Ideas for rationalist meetup topics
(From Zvi Mowshowitz, leader of the New York group, and based on his experience)
Category 1: Discussions—The Base
A: Less Wrong topics. Usually recent posts. Often big hits.
B: Rationalist group planning and organization. Meta-topics. Dealing with group issues on occasion.
C: Spreading Rationality. Discussion of various approaches.
D: Contraband Topics. Discussion of things that I won’t include here, but you can guess.
E: How To Do X, or how to do X well. Charity, meeting people, improving skills, relationships, etc.
Category 2: Presentations—Almost Always a Winner
F: Sequences. Andrew Rettek did these for public meetups, went over well I think.
G: Personal Projects: Variance, Geoff Anders’s Psychology.
H: General Knowledge: CBT, Starting a Business, Basic Python.
I: Advanced Rationality: Attempted once, successful despite poor execution. Should be explored more.
Category 3: Game Nights
J: Proven Good Games: Illuminati, Poker, Citadels, 7 Wonders, Nomic.
K: Advanced Games: Much demand for general gaming, but not really that rationalist. Proven winners in this group: Vegas Showdown, Power Struggle, Baltimore & Ohio, Tichu, Through the Ages. I can keep going, many good choices. AVOID: Settlers of Catan (personal opinion) and Fluxx (cause you can do better, honestly).
U: Outside Games. Ultimate Frisbee is good.
Category 4: Other Celebrations
L: Karaoke
M: Baraccuda (bring something awesome you love)
N: Contraband Activities (enough said)
O: General Party In or Out / Pot Luck
Category 5: Special Guests
P: Famous Rationalists! If you get Eliezer or Robin or Vassar, you need no other topic. Probably a few others who get there on their own as well, or any generally famous guest.
Category 6: Self-Improvement
Q: Go out and do something to improve social skills.
R: Discuss or map out goals and plans. Set goals. Can be combined with other tasks.
S: Run experiments! For science!
T: Study Hall. Also folds into discussion of self-improvement topics.
West LA just had a new sort of meeting tonight, which worked out well: we made 2012 predictions! It was fun trying to hammer out probabilities, and we got to discuss people’s models and priors on a range of topics.
Will you publish them on LW?
None of us agreed to do so, and people may have been more hesitant had this been the plan.
I’ll share mine, though they’re not very interesting: 75% Obama wins the general election, 80% Yudkowsky doesn’t finish MoR this year, 80% Burning Man tickets sell out by the end of June (95% by the end of July).
You can make some ok money on Intrade if you think 75% Obama wins. Current market thinks it’s about 51%.
This seems far too low to me. It’s already been a year and a half since the creation of the fic, and Harry hasn’t even finished his first year. Furthermore, it’s been 3 months since the last update of MoR.
Four months, and the real question is how many arcs are left. I suspect there aren’t that many. (Though 80% might still be low—this is my first time trying to put probabilities to my predictions!)
I’d give at least 50% odds that the fic finishes before the start of Harry’s second year, and more than 90% that it finishes before the end of his second year.
I’d give at least 50% odds that Harry leaves school and does something else before the end of his second year, but that this is not the end of the fic.
Good possibility to raise, but 50% seems way too high to me.
Out of curiosity, why avoid Settlers of Catan?
Personal opinion that the game is bad. It was the first German-style game people were exposed to, which meant it was compared to games like Monopoly and Life rather than other German-style games, which made it look good and catch on. Settlers is far too determined by early placement, has frustrating trading mechanisms, is diplomatic in bad ways without being diplomatic in good ways, and so on. Bottom line is that I don’t find it fun or interesting.
As for Nomic, with the right crowd it’s one of the best gaming experiences you can have, and in my experience Less Wrong groups fit that bill quite well. We have had excellent experiences every time.
Funny, I agree with every one of your criticisms after thinking about them a bit except your bottom line: I still find the game very fun. This makes me think Nomic will just be amazing.
Have you typically played Nomic with the standard ruleset from the initial proposal?
I played an epic game of Nomic at Burning Man two years ago starting with the null ruleset, where it took over an hour to figure out how to agree to make the first rule. I think the zero rule Nomic is probably a more valuable exercise than the standard one with the arbitrary points.
It is useful to have something that forces action, and you can easily make the points not matter if you want to. Our games have kept points relevant, but that is only one option. Game theoretical point madness is great fun.
I’ve seen several people suggest that Ad Astra has most of the positive aspects of Catan without most of the negative ones (e.g. production occurs when you play a produce card rather than depending on die rolls).
Those are actually some damn good criticisms. Settler’s diplomacy pretty much just encourages bitchiness. It really does suck compared to alternatives. I’m going to have to look up those other ones you suggest.
And why avoid Settlers of Catan in favor of Nomic. (Because if you are going to play complete and utter nonsense you may as well at least make it Calvinball!)
Sorry for the totally unrelated question, but is he The Zvi Mowshowitz (famous MtG player and theorist)?
Yes.
Thank you, I see he also has an impressive curriculum here at LW.
This is a great list. Thanks for putting this up. Reading this makes me wish even harder that I lived anywhere near a meet-up.