For this month’s discussion meetup, which so happens to fall on Valentine’s Day, we will discuss a very romantic topic: transaction costs! The main reading will be Ronald Coase’s classic article “The Nature of the Firm” which asks why people organize into firms and hire employees rather than just hiring

For this month’s discussion meetup, we will be continuing in the moral philosophy vein. We will discuss equity and equality, particularly through the lens of Rawls’s “Theory of Justice.” As always, feel free to come if you haven’t done the reading. READINGS & MEDIA DATE & LOCATION

For this month’s discussion meetup, we will be discussing Sam Harris’s moral landscape. Broadly, Sam attempts to give clear definitions of right and wrong in terms of well-being of conscious creatures and to do away with moral relativism. The primary reading / listening will be a recent episode of the

For this month’s discussion meetup, we will be discussing “Notes on the Inexact Sciences” from the pseudonymous Suspended Reason. Here’s the abstract: Popular wisdom warns us against premature optimization. And yet, in a quest for public legitimacy and tidy problem domains, many fields discourage vitally necessary descriptive and conceptual work

For this month’s discussion meetup, we will be diving into another topical, geopolitical topic: Taiwan. Please come even if you haven’t done the readings, you’re worried it will be awkward, or you aren’t the “typical person who comes to a Rationality meetup.” READINGS & MEDIA DATE & LOCATION

Update: The original location is blocked off so we are here: https://plus.codes/86HJV9FG+4F We will be hosting the fall edition of Astral Codex Ten’s Meetups Everywhere. These meetups tend to draw a larger and more varied group of people than a typical Chicago Rationality meetup, so this is a great time

For this month’s discussion meetup, we will be discussing the autismy-schizotypy continuum. There’s a handwavey idea that autism and schizophrenia are in some sense opposites—some recent-ish work attempts to formalize this as an overweighting of sensory input as an autistic trait (leading to extreme systemizing behavior and difficulty reading social

For this month’s discussion meetup, we will be discussing the all-encompassing Epstein conspiracy theory—as well as some meta-discussion on conspiratorial thinking. We don’t tend to do things this topical and inflammatory, so let’s see how this goes. Please feel free to come even if you haven’t done the readings, you’re

The next monthly discussion meetup is next Saturday, July 19 @ 2 PM (see below for location etc.). We’ll be discussing concepts of the self and the potential benefits of a meditation practice. We suggest some readings below that offer one perspective on this, but we’re looking forward to discussing

For our June meetup, we will discuss Too cool for school? Signaling and countersignaling, a paper that models signaling and countersignaling as strategies. We may, in fact, have some countersignalers in our midst! Rationalist elite (but not cultural elite) Robin Hanson has written and spoken extensively about these dynamics. As