Meetup Time and Buzz Interview

[Joe Betz]

Hello,

Sorry I wasn't able to make the meeting today. Hope the discussion on
contrarianism went well. My absence was not a statement on the
subject. I had a prior commitment that usually isn't until 3 but today
was pulled back to 2. That being said, I don't think that 2pm on
Sunday will generally be a good time for me. I won't be in town this
weekend or the next, so it shouldn't made a difference for the next
two meetups, but it would be nice to find an alternative time for
those that follow. Perhaps sometime on Saturday?

So that's the bad news. The good news is that I just got a writing
position in the community section of buzz magazine. That means that it
would be relatively trivial for me to do an interview with some
representative from the LessWrong group and to get it published on the
buzz website. I don't think it gets all that much traffic, but
publicity is publicity, and that was a goal we talked about last week.

If anyone is interested in being the interviewee, let me know. I'd
volunteer myself but I am more of a visitor than I am member of this
community, so I think it would be good to hear from someone with a few
more sequences under their belt. We could do it in person or over
email, the choice will be yours. There's no time crunch on my end, but
I figure the sooner the better as far as raising awareness and general
interest, since we're already halfway through the semester. It will be
relatively simple and straightforward. I'm imagining it as a general
overview of what the "art of rationality" is all about, perhaps with a
few anecdotes about some of its more practical benefits. I've got no
strict expectations, so we could totally be creative with it. Any
suggestions are welcome.

Best,
Joe

[jack....@gmail.com]

If I remember correctly, Brad is usually busy on Saturdays, so another time on Sundays is probably better. Moving it later is probably a bad idea, because when people have work to do on the weekend they know is gonna take half of a day, they will usually put it off until they can't put it off anymore. Even if you think you can plan it out, and do it on Saturday some time or on Sunday morning, so that way you can make it to the meetup, you're wrong, and the planning fallacy has you.

So I think that if we move the meetup later on Sunday, people will not show up because they have work to do a lot more often. So how about moving it to Noon, Sundays? It usually only lasts a couple of hours anyway. We don't yet have a DC meetup group-like supercritical mass of LessWrongers, so that each interesting conversation generates on average more than one new interesting conversation, unfortunately. If we move it much earlier of course, we run into problems with people wanting to sleep in on the weekends. It's also good to give people a little time in the morning before the meetup starts, so that they don't have to go anywhere until they have really woken up, eaten breakfast, checked their email, and are a little bit bored. If we give them a little time to read any of the things we've posted as "recommended reading" for the week, in case they've procrastinated until the morning before (Like I always do), then that's even better.

Grats on your new job. I can do an interview. I'd prefer the email option, because in writing I can take time to compose my thoughts and not accidentally say things that are wrong. The kinds of questions that I would most like to publicly answer are the ones that allow me to demonstrate to the highly specific subset of the population that would enjoy LessWrong that they would in fact enjoy LessWrong, and thus tempt them to come to meetups. That probably means differentiating LessWrong from philosophy clubs that are wrong about a bunch of things and get stuck on "wrong questions" and arguing over definitions, and from self-help cults whose ideas don't really work that well, if in fact we are not these things. The best way I can think of is to ask me about philosophical positions that are much more common on LessWrong than elsewhere, and exactly what to expect from LessWrong in terms of self-improvement.

I have been called "stereotypically LessWrong" by LessWrongers, so I am probably pretty representative as far as one-person samples go. Please tell me in advance how much room I have to write, because by default I am a mason of massive walls of text.

With this new job, will you still have time to write dialog and stuff for my game? If so, can you send me samples of stuff (preferably fiction) that you've written? I'll need to go through my notes for the setting, characters, and plot, and make sure they're up to date with changes I have made in my head before sending them to you.

[Brad Deutsch]

Hi all,

Jack is right about several things. Here is an incomplete list of those things:

1) I can't make mid-day meetups on Saturdays.

2) Sunday noon is a good compromise. Would we want to bring/get lunch?

3) Jack is a good choice as an interviewee. I trust him to put out an appropriate message, and email is pretty clearly the better option.

That's an interesting point about the critical mass of meetup conversations. I suppose we could tweak it by being more interesting people, but that may be a difficult parameter to adjust.

- Brad

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[Brad Deutsch]

Oh, and I won't be here for the next two weekends either. 

[Joe Betz]

Sunday at noon sounds good to me, and I like Brad's idea of adding
food to the mix. It might be too demanding for everyone to bring food
every week, but perhaps we could have a monthly potluck. Or we could
just rotate with small snacks. Food can be a pretty big draw for the
college crowd.

And I appreciate the impromptu lesson on planning fallacy. I'm slowly
starting to unravel what these biases are all about. I'd like to get
through the Harry Potter fanfic and the "How To Actually Change Your
Mind" sequence during spring break -- any other texts that you would
recommend for general introductions?



Regarding the interview:

I'll start coming up with a list of questions. They'll be super
high-level, so you should have a lot of space to tailor your response.
I like the idea of explicitly addressing what it is that
differentiates LessWrong from your typical philosophy club. We could
even draw from the religious testimony model, where you explain
something about how you found LessWrong, how it changed you, and how
it continues to influence your daily life. Or if that sounds too
personal, we could focus more on LessWrong as a community, and how
LessWrong can serve as a viable foundation for community building in
Champaign-Urbana. Since buzz is locally oriented, there will
inevitably be a few questions along these lines.

As for length, with online content, shorter tends to be better, so
we'll probably want to cap it about 1000 words. The first question
will probably be an elevator pitch, so you might want to think about
how to best win your audience in just a few sentences.

I'll send a separate email regarding the game, so that this thread
doesn't swell out of proportion.

[Brad Deutsch]

You'll want to go through all of the sequences eventually. I haven't gotten that far, but I've read the major ones. Start with whatever looks interesting. You'll get sidetracked, and that's fine.

- b