May Meetups!
Skyler Crossman
Hello all, and welcome to the newcomers from ACX Everywhere! Glad to have you here.
Since there's a lot of meetups for the month, I thought I'd do a collection of them here. Makes it less likely I've missed one.
Before I get into the next month of events: If you attended the ACX Everywhere last weekend, I'd love it if you'd fill out this survey: https://tinyurl.com/acx-meetup-survey. That's not just for Boston, that's the same survey sent to events all around the world, and it's what helps Scott (and more frequently, his meetup czar) improve ACX meetups.
On with the meetups!
Board Games: Icebreaker Games
What: Board Games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday May 6th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like, I'll plan to bring some of mine. Tonight I plan to bring a prototype (Chaos Investments!) and I invite you all to bring works in progress of yours as well. Otherwise, I’m planning to bring games that make for passable getting-to-know-you setups. We’ll have Two Truths and a Prediction Market, Trial by Trolley, Rationality Cardinality, and Askhole.
Look for the guy in a bright bandana.
Arboretum Field Trip
What: Walk Around the Arboretum
Where: Forest Hills Gate of the Arnold Arboretum (Forest Hills Rd, Boston)
When: 3:00 PM, Saturday May 9
Look for Charlie wearing a hat
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board Games!
Where: Owen's place, near Davis Square
When: Saturday May 9th, 6pm
Style: Social
Run By: Owen
General hangout for LessWrong and Effective Altruism sorts. Please use the partiful to RSVP. Partiful usually goes up the week of.
AI 2027 Midtrospective
What: Predictions and Prediction Payoffs, talking about A
Where: 325 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02142 - Google's "Urban Park"
When: Sunday May 10th, 2:00pm
Style: Dojo
Run By: Skyler
AI 2027 is an essay that outlines one scenario for how artificial intelligence advancement might go. It was published on April 3rd 2025 and written by Daniel Kokotajlo, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean, and Scott Alexander. It makes a number of concrete predictions. I’m sure that over the last year or so some of the predictions have fallen short- but if you’re going to criticize people for sticking their neck out and being wrong, it behooves you to stick your neck out at least as far. Last July many of us came together to make predictions about what would and wouldn’t happen.
Today we’re going to meet up and look at what came true or over the last year, and make new predictions about what the next year (or two!) will hold. You’ll want to bring a phone or laptop, and have a Fatebook account. You’ll also want to have read AI 2027 before the meetup- we’ll be going over it again month by month, but we won’t be going slowly enough to just read it and you’ll want to be able to discuss it with people.
Look for the guy in a bright bandana
Board Games:
What: Board Games!
Where: Boston Public Market, 100 Hanover St. Boston
When: Wednesday May 13th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Amin
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like.
Rationalist Fiction Reading Group
What: Discussing the short story "The Cambist and Lord Iron"
Where: 325 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02142 - Google's "Urban Park"
Directions: Up the staircase in the plaza surrounding the outbound Kendall/MIT Red Line head house.
When: Saturday May 16th, 2pm
Style: Reading Group
Run By: Amin
Discussing the rationalist-adjacent short story "The Cambist and Lord Iron", by Daniel