Hello world

[Crouzier Benjamin]

I'm glad I found this forum/mailing list.

Let me introduce myself with a brief recap of my rationalist journey:

I had a pretty normal education (besides the fact that I went to a high school where you spend 50% practising musical-related activities). After that, I went to a scientific "prepa" for one year, found it a bit boring and hard, and decided to go to a private IT-school (Epitech). At the time, I sensed that computers were "the real deal". Fast forward 5 years, I am now working as a full time software developer making ok wage, and slowly turning into a freelance developer. During my studies, the concepts of artificial intelligence and intelligence explosion interested me more and more.

Now (I am 24), the plan is to make some better wage by being a freelance to have more time for myself, in order to research those topics. I am interested in continuing my personal projects (mostly web applications, and building with Kapla), and learning maths and probability theory by taking coursera courses. 

Up until recently, I feel more and more alone in my "quest of rationality". As I learn more and more complex concepts on lesswrong and the internet, I am less and less able to communicate with my peers. At home, the discussion always turns to god. At work, it always ends with the argument "but you know, there is something else than neurons that makes us who we are... There is chemistry, there is this and that...". The discussion always gets stuck before the interesting points.

Lately, I attended quite a few programming meetups in Paris (paris.rb, paris tech talks, nodejs, paris hackers...). But the rationalist seems to be a small subset of the the programming community, if at all. So I'm turning to you guys, I'm sure we have plenty to talk about :)

My questions are: 

 - How big is the "rationalist community" in Paris ? (it looks so small, I almost hesitate to relocate to SF...)

 - What are the most common interests / jobs (programming / consulting / research ?)

 - Is there is a lw meetup planned in Paris? that'd be awesome

The few articles/talks that made it click for me:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hawkins_on_how_brain_science_will_change_computing

http://paulgraham.com/love.html

http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl3/on_saving_the_world/ (after reading this I was like "This is it. I'm sold. FAI is the real deal")

I contribute to:

http://stackoverflow.com/users/311744/pinouchon

https://www.youtube.com/user/benjamincrouzier

https://github.com/pinouchon

Cheers,

Benjamin Crouzier

[Emile Kroeger]

Hi Benjamin, and Welcome!

Yeah, we would probably have a fair amount to talk about.

On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Crouzier Benjamin <pino...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm glad I found this forum/mailing list.

Let me introduce myself with a brief recap of my rationalist journey:

I had a pretty normal education (besides the fact that I went to a high school where you spend 50% practising musical-related activities). After that, I went to a scientific "prepa" for one year, found it a bit boring and hard, and decided to go to a private IT-school (Epitech). At the time, I sensed that computers were "the real deal". Fast forward 5 years, I am now working as a full time software developer making ok wage, and slowly turning into a freelance developer. During my studies, the concepts of artificial intelligence and intelligence explosion interested me more and more.

Now (I am 24), the plan is to make some better wage by being a freelance to have more time for myself, in order to research those topics. I am interested in continuing my personal projects (mostly web applications, and building with Kapla), and learning maths and probability theory by taking coursera courses. 

Up until recently, I feel more and more alone in my "quest of rationality". As I learn more and more complex concepts on lesswrong and the internet, I am less and less able to communicate with my peers. At home, the discussion always turns to god. At work, it always ends with the argument "but you know, there is something else than neurons that makes us who we are... There is chemistry, there is this and that...". The discussion always gets stuck before the interesting points.

Lately, I attended quite a few programming meetups in Paris (paris.rb, paris tech talks, nodejs, paris hackers...). But the rationalist seems to be a small subset of the the programming community, if at all. So I'm turning to you guys, I'm sure we have plenty to talk about :)

My questions are: 

 - How big is the "rationalist community" in Paris ? (it looks so small, I almost hesitate to relocate to SF...)

It is fairly small, especially if you're comparing to the bay area ... maybe five or six regulars?

 

 - What are the most common interests / jobs (programming / consulting / research ?)

Programming and academia are both pretty common. My profile is fairly close to yours (jQuery? it's Angular that's all the rage these days!), but it seems the academics usually outnumber the programmers :)

 

 - Is there is a lw meetup planned in Paris? that'd be awesome

How about this Friday evening? T'would be nice to have you and alEx (and Christophe - another newbie that hasn't shown up for a meetup yet) around.

 

[Crouzier Benjamin]

This friday sounds awesome. I'll be available after work at 7pm. I work at Saint Lazare, and live in the 75005 near place Monge. Where do you usually meet ?

Benjamin

[alEx]

Friday is also fine for me. I'll make myself available at any time, location in Paris. 

Looking forward to meeting you all soon. 

alEx

[Maksim Maydanskiy]

Hello Benjamin and alEx,

Welcome! 

By way of introduction - I'm a pure math postdoc at Paris 6 (with a beginner interest in machine learning/statistics/programming). I'm also the "host" of many of the more informal meetups -  some of the "academics" in the group, myself included, live in Cite Universitaire, others just find south Paris convenient; so we often gather in my apartment (it's usually not a very large group, so I don't really have to do anything "host-like").  I think the plan for this Friday is to do the same (gather around 7-7:30). Unless there is a voice calling for something different, I'll post a separate announcement to the group with the details later tonight. 

Hope to meet you soon.

M.

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[Christophe Aguettaz]

Hello and welcome Benjamin,

I'm the other new guy mentioned above. You can take a look at my introduction thread if you like, it's called, well... 'Hello world'. Eh.

I agree it's about time I met you all in person, but sadly Friday's no good for me. Maybe we could plan the next one a bit more ahead? How does the 21st sound? Or the 28th?

Anyway, I'll be in Berlin for the European meetup next month, anyone else coming?

Cheers,

Christophe

[Christophe Aguettaz]

Oh, and welcome alEx too!

[Maksim Maydanskiy]

Re: Berlin: I'm registered, but haven't bought tickets or made precise plans yet. We could potentially coordinate...

[Holger Dell]

I'm not registered, but I will be in Berlin until that Friday (for independent reasons).

-h

[Emile Kroeger]

I'm trying to register but it might be too late, I'm waiting to hear back from them.

[Crouzier Benjamin]

Just to confirm, I'll be there at 7:30pm-8pm at 55 bd Jourdain, as you said.

Benjamin

On Monday, March 10, 2014 10:26:26 PM UTC+1, Crouzier Benjamin wrote: