May 9th meetup: The Art of Not Being Right
Roxolan
This month, we'll be talking about how to care about truth more than victory. We'll discuss topics from the LessWrong sequence How to actually change your mind.
For those of you who have not read this sequence before, you can find a
slightly better organized version as part two of the recently released
free (well, pay-what-you-want without a minimum) ebook Rationality: From AI to zombies.
(This is not mandatory reading. It's fine to come to LessWrong
meetups without having read a single line of LessWrong. Also it's poor
form to ask people to read a book five days in advance.)
Actually, I'm doing a presentation on this topic later this month for the French-speaking Skeptics in the Pub,
and I would like to try it out on you. There will be slides and
everything. That'll let me test the talk on a mix of people who are
familiar with the material and people who aren't. It may also help me be
a little less terrified out of my mind when I have to do that talk in front of a crowd of strangers oh my god why did I agree to do this
In other news, you may have noticed that LessWrong Brussels has been pretty quiet these last couple of months. That comes with having only one organizer who has periods of depression. Sorry. I do still intend to do some of the things we discussed to improve the meetups, namely
• Write an "introduction to LessWrong Brussels" that is less scary to newcomers than LessWrong's own About page.
• Get rid of the Google Group, figure out a better place to have online discussions (possibly the meetup.com page) and open a facebook group.
• Make a longer-term meetup topic schedule that would follow the chapters of Rationality: From AI to zombies.
• Catch up on all the "things discussed in previous meetups" links (I do still have my notes).
But, well, that'll get done when I have both energy and time, unless
someone else wants to step up. Please be aware though that even when I'm
in a bad space and not keeping the meetup announcements updated, there
is always a LessWrong Brussels meetup on the second Saturday of the month, with at least a couple of people.
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We will meet at 1 pm at "La Fleur en papier doré", close to the Brussels Central station. Depending on the weather, we may also spend some time outside. The meeting will be in English to facilitate both French and Dutch speaking members.
If you are coming for the first time, please consider filling out this one minute form to share your contact information.
The Brussels meetup group communicates through a Google Group. Announcements are mirrored on LessWrong and meetup.com