Lighthaven Sequences Reading Group #10 (Tuesday 11/​12)

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 be ordering pizza-of-the-day from Sliver (including 2 vegan pizzas). Please RSVP to this event so we know how many people to have food for.

We’re roughly working through the sequences highlights. The mandatory readings this week are

1. What is Evidence?

2. How Much Evidence Does It Take?

3. Conservation of Expected Evidence

4. Einstein’s Arrogance

5. Optional: Mistakes with Conservation of Expected Evidence

The posts should take around 15-20 minutes to read if you’ve read them before, and 30-60 mins if it’s your first time.

Doors open 6pm (yes we’ll let you in early if you get here). The event starts at 6:15 when we’ll welcome people, give a few announcements, and then split into groups. Dinner will be served at about 7:30pm, after which point we’ll hangout around the fireside as late as we feel like. If you’d like to help us keep dinner going, you can donate here (dinner costs about $200 each time).

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

This is 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.

[Ben Pace]

By the way, for my circle tonight, I’d like to do something a little different, involving writing at least as much as talking. If you might like to join me, please bring your laptop.

[Elijah Ravitz-Campbell]

This WWE clip seems highly relevant to some of the conversations at today’s reading regarding situations where an imperfect world model or imperfect reasoning can be an actual advantage (e.g. madman diplomacy). Someone in attendance requested that I share it here, so here it is: