful and that gave a good idea what Less Wrong/rationality was about. This is a handout I composed for the meetup to explain the exercise we were going to be doing. It's a five-second-level breakdown of a few mental skills for changing your mind when you're in an argument; any feedback on the steps I listed is appreciated, as no one reviewed them before I used them. People found the handout to be useful, and it gave a good idea of what we would be trying to accomplish.

The meetup began by going around and introducing ourselves, and how we came to find the meetup. Some general remarks about the demographics:

• The attendees were 100% male. There were a few women who were going to attend, but cancelled at the last minute.
• Only two out of the 12 didn't have a background in science. The science backgrounds included math, biology, engineering and others.

After a quick overview of what rationality is, people wanted to go through the handout. We read through each of the skills, several of which sparked interesting discussions. Although the conversation went off on tangents often, the tangents were very productive as they served to explain what rationality is. The tangents often took the form of people discussing situations where they had noticed people reacting in the ways that are described in the handout, and how someone should think in such cases.

The exercise that is described on the second page of the handout was not successful. I had been trying to find beliefs that are not too controversial, but might still cause people to disagree with them. Feedback from the group indicated that I could have used more controversial beliefs (religion, spirituality, politics, etc) as the feelings evoked would have been more intense and easier to to notice; however, that might also have offended more people, so I'm not sure whether that would have been better or not. If I were to run this meetup again, I would rethink this exercise.

The meetup concluded with me giving a brief history of Less Wrong, and mentioning HPMOR and the sequences. I provided everyone with some links to relevant Less Wrong material and HPMOR in the discussion section of the meetup group afterwards.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments, any feedback is appreciated!

In Vancouver, we're starting a Sequences reading group, because we're getting a bunch of new friends interested. Additionally, we have multiple CFAR alumni at our meetup, so that might lead to some interesting projects going on. I will attempt to take notes on this stuff, and I will either post it here, or generate a report about it in the future. Either way, I'm grateful for this reminder that taking notes and reporting them is something worthwhile. Thanks.

I’ve lurked on this site since 2010, time to post something. In hindsight I should have taken notes at the meetup, rather than posting this from memory. Next time I may. I attended the Portland meetup on the 11th. I’ve been sporadically going to the lesswrong meetup here in Portland for the last 2 years. I can at least mention the demographics. Over the last 2 years when I attended a meetup I was the only female out of the 4 or 5 attendees (unless one of them brought their wife). I was also the only person who was not a programmer. I will admit these 2 things probably influenced my decision to not always attend. At the most recent meetup, there were 15 -20 people, I’m sure one of the other attendees has a good count. There were only 2 other women. There was also a much broader mix of background/education, not everyone in attendance was a programmer or a CS major. If we kept the turnout like this, I would attend much more often. The group was large enough we had to split into 2 or 3 groups and people mingled between the groups to meet everyone. I was involved in or at least listened to a talk about what is possible or impossible and why (mind reading for example). One topic was political system setups that are resistant to power and places to test theories, and there was a short discussion on how to donate to do the most good (helping those in Africa is more cost effective than helping American poor specifically). We all talked about interest or projects we are working on, that was the best conversation starter and lead to many of the interesting sub-discussions. We also talked a bit about how to get people to come regularly, since that has been a problem with our city’s meetup.

See also: LW Organizers Google group.

It's been posted elsewhere on LW before, but here's a brief meetup summary + attendance of the DC metro area group, for approximately one year now. We hold weekly meetups, typically in a museum courtyard, and seldomly at people's homes. Attendance varies, but the average is around 10. Frequent meetup activities include, in no particular order: structured activities, suggested-topic discussion, games+social meetups, and lesson-type activities led by one person on an area of expertise.

In addition to the actual meetups, we've had a weekly role-playing group (drawn from the same pool as meetup regulars) since Spring 2013, and we occasionally organize "extracurricular" group activities including but not limited to mega-meetup travel. Typically, group events snowball from someone mentioning something and people expressing interest, Doodle polling happens and we decide on a date and other details. It helps that we have people willing to be leaders by fiat, to move things along.

Because of the RPG being held before the meetups, and more often than not, eating out and post-dinner social/hanging out, our meetups may informally last for 8+ hours, although people often leave early, or before or after dinner.

I can try to go into detail on specific meetups or activities, if people have questions.

Vienna, 2013-12-18 -- we had a room in Cafe Votiv, and Axel explained to us quantum physics. He is very good at this; he understands physics, and as a rationalist he does not add the typical nonsense that usually comes with this topic. We even had some experiments with a laser pointer (I didn't know previously you could do quantum experiments just like this; outside of the lab). -- He definitely should do a YouTube video on this topic.

Bratislava, 2013-12-20 -- we had a presentation on social system, orphanages, adoptions, and professional families; by a former Member of Parliament. We discussed some ideas on altruism afterwards.