I disagree that participants would already have to be superhuman, or even particularly strong rationalists. We can all get stronger together through mutual support even though none of us may already be “big-R Rationalists.”
In his post about explore/exploit tradeoffs, Sebastian Marshall remembers how Carlos Micelli scheduled a skype call everyday to improve his network and his English. I haven’t looked into how many of the people Micelli called were C-suite executives or research chairs or other similar high-status individuals. My guess is that he could have had good results speaking with interesting and smart people on any topic.
For myself, I remember a meetup that I attended in November last year. I was feeling drained by a day job that is not necessarily aligned with my purpose. The event itself was a meeting to brainstorm changes to the education system in Canada, which is also not necessarily aligned with my purpose. However, the charge and energy I got simply from speaking to smart people about interesting things was, and I want to stress this, amazing. For weeks afterwards, the feeling that I got from attending that meeting was all that I wanted to talk about.
I disagree that participants would already have to be superhuman, or even particularly strong rationalists. We can all get stronger together through mutual support even though none of us may already be “big-R Rationalists.”
In his post about explore/exploit tradeoffs, Sebastian Marshall remembers how Carlos Micelli scheduled a skype call everyday to improve his network and his English. I haven’t looked into how many of the people Micelli called were C-suite executives or research chairs or other similar high-status individuals. My guess is that he could have had good results speaking with interesting and smart people on any topic.
For myself, I remember a meetup that I attended in November last year. I was feeling drained by a day job that is not necessarily aligned with my purpose. The event itself was a meeting to brainstorm changes to the education system in Canada, which is also not necessarily aligned with my purpose. However, the charge and energy I got simply from speaking to smart people about interesting things was, and I want to stress this, amazing. For weeks afterwards, the feeling that I got from attending that meeting was all that I wanted to talk about.
If I could get that feeling everyday...