Post-ACX Everywhere Welcomes, and October Events

[Skyler Crossman]

Hello all, and welcome to newcomers! I have further details on the meetups we have planned in October, and some links to adjacent groups in case you weren't aware of them.

If you have a moment and don't mind filling out a survey on the recent ACX Everywhere though, I'd appreciate that. https://tinyurl.com/acx-meetup-survey. Information from the survey helps me and Scott make the ACX meetups around the world better.

October Meetups

Board Games!
What: Board games
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville, MA 02143
When: Wednesday October 8th, 6:30pm.
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler

Board games! Bring your favourites if you like, I'll plan to bring some of mine. Usually that means Tak, Deep Sea Adventures, Trolley Problem, and sometimes whatever work-in-progress I've been creating. For this week I'll plan to bring Zendo as well, a rationalist classic that involves trying to perform experiments and investigate how "the world" (a secret rule) works.

Rationality 101!
What: A lecture on LessWrong style rationality
Where: 70 5th St, Apt 2
When: Wednesday October 15th, 7:30pm.
Style: Lecture/Dojo
Run By: Skyler

This is an introduction to rationality lecture. If you're new around here, you're welcome to attend and get your basic questions answered- either during the lecture or afterwards by old hands in the community. If you're an old hand who has been around for a while and feel like you've mastered many of the concepts, you're also welcome to attend: I expect much of it might be repetitive for you but you can help answer questions and/or complain about what I got wrong after the talk.

(I said this was going to be on Oct 14 at the ACX Everywhere, there was a schedule update and it's going to be the 15th.)

IABIED Reading Group #1!
What: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies reading group
Where: Kendall Street Lobby, 355 Main Street, Cambridge.
When: Saturday, October 18th, 2pm
Style: Reading Group
Run By: Skyler

Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares have published a book on Artificial Intelligence. The thesis statement of the book is fairly clear from the title. While many people will be familiar with Eliezer's previous writings on the subject, many reviewers report appreciating the way this book collects a lot of arguments in one place.

For this meeting, you'll need to have read Chapter 1 and 2 of If Anyone Builds It. We'll have discussion questions.

Board Games Again!
What: Board games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville, MA 02143
When: Wednesday October 22nd, 6:30pm.
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler

Board games! Bring your favourites if you like, I'll plan to bring some of mine. Usually that means Tak, Deep Sea Adventures, Trolley Problem, and sometimes whatever work-in-progress I've been creating. For this, I plan to also bring Ben Orlin's "Math Games With Bad Drawings" to play.

IABIED Reading Group #2!
What: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies reading group
Where: Kendall Street Lobby, 355 Main Street, Cambridge.
When: Saturday, October 25th, 2pm
Style: Reading Group
Run By: Skyler

Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares have published a book on Artificial Intelligence. The thesis statement of the book is fairly clear from the title. While many people will be familiar with Eliezer's previous writings on the subject, many reviewers report appreciating the way this book collects a lot of arguments in one place.

For this meeting, you'll need to have read up to Chapter 3 and 4 of If Anyone Builds It. We'll have discussion questions.

ACX Ballot Meetup!

There's also a Ballot Meetup coming up with details still in the works. Keep an eye out for updates, or talk to Taymon if you want to help.

Adjacent groups

Boston has an ACX group, but also several adjacent groups that aren't exactly ACX, but likely are of interest to some of you.

Effective Altruism - https://www.eaboston.org/
LessWrong - https://discord.com/invite/2N2ADpACkw
Fractal/ Fractal University - https://fractal.boston
Forecasting and Prediction Markets- https://forecastingmeetupnetwork.kit.com/eb6374e5e8
TPOT Office Hours - https://www.officehours.lol/bos

One adjacent in particular: Fractal University is a community effort to learn more things; if there’s a subject you’d like to teach, an online class you’d like a cohort to learn with, or even a discussion group you’d like to host, you can fill out this form (https://tinyurl.com/fractal-boston-teachers) by October 8th. I'll likely make another mention of this when the course list is finished and students can sign up!

We could use more organizers

Last but certainly not least, I'm looking to expand the roster of organizers. The Boston rationality community operates on what I usually describe as an open source model: lots of people can run things, in practice there's a small number of core maintainers. If running meetups sounds fun, please reach out to me for advice- or just pick a time and place and let folks know you'll be there. Board games and book readings are pretty easy to run ;)

Best,
Skyler

[Taymon A. Beal]

We now have details on the ballot meetup!

Last month, we created an ACX community voting guide for the preliminary elections; we’re now following it up with one for the general. We’re adjusting the process to take advantage of the slightly less compressed timeframe to produce a guide that more comprehensively takes into account all participants’ views.

The details are in this Google Doc. If you're interested, here's the schedule:

• Through October 18: You read the Google Doc and add things to the Sample Ballots, Values and Priorities, Information Resources, and Open Questions sections.
• Sunday, October 19, 2–5 PM, 17 Hills Court, Malden (RSVP on Facebook, LessWrong, or Meetup.com): We meet, review what’s in this doc, and make sure all the races and questions that people are interested in are included. We vote on values and priorities; in cases where a substantial minority of people disagree with the majority on a values or priorities question, we can note this and include information from the minority perspective. We will then ask people to volunteer to research specific questions of interest and to choose and write up endorsements. Multiple people can volunteer to write up endorsements for the same race, either together or separately, if there’s interest.
• October 20–25: People do the research and writing tasks they volunteered for.
• Sunday, October 26, 2–5 PM, 17 Hills Court, Malden (RSVP on Facebook, LessWrong, or Meetup.com): We meet again and read and review everyone’s work. We vote on any amendments we want to make to the written endorsements, and then to ratify them and to include any dissenting opinions that have sufficient support. The final document is then sent to Scott, who has agreed to link it in the Open Thread post.
  

Looking forward to seeing people there!

Taymon

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