We ran a couple varieties of meetup, but the group changed over time, and most of the original people moved away or moved on. Most of the organizing was done in a Google Chat group, which is still pretty active.
I’m no longer there—but we had a couple of great activities I’ll encourage others to try.
1) http://lesswrong.com/lw/muy/aumann_agreement_game/ - This was fun, and we’ve played a lot. It has a lot of replay-ability value, and it a valuable calibration and group cohesion / getting to know others activity. The big downside is that it’s 4-person + 1 Scorekeeper as long as you use the typical 4-answer quiz questions. If you found a different source of questions with more multiple choice options, it would scale well, but would start to get unwieldy by 10 people.
2) Presentations / Thinking Questions / Guided discussions—We had fun sometimes having someone pose interesting solved or unsolved issues, or just general things people were interested in. I gave a couple on formal decision theory-related topics, and others covered topics as diverse as various types of formalisms for infinite numbers, to how to be more persuasive and personable at social gatherings.
Downside: this can’t be more than half the time of the meetup, and sometimes there were some people who were uninterested in the topic who would wander off.
3) Rationality Moments − 15 minutes long, a good component of a longer meeting. Described here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mlj/meetup_west_la_problem_solving/ - this was a good thing for me, and I think others, especially since it meant there was a component of explicit rationality-boosting and thinking about how to get better. at practical skills.
4, 5, etc.) General discussion / Game Nights / Other—We had done lots of random things, but usually the devolved into just hanging out, which was fun and fine, but not usually particularly rationality focused.
When you say most of the original people moved away, do you mean the group stopped meeting, or its meetings acquired new members and a different focus?
I mean a few members are still around (not including myself,) bu7t several of those driving the meetings left. Because we aren’t pushing for it and showing up, the frequency of meetings decreased. They still meet occasionally—but not longer reliably weekly or every other week.
Lesswrong LA / Los Angeles Rationality
We ran a couple varieties of meetup, but the group changed over time, and most of the original people moved away or moved on. Most of the organizing was done in a Google Chat group, which is still pretty active.
I’m no longer there—but we had a couple of great activities I’ll encourage others to try.
1) http://lesswrong.com/lw/muy/aumann_agreement_game/ - This was fun, and we’ve played a lot. It has a lot of replay-ability value, and it a valuable calibration and group cohesion / getting to know others activity. The big downside is that it’s 4-person + 1 Scorekeeper as long as you use the typical 4-answer quiz questions. If you found a different source of questions with more multiple choice options, it would scale well, but would start to get unwieldy by 10 people.
2) Presentations / Thinking Questions / Guided discussions—We had fun sometimes having someone pose interesting solved or unsolved issues, or just general things people were interested in. I gave a couple on formal decision theory-related topics, and others covered topics as diverse as various types of formalisms for infinite numbers, to how to be more persuasive and personable at social gatherings. Downside: this can’t be more than half the time of the meetup, and sometimes there were some people who were uninterested in the topic who would wander off.
3) Rationality Moments − 15 minutes long, a good component of a longer meeting. Described here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mlj/meetup_west_la_problem_solving/ - this was a good thing for me, and I think others, especially since it meant there was a component of explicit rationality-boosting and thinking about how to get better. at practical skills.
4, 5, etc.) General discussion / Game Nights / Other—We had done lots of random things, but usually the devolved into just hanging out, which was fun and fine, but not usually particularly rationality focused.
When you say most of the original people moved away, do you mean the group stopped meeting, or its meetings acquired new members and a different focus?
I mean a few members are still around (not including myself,) bu7t several of those driving the meetings left. Because we aren’t pushing for it and showing up, the frequency of meetings decreased. They still meet occasionally—but not longer reliably weekly or every other week.