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).
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.