Posts

Bangalore - ACX Meetups Everywhere Fall '24 + Oct Social 2024-10-19T16:51:55.779Z
Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Sep 2024 2024-09-22T10:59:24.907Z
Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Aug 2024 2024-08-19T11:07:10.764Z
Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Jul 2024 2024-07-23T02:04:50.905Z
Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Jun 2024 2024-06-16T15:34:53.444Z
Bangalore - ACX Meetups Everywhere Spring/Summer '24 + May Social 2024-05-19T19:07:45.122Z
Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Apr 2024 2024-04-13T06:06:28.316Z
Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Mar 2024 2024-03-25T07:27:23.276Z
Bangaluru - LW/ACX Social Meetup - November 2023 2023-11-20T14:39:56.004Z
Bangalore - ACX Meetups Everywhere '23 + September Social 2023-09-18T17:06:16.372Z
Bengaluru LW/ACX + Progress Studies Meetup - Aug 2023 2023-08-17T18:18:42.549Z
Bengaluru LW/ACX Social Meetup - July 2023 2023-07-09T16:31:41.815Z
Bengaluru LW/ACX Social Meetup - June 2023 2023-06-11T16:54:48.447Z
Bengaluru LW/ACX Social Meetups + Meetups Everywhere - Spring 2023 2023-03-30T10:59:23.546Z
Bangalore LW/ACX Social Meetup - Nov 2022 2022-11-14T16:18:00.891Z
Bangalore LW/ACX Social Meetup - August'22 2022-08-06T04:00:48.141Z
Bangalore LW/SSC/ACX meetup (in-person) 2022-03-21T15:17:37.705Z
Bangalore LW/SSC/ACT meetup in-person 2021-11-08T13:56:27.978Z
Nihal M's Shortform 2021-06-29T06:47:13.435Z
Why you should try a live reading session 2021-06-26T08:30:25.591Z
Bangalore SSC/LW Meetup #23 2020-02-18T11:34:26.049Z
Bangalore SSC/LW meetup #22 2020-01-26T13:32:02.219Z
Bangalore LW/SSC Meetup #21 2020-01-06T04:28:49.848Z
Bangalore SSC/LW Meetup # 20 - Dec 2019-12-12T05:28:09.550Z
Bangalore SSC/LW meetup #19 - December 2019-11-29T07:01:58.268Z
Bangalore SSC/LW Meetup September 2019-09-12T05:52:20.703Z
Bangalore LW/SSC group Meetup 2019-08-14T13:02:41.250Z
Bangalore SSC/LW meetup 2019-07-15T11:46:41.865Z
Bangalore LW/SSC Meetup 2019-02-21T13:07:57.360Z
Monthly Meetup - Bangalore 2018-09-23T07:38:37.780Z

Comments

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore - ACX Meetups Everywhere Spring/Summer '24 + May Social · 2024-05-26T19:04:09.206Z · LW · GW

Yes. The actual turnout was 21. 
See this

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bengaluru - LW/ACX Meetup - Mar 2024 · 2024-03-31T10:55:00.923Z · LW · GW

Hi

Please walk to the back section of Matteo, and you'll find a sign pointing to our meet-up. I'll try to edit the description in future meetups to include this

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere Fall 2023 · 2023-09-18T17:10:27.421Z · LW · GW

Actual event link - 

https://www.lesswrong.com/events/5KBprKvkvsFmWPzNT/bangalore-acx-meetups-everywhere-23-september-social

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Some rules for life (v.0,0) · 2023-08-17T08:37:47.115Z · LW · GW

Control your ambient thought

Link is broken

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on [Mostly solved] I get distracted while reading, but can easily comprehend audio text for 8+ hours per day. What are the best AI text-to-speech readers? Alternatively, do you have other ideas for what I could do? · 2023-06-11T17:20:24.400Z · LW · GW

have you tried https://play.ht/

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bengaluru LW/ACX Social Meetups + Meetups Everywhere - Spring 2023 · 2023-03-31T08:57:29.189Z · LW · GW

Yeah, this post is for the one on May. 

There will be another meetup on Apirl(date TBD), for which ther will be a separate post. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Sequence Reread: Fake Beliefs [plus sequence spotlight meta] · 2022-11-03T11:27:14.951Z · LW · GW

I've considered giving Sequence Spotlights a "Create Discussion Meetup" button, such that Sequence Spotlights more easily serve as default reading material for local communities. Would anyone be interested in that?


This sounds like something I'd be interested in running with my group. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Listen to top LessWrong posts with The Nonlinear Library · 2021-10-29T07:20:37.898Z · LW · GW

Thanks for doing this. I enjoy listening to audio form of content, and this makes reading my backlog of lesswrong and EA content very accessible. 

