RECENT AND UPCOMING MEETUP TOPICS

July 2019 Meetup: The Repugnant Conclusion

1) What is an optimal course of action when you encounter a situation in which you have a good amount of epistemic uncertainty? We exist and act in the world, so we have to do something before we have all the information, right?  No Half-Speed https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FMkQtPvzsriQAow5q/the-correct-response-to-uncertainty-is-not-half-speed In this reading, how

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June 2019 Meetup: Causation and Explanation: Monocausal vs. Polycausal Accounts

1. Pragmatism versus principles (i.e. prioritizing the practical effects of choices/policies versus prioritizing fundamental principles, for example because of the negative long-term effects at the individual or societal level of violating said principles) 2. Mono-causal versus poly-causal accounts of a given phenomena: The Omnigenic Model As Metaphor For Life (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/13/the-omnigenic-model-as-metaphor-for-life/)

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May 2019 Meetup: Tradition vs. Modernity

When is it worth sacrificing “traditional” ways of doing things in the name of modernity, progress, clarity or efficiency? Possible readings — SSC’s review of Seeing Like A State discussing (often argued to be failed) modernist attempts at improving “legibility” by scrapping traditional ways of life. Chesterton’s Fence principle https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence

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January 2019 Meetup: Modern Humans’ Quality of Life

1. There feels like a recurring theme in SSC of trying to find meaningful ways to talk about modern humans’ quality of life in general. I’m sure there are more of his essays that address these issues, but here are a few: How bad are things? http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/24/how-bad-are-things/ Would we be

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December 2018 Meetup: Instrumental Rationality

Instrumental/Applied rationality review. Review the first 4 posts from this sequence and review how to apply them. Discussion of what you’ve found useful from them. : https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qRxTKm7DAft%E2%80%A6/p/QzBuuNEqJGQFeWM4f https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qRxTKm7DAft%E2%80%A6/p/rFjhz5Ks685xHbMXW https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qRxTKm7DAft%E2%80%A6/p/vpvKEj7shuk8h5Eet https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qRxTKm7DAft%E2%80%A6/p/ESnzpoCJrAfwAzpMB

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October 2018 Meetup: Inadequate Equilibria

#1. Meta discussion on a reading about the rationality community itself. see, e.g., this blogpost: https://srconstantin.github.io/2017/08/08/the-craft-is-not-the-community.html #2. Discussion on a reading of fairly general interest regarding rationality (e.g., https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yPLr2tnXbiFXkMWvk/an-equilibrium-of-no-free-energy among obviously many others) #3. Discussion of a more topical post, applying rationality to current events or concerns. (e.g., https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/06/acc-entry-should-childhood-vaccination-be-mandatory/ among

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