First Lighthaven Sequences Reading Group
- [Open in Google Maps] [Open in local app]
- 5 September 2024, 6:00 pm—8:30 pm
- 2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA 94705, USA
Come get old-fashioned with us, and let’s read the sequences at Lighthaven! We’ll show up, mingle, do intros, and then split off into randomized groups for some sequences discussion. Please do the reading beforehand—it should be no more than 20 minutes of reading.
This group is aimed for people who are new to the sequences and would enjoy a group experience, but also for people who’ve been around LessWrong and LessWrong meetups for a while and would like a refresher.
This meetup will also have dinner provided! We’ll post ahead of time with the food so you know if it works for you, but it will cover meat-eaters, veggies and vegans alike. Please RSVP to this event so we know how many people to have food for.
For this Sept 5th meetup, we’re reading from the first book of the sequences highlights. The mandatory readings are
Optional bonus: Use the Try Harder, Luke
These are quite short and should take around 15-20 minutes to read all together.
The meetup starts at 6pm. We’ll split into discussion groups around 6:30, and dinner will be served at about 7:30pm, after which point we’ll hangout around the fireside as late as we feel like.
You can come without having read the essays from the sequences, we do want you to get to join, but then you will have to do a punishment. (And then you still have to catch up on reading the essays during the meetup.)
Some questions to ask yourself about the essays as you read them
What’s the most important point in the essay?
What’s the weakest point in the essay? Or what is the essay wrong about?
Can you think of a way to apply the ideas in this essay to your own life?
For the future
We want to make this a weekly meetup! If you’d like to get notified of future events, you can subscribe to our meetup below to get an email whenever we add another one.
Had such a great time meeting y’all and discussing the sequences tonight! Thank you to Ben, Ronny, and Aella for organizing and Lighthaven / Oliver for hosting. Highlight of my week. (and the pizza was delicious too)
- Matt
Glad you came! I’m excited to keep these going, I really had some excellent conversations, and came up with ways to better practice several virtues (curiosity, argument, noticing confusion).
I’m starting a synced version of this in the Twin Cities. We’re going to shamelessly also have fire pits. https://www.meetup.com/saint-paul-acx-meetup-group-unofficial/events/303186245/
This is right up my alley! I love reading and discussing things with people and am relatively new to the rationality community, this sounds like the perfect starting point. I’m excited to attend and meet y’all, thank you for hosting and organizing this :)
Also, please note that I will be giving a class at 7:30 after the reading group called “The Bayesics” where I will teach you the basics of intuitive Bayesian epistemology and how to do Bayesian updates irl on the fly as a human. All attending the reading group are welcome to join for that as well.
That’s this week, right?
Is reading An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes Theorem recommended?
Yes, but this is one thing that I have felt being mutated as I read the sequences and continued to hang out with you lot (roughly 8 years ago, with some off and on)
I’ve been working on visualization tech and made demo maps to illustrate the flow of each of the mandatory readings. Try them out!
https://seethegalaxy.com/The%20Lens%20That%20Sees%20Its%20Flaws%20Segment%20Map.html https://seethegalaxy.com/Your%20Strength%20as%20a%20Rationalist%20Segment%20Map.html https://seethegalaxy.com/What%20Do%20We%20Mean%20By%20_Rationality_%20Segment%20Map.html https://seethegalaxy.com/Twelve%20Virtues%20of%20Rationality%20Segment%20Map.html https://seethegalaxy.com/Use%20the%20Try%20Harder,%20Luke%20Segment%20Map.html
Note: the maps require either a mouse or a touchpad to work properly. The text shows up as you bring your pointer next to each of the dots.
You are overlapping with the thursday night meetup, fwiw
Oops! Sorry about that. I couldn’t find an event that night, but I see now there’s a Thursday Dinners group.
The meetup would be very welcome to come join our sequence reading group this week, and we’re serving dinner :)
Any chance of it being recorded, or online ?
I think this will just be for chatting with each other. But I will encourage people to write up LW comments or shortforms if they have ideas or responses they think are worth sharing!
While I can imagine why others would want to see this sort of thing, it seems to me that “this will go on your permanent record” would be a strong disincentive to engage seriously with the text or mention anything aloud that you wouldn’t be comfortable with anyone in the world, ever, knowing about you.
I won’t be attending as I (Caleb Ditchfield) have apparently been banned from the Lighthaven campus.
Still awaiting a response to my email as to why; hosting my own in the meantime at my house.