Minor suggestion. - The podcast is hosted on multiple platforms, but is missing YouTube. There are several podcasts that are audio only on Youtube( Naval Ravikant's podcast, Cortex by CGP Gray, etc.). Adding it to you tube can increase reach to potential new listeners. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 · 2021-09-20T09:16:04.675Z · LW · GW

The EA group is active in bangalore as well AFAIK, one of the organizers attends the SSC meetup semi-regularly. The SSC group has been meeting regularly since 2018 when we discovered each other through the 2018 meetups everywhere post. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 · 2021-09-20T09:14:36.450Z · LW · GW

You can DM me with your email address, and I'll add you to the mailing list and also share a signal invite link for chat. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 · 2021-09-18T09:38:19.837Z · LW · GW

Meeting link for tomorrow's meetup - https://meet.around.co/r/bangalore-acx
Kindly DM/Email me before joining. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 · 2021-09-13T14:04:58.635Z · LW · GW

Correction - The meetup is on 19th at 4PM. 

You can DM me if you're interested

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 · 2021-09-04T03:12:43.071Z · LW · GW

Hi Tejas, 

We meetup once a month, discuss the latest scott's essay or an older one. Sometimes we discuss stuff from Lesswrong or the adjacent blogosphere. Occasionally we read essays in the session itself, or have a casual conversation about current affairs with an ACX/LW POV. 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore, India – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2021 · 2021-08-28T05:11:12.223Z · LW · GW

Reminder that the existing Bangalore meetup group is still active with monthly online meetups. You can join them by contacting me. 



 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Nihal M's Shortform · 2021-06-30T06:33:56.509Z · LW · GW

Flying Cars have larger safety consideration. The point on flying cars I made was a bit hyperbolic which was probably unnecessary in hindsight. 
 

Thinking out loud,
1. While Safety cars expand the risk envelope, the difference is not too much different either. I can expect a drunk driver to ram into a store or building at ground level these days, and I expect that living in the fourth floor of an apartment is safer cause there's no precedence for incidents like that. But someone crashing a vehicle to the ground floor or to the third floor can be handled in a similar legal framework with varying levels of punishment. If there were no cars, we'd be concerned of the idea that someone could crash a heavy machine to our homes at large speeds. The analogy is similar to flying cars, just the precedence is missing. 

2. The current breed of flying cars are heavily electric and shouldn't face too much concern over energy costs.

3. Not sure of this, but could the noise be normalized over time? Like how (some) people living near airports are used to the planes taking off and landing that they kind of tune it out? urban noise is largely from traffic, and this can be another dimension to it? 
 

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Nihal M's Shortform · 2021-06-29T06:47:13.782Z · LW · GW

Safety is a slippery slope. 

Misplaced excess concern over safety hinders technological progress, and is a slippery slope. 

Experts and regulators who are held accountable when things go wrong with new technology, and are thus incentivized to raise the bar or standards in an effort to make systems "more safe". 

This has detrimental effects in two ways -
- The slippery slope of adding more complex regulations or roadblocks in the name of safety. 
- Disincentivizing technology adoption and slowing progress.

 

Examples from experience :

  • Why we don't have drone deliveries yet. The technology was ready more than half a decade ago, but restrictive regulations didn't help in learning from real word experience and increased adoption. The infrastructure and other problems that would've been discovered and solved at scale have never materialized because everyone is still in the boardroom brainstorming scenarios and ideal workflows
  • Flying Cars suffer the same problem. Just replace "drone deliveries" with "flying cars" in the above paragraph and it mostly stays the same.

External examples with no experience 

  • Roots of progress talking about why Nuclear energy failed. Public perception of safety was a huge driving factor in regulations which made it near impossible to setup new plants in the US. General public perception of the horrors of nuclear technology is still largely negative and cause strong reactions that are pro-safety. This led to a slippery slope in more complex and burdensome regulations resulting in an economic disincentive for industry,
Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Why you should try a live reading session · 2021-06-27T09:00:32.286Z · LW · GW

You're not alone. I know people who've tried this technique, and preferred to read things by themselves instead. 

For those who don't mind, and want to have a social reading habit, this can be a potentially useful format.

Comment by Nihal M (nihal-m) on Bangalore SSC/LW meetup #22 · 2020-02-18T11:31:44.429Z · LW · GW

Hi, I don't look at this often, sorry for the late reply.

We usually discuss Scott's articles, and try to break down some topics discussed there, and some of the sequences.

It's a small group, so there aren't any expectations from the participants other than open discussion.

let me know if you plan on attending one, we have one scheduled this weekend.