We will be having our monthly discussion meetup on Saturday, 9/3 at 2pm. The topic will be somewhat meta this month. We will discuss the rationality “movement,” the rationality organizers retreat that I (Todd) went to in July, and what the Chicago Rationality group is even doing.
DATE & LOCATION
- Date: Saturday, 9/3 @ 2pm-4pm
- Location: South Loop Strength & Conditioning – upstairs in the mezzanine
645 S Clark
Chicago IL 60605
Note: Todd owns this gym so that’s why there’s a Rationality meetup at a gym 🙂
READINGS
Since we have folks with a lot of varying backgrounds in terms of being soaked in the Rationality internet brine, so-to-speak, it’s probably useful to revisit some of the classic early Eliezer Yudkowsky writings.
These are referred to as “The Sequences” and are a collection of early blog posts written on Overcoming Bias and LessWrong.
- “Thinking Better on Purpose” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (from the LessWrong Highlights from the Sequences)
- If you want to get the whole entire Sequences as an ebook, pdf, whatever, you can do so here.
- Or listen in podcast form for my 2.5x speed ninjas
Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten has several “rationality canon” posts as well. Here’s three that come to mind as being particularly worth a read (or a reread if it’s been awhile):
- “Meditations on Moloch“
- “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup“
- “The Control Group is Out of Control“
Other readings about Rationality, Rationality communities, scene-building, etc.
- “The Craft is Not the Community” by Sarah Constantin
- “Silicon Valley’s Safe Space” from The New York Times (The article that caused Scott Alexander to briefly delete his blog)
- Recent Time Magazine piece on Will MacAskill/Effective Altruism/Longtermism
- The Guardian interview with Questlove — missing some details, but he talks about deliberately creating a Philadelphia hip-hop/neo-soul scene while recording “Things Fall Apart”
Please feel free to come to the meetup even if you don’t do any (or only some) of the suggested reading. These are just starting points to get the discussion going and are by no means required.
Please also feel free to come even if you’re worried it will be awkward, you won’t fit in, or you aren’t the “typical person who comes to a Rationality meetup.” We are welcoming (albeit occasionally argumentative)!
Hope to see you soon!
