Posts

Meetup : Stanford Salon and LW inaugural meetup 2014-04-07T04:26:11.105Z
Community overview and resources for modern Less Wrong meetup organisers 2014-04-04T20:53:41.678Z
Meetup : Melbourne Social Southern Summer Solstice Celebration 2013-12-17T15:08:57.063Z
Meetup : December Practical Rationality Meetup 2013-11-30T10:46:55.867Z
Meetup : Sunday Brunch Club - Sunday 20th October 2013-10-14T08:08:26.230Z
Meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality Meetup 2013-09-29T11:36:59.964Z
Meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality: Group Prediction Calibration and Aumann's Agreement Theorem 2013-08-28T07:17:24.166Z
Meetup : Melbourne Excursion: Comfort Zone Expansion 2013-07-19T08:43:00.898Z
Meetup : Melbourne Practical Rationality - July 5th 2013-07-04T10:13:03.808Z
Meetup : Melbourne LW Outing: Astronomy evening in Eltham, Saturday 29th June, 5:30pm 2013-06-27T15:17:13.411Z
Meetup : Melbourne LW Outing: Indoor Rock Climbing, Sunday June 30th 2013-06-22T05:21:01.550Z
Meetup : Melbourne Winter Solstice Dinner Party and Social Meetup 2013-06-16T09:46:12.712Z
Meetup : Rationalist Housewarming at Isengard (Melbourne) 2013-06-10T12:07:21.442Z

Comments

Comment by BraydenM on RSPs are pauses done right · 2023-10-17T18:05:59.884Z · LW · GW

My guess is that the hard "Pause" advocates are focussed on optimizing for actions that are "necessary" and "sufficient" for safety, but at the expense of perhaps not being politically or practically "feasible".

Whereas, "Responsible Scaling Policies" advocates may instead describe actions that are "necessary", and more "feasible" however are less likely to be "sufficient".

The crux of this disagreement might be related to how feasible, or how sufficient each of these two pathways respectively are?

Absent any known pathways that solve all three, I'm glad people are exploring both of these pathways (and the potential overlap between them). I hope that there is increased exploration. 

Perhaps we are going through a temporary phase of increased contention between Pauses versus RSPs as they both may be vying for similar memetic uptake (e.g. on the lesswrong home page right now there is a link for "Global Pause AI Protest" events spread across seven countries happening a few days from now.)

(Conflict of interest: I support implementation of Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy)

Comment by BraydenM on AI #1: Sydney and Bing · 2023-02-22T07:23:11.395Z · LW · GW

Thanks for interesting post as usual, Zvi. As one of the new members of the Product team at Anthropic that you referenced (and commenting in a personal capacity, not representing my employer) I would like to offer that I endorse collaborative (or at least, communicative) community norms and I personally aim to regularly engage with folks across the community.

This week I will be talking to folks in person at the Berkeley AI impacts dinner, and at EAG Berkeley this weekend. I hope to meet some of you there.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : San Francisco Meetup · 2015-01-02T21:55:20.570Z · LW · GW

I'll be there!

Comment by BraydenM on Community overview and resources for modern Less Wrong meetup organisers · 2014-04-24T22:59:47.740Z · LW · GW

This content should probably be a wiki page, linked to the other meetup resources, right?

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Stanford Salon and LW inaugural meetup · 2014-04-07T18:28:26.030Z · LW · GW

Update: the official kick off time is 7:30pm, but guests are invited to arrive from 7pm onwards.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Stanford Salon and LW inaugural meetup · 2014-04-07T18:27:09.845Z · LW · GW

This event is open to all

Comment by BraydenM on Community overview and resources for modern Less Wrong meetup organisers · 2014-04-06T23:19:39.971Z · LW · GW

I'd like to gauge feedback, see how useful other organisers expect this information to be, and see if other organisers would be interested in contributing first, but in general, Yes.

Comment by BraydenM on LessWrong Help Desk - free paper downloads and more (2014) · 2014-01-22T10:43:50.149Z · LW · GW

Can anyone help with this one: Nonsocial Transient Behavior: Social Disengagement on the Greyhound Bus

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2014-01-06T06:53:28.803Z · LW · GW

See you all there!

Comment by BraydenM on Why CFAR? · 2013-12-29T05:11:56.500Z · LW · GW

Great post. I've made it a personal goal to attempt to find 5 high value participants for the Melbourne workshop, and I'll also provide support in the form of accommodation for CFAR instructors and volunteers before/after the February workshop.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-11-10T14:10:18.266Z · LW · GW

Can't wait! For those who have celebrated finishing exams it should be a good one!

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-10-14T13:10:26.519Z · LW · GW

Attendance is Optimal.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-09-19T03:27:46.604Z · LW · GW

I'd like to convey a message to anyone who has been considering attending a meetup but hasn't actually come.

I first considered coming to a Melbourne meetup 18 months ago, but ended up putting it off for almost 6 months, having read HPMOR and only one of the sequences. At the time I remember feeling a little like attending my first meetup had a pretty poor expected cost/benefit ratio: I didn't know where the venue was, know any of the people, felt like I wouldn't fit in, and it was on a Friday night! My range of uncertainty for the expected awesomeness of the event ranged from 'not very awesome at all' to 'okay'.

When I finally did decide to attend, it turned out to be on of the best decisions I've made. The people were incredibly friendly and intelligent, the games were much more challenging and enjoyable than the board games I had played before, and I came away at the end of the night with a long list of interesting things to research.

In the year since I first came I've had an incredible journey thanks to these people, and I admit that putting off attending for six months was a mistake. The best way to narrow down your uncertainty on how good an idea it is to do something is to just try it. If it turns out good, you start reaping the rewards immediately, and if it turns out not so good, then you now have information to that effect.

Feel free to send me a private message if you are still sceptical or want more information. Or make a post here so we have more data on where everyone is coming from. If you are interested, but the time/location/event type doesn't work for you, let us know, so we can update accordingly in the future.

Brayden

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-09-19T02:59:09.743Z · LW · GW

I'll be there for sure, and have also invited a friend.

Comment by BraydenM on Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality · 2013-09-10T07:59:24.205Z · LW · GW

"And simply being able to notice your emotional state is rarer and more valuable than most people realize. For example, if you're in fight-or-flight mode, you're going to feel more compelled to reject arguments that feel like a challenge to your identity."

Can I have some specific examples that might help illustrate this point?

Comment by BraydenM on LW Melbourne: Report on Public Rationality Lecture · 2013-08-17T15:38:01.134Z · LW · GW

Excellent work, Reuven, and good work on identifying the failure modes to avoid for next time.

It is absolutely more important to go out and try something, even at the expense of an imperfect lecture, and it was correct to treat this as an experiment. Because you expect to learn the most from the first event, and you went out planned and delivered three presentations in only 5 weeks, you now have significant evidence and experience which will help make whatever happens next more targeted and likely to succeed.

And in case you were too modest to share the lecture itself, the video recording can be found here: http://youtu.be/RumkLgp3Ug0

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-08-13T13:25:47.127Z · LW · GW

Not only will I attend, but I precommit to making it more likely that an awesome game of Zendo will happen. This was the first game I played at a LW social meetup and I hope our new attendees enjoy it.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality · 2013-07-29T10:38:38.190Z · LW · GW

Please RSVP for this event on our meetup.com group: http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Less-Wrong/

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality · 2013-07-27T08:17:45.425Z · LW · GW

I'm reposting an edit made by Matt as it didn't propagate back to this post.

The plan for this month has changed slightly. See http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/i2p/meetup_melbourne_practical_rationality/

More info to come this weekend.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Excursion: Comfort Zone Expansion · 2013-07-20T12:43:15.562Z · LW · GW

Hey JayDee, awesome to hear from you. Don't be too harsh on yourself, we would have had fun today, but there's always next time!

Have we met at a meetup before?

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-07-15T14:27:40.407Z · LW · GW

where "it" == me attending.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup · 2013-07-15T14:14:37.321Z · LW · GW

You can count on it!

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne LW Outing: Indoor Rock Climbing, Sunday June 30th · 2013-06-27T15:17:51.869Z · LW · GW

This event has been postponed. See http://lesswrong.com/meetups/o7 for replacement event this weekend.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Melbourne LW Outing: Indoor Rock Climbing, Sunday June 30th · 2013-06-24T01:44:45.594Z · LW · GW

The venue was unable to accomodate our booking so this event might be cancelled. Stay tuned.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Rationalist Housewarming at Isengard (Melbourne) · 2013-06-13T14:22:37.207Z · LW · GW

For those that don't know how long they want to stay, the event will officially end at 2am, with most of the themed events taking place between 8pm and 11pm.

We have one double sized lounge room sofa-bed for late revellers.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Rationalist Housewarming at Isengard (Melbourne) · 2013-06-13T14:15:24.499Z · LW · GW

Hi mira, we would absolutely love to have you! Most of the Melbourne Social events are sober affairs, and the drinking will be only a minor part of the evening for some of the participants. Come early if you want to get to know people while it is quieter.

Comment by BraydenM on Meetup : Rationalist Housewarming at Isengard (Melbourne) · 2013-06-10T12:16:38.572Z · LW · GW

Bonus upvote if you pre-commit below to a fictional persona.

Comment by BraydenM on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) · 2013-06-10T09:46:24.466Z · LW · GW

Hi, I'm Brayden, from Melbourne Australia. I attended the May 2013 CfAR workshop in Berkeley about 1 year after finding Less Wrong, and 2 years after finding HPMOR. My trip to The States was phenomenal, and I highly recommend the CfAR workshops.

My life is significantly better now than it was before, and I think I am on track with the planning process for eventually working on the highest impact causes that might help save the world.