Houston SSC/LW/EA Social Meetup
- [Open in Google Maps] [Open in local app]
- 23 June 2019, 2:00 pm—5:00 pm
- Brasil, Brasil (cafe, Dunlavy Street, Houston, TX, USA
- Contact: houston-rationalists@googlegroups.com
Heya! Come hangout with ~rationalsphere folks in person, enjoy some good conversation, and have fun!
Please invite friends and others you think would be interested in attending, this is a social meetup where we enjoy discussing interesting topics we don’t often get to discuss IRL.
We are Houston Rationalists and we have social meetups on the third Sunday of each month (exception for holidays: we adjust our meetup day if the third Sunday is a holiday which is why June’s meetup day is on the 23rd instead of the 16th, because the 16th is Father’s Day). Hope to see you there :)
Cheers,
Willa
I showed up but nobody was there. At least there was not a group with a sign at their table. Is this meetup still a thing?
Sorry to hear that! One of the organizers was definitely there but they didn’t have a sign—I’ll suggest to them that they bring one in the future. I also recommend joining the Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1816070091838828/) if you want real-time updates. Again, sorry that happened to you! Good luck in the future!
The FB link didn’t work.
Ah, weirdly that’s because I put it in parentheses. Try now: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1816070091838828/
Thanks!
Alas, that’s really sad to hear. I will ping the organizers to get an update.
Thank you!
My apologies, we were there but I didn’t bring a sign. I’ll do so next time and going forward :) it’ll likely say “LW/SSC/EA Meetup” on it or something similar. We have an email list, discord, and google group in addition to the facebook page since people have different communication preferences; sending you a PM now with more info :)
This is a rather behind schedule follow-up message for the June 23 Meetup. First one I’ve done so far, feels like a good habit to get into. This post is a bit edited from the original email I sent it as, I only left out Houston Rationalists’ internal housekeeping and planning type information since that didn’t seem relevant for the whole world to see.
Notes
We discussed many things, especially learning and education, here’s what I had in my notes, and my elaborations on those notes:
(1) Using Anki when you have to memorize a large number of facts, vocabulary, or other things is quite helpful, because Anki lets you build flash card decks (and import decks others built too!) that utilize spaced repetition to automatically time when you should study each card in each deck (you can build as many different decks as you’d like) based on research around the forgetting curve. Don’t know what spaced repetition and the forgetting curve are? That’s okay! Essentially, we humans seem to remember things better if we encounter the thing we’re trying to remember (say, the meaning of “schadenfreude” or some other word or fact) multiple times over a certain period of time; we call that phenomenon the forgetting curve and spaced repetition is essentially practicing memorizing what you want to memorize according to the logic of the forgetting curve. More information and a better explanation can be found at Gwern’s website: https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition
(2) Research article on ”...the feasibility of using computational methods to assist in the design of training procedures that enhance learning”. (Discussion section, last paragraph): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3267874/ ; this is a bit out of my wheelhouse so if anyone has questions please direct them to the group. I’m curious about how one could bridge the gap between a research article like this, its findings, how the findings transfer if at all to human learning and memory training, and crafting a set of memory training / learning curricula based on the new information.
(3) Continuing the learning and education theme, it was highly recommended that everyone read through “SSC Gives a Graduation Speech”: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-speech/ ; I read it once previously, but skimmed it again before listing it here. Overall I think it’s good stuff, and the main point says essentially to ask yourself what you got out of your education (to whatever extent you pursued or received one), was it worth it, etc. The article also spent a lot of time reflecting on universal basic income guarantees (UBI), the potential societal apocalypse we’ll have if we don’t go UBI, and meanders nicely into discussing how broken the system is, plus the power of kindness. Among other things.
(4) If you’re feeling like more education things, you can also check out Bryan Caplan’s book “The Case against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money”. I’d recommend reading Scott’s “SSC Gives a Graduation Speech” and other education related articles first though to help give yourself an increased sense of the nuance of the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/education/. Link to description of Caplan’s book here: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html The book is...acquirable elsewhere...if you need help obtaining a copy please message me directly, assistance may be provided. I did not write summaries or take notes while reading Caplan’s book last year sometime.......and don’t remember enough to provide commentary, unfortunately. Lesson to self: please write chapter summaries and take notes of books I read, thanks.
(5) Topic shift!! We spent a decent amount of time discussing the necessity or lack thereof regarding the usefulness of having “shamans” around to conduct placebo inducing rituals that help you and others feel better afterwards. See chiropractors, meditation, homeopathy, acupuncture, and plenty of other things often gate-kept or officiated by “shamans” that many individuals do and say they feel better after doing/going through. I mildly wonder whether therapy should be included in this category...I lean towards saying: probably. But, therapy feels a bit different, and I’m not sure how to unpack why it feels different (maybe I am too close to it? I’ve regularly seen a therapist for several years and it does feel quite helpful). Any thoughts?
(6) We discussed the usefulness of knowledge, generally. I am afraid I’m unable to recollect enough to offer any specifics besides knowing that I tied these topics/articles to this discussion:
Richard Rorty’s concept of a “final vocabulary”, as defined in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity: “All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes… A small part of a final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous terms such as ‘true’, ‘good’, ‘right’, and ‘beautiful’. The larger part contains thicker, more rigid, and more parochial terms, for example, ‘Christ’, ‘England’, … ‘professional standards’, … ‘progressive’, ‘rigorous’, ‘creative’. The more parochial terms do most of the work. (p. 73)” excerpt quoted from this webpage: http://www.exampler.com/testing-com/writings/final-vocabulary.html; however, you can find more information here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/2/2/313/htm (having read this review and a bit of Rorty’s thought elsewhere, I judge that the excerpted quote I linked from the exampler.com website is reasonably valid, not fake news). I’d like to do a deep dive into Rorty’s thought one day, for now though, I’ve mostly read a few review articles and some of his info at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/ and https://www.iep.utm.edu/rorty/; there is one relevant article related to his thought but more centered around postmodernism that I strongly recommend, it’s called: Judgements without rules: towards a postmodern ironist concept of research validity; http://garyrolfe.net/documents/judgmentswithoutrules.pdf Fun stuff, I recommend checking it out
Yudkowsky’s posts Guessing the Teacher’s Password (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-the-teacher-s-password); and Lawful Uncertainty (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/msJA6B9ZjiiZxT6EZ/lawful-uncertainty) were also listed as relevant to discussions on the usefulness of knowledge. I can’t really tell you specifically how, it’s what I wrote down at the time though.
It’s possible that a central theme could be excavated from everything mentioned here around the usefulness of knowledge, but I’m not prepared to be that archaeologist, not tonight at least. Epistemic confidence in the value of such a pursuit: seems possibly helpful and could be fun. I’m not sure what my mind was cooking at the time when thinking about the things mentioned in (6), but it’s a direction I’ve been trending towards a fair bit for the last few months, and I do think I’d like to make a non-scattered and focused attempt at crafting some sort of point or meaning in that direction. Any thoughts?
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like more information on anything.
Cheers,
Willa