I attended a meetup in Santa Barbara which I found largely to be a waste of time. The problem there—and I think, frankly, with LW in general—is that there just aren’t that many of us with something insightful to say. (I certainly don’t have much.) While it’s great, I guess, that the participants acknowledge the importance behind some of the ideas championed by Yudkowsky and Hanson, most of us don’t have anything to add. Some of us may be experts in other fields, but not in rationality.
Here’s the perfect analogy: it’s like listening to a bunch of college guys who’ve never played sports at a high level discuss a professional game; they all repeat the stuff they hear on ESPN, and the discussion isn’t wildly wrong, but they’re just regurgitating what they hear.
Do you feel like this described the NYC meetup at all? Do you think the meetup was worthwhile?
I always find it worthwhile, but maybe it’s not what you are expecting or looking for. It’s become a social group, with a slightly intellectual bent. It’s not an attempt to recreate LessWrong in-person. The core group really has become a community, as in: make connections, understand each other, communicate, and in certain ways, offer mutual support. I find the discussion almost always stimulating, and even though I only go up once every month.
Q: Generally, what kinds of meetups would you enjoy attending?
Well, there’s three kinds of meetups I can imagine.
(1) You go for the intellectual content of the meeting. This is what I was hoping for in Santa Barbara. For the reasons I mentioned above, I now think it’s unlikely that the intellectual content will ever be worthwhile unless somebody does some serious planning/preparation.
(2) You go for the social enjoyment of the meeting. I confirmed my suspicion in SB that I personally wouldn’t socially mesh with the LW crowd, although maybe this was a small sample size thing.
(3) You go to meet interesting people. In my life I’ve had a lot of short-term and a few long term friends with whom I’ve had fun. But I’ve probably only known 3-4 truly interesting people, in the sense that they challenged my thinking and were pleasing enough to spend a lot of time getting to know well.
Any of the above would get me to go to a meetup, although I’d be most excited about (3).
What happens at the meetups?
Orgies.
Discussion, mostly ad-hoc. On some occasions the discussion has been more focused it was assumed participants had read certain LW related things.
I attended a meetup in Santa Barbara which I found largely to be a waste of time. The problem there—and I think, frankly, with LW in general—is that there just aren’t that many of us with something insightful to say. (I certainly don’t have much.) While it’s great, I guess, that the participants acknowledge the importance behind some of the ideas championed by Yudkowsky and Hanson, most of us don’t have anything to add. Some of us may be experts in other fields, but not in rationality.
Here’s the perfect analogy: it’s like listening to a bunch of college guys who’ve never played sports at a high level discuss a professional game; they all repeat the stuff they hear on ESPN, and the discussion isn’t wildly wrong, but they’re just regurgitating what they hear.
Do you feel like this described the NYC meetup at all? Do you think the meetup was worthwhile?
I always find it worthwhile, but maybe it’s not what you are expecting or looking for. It’s become a social group, with a slightly intellectual bent. It’s not an attempt to recreate LessWrong in-person. The core group really has become a community, as in: make connections, understand each other, communicate, and in certain ways, offer mutual support. I find the discussion almost always stimulating, and even though I only go up once every month.
Q: Generally, what kinds of meetups would you enjoy attending?
Well, there’s three kinds of meetups I can imagine.
(1) You go for the intellectual content of the meeting. This is what I was hoping for in Santa Barbara. For the reasons I mentioned above, I now think it’s unlikely that the intellectual content will ever be worthwhile unless somebody does some serious planning/preparation.
(2) You go for the social enjoyment of the meeting. I confirmed my suspicion in SB that I personally wouldn’t socially mesh with the LW crowd, although maybe this was a small sample size thing.
(3) You go to meet interesting people. In my life I’ve had a lot of short-term and a few long term friends with whom I’ve had fun. But I’ve probably only known 3-4 truly interesting people, in the sense that they challenged my thinking and were pleasing enough to spend a lot of time getting to know well.
Any of the above would get me to go to a meetup, although I’d be most excited about (3).
The NYC group, and olimay in particular, has certainly challenged my thinking. I might be coming from a very different place than you, however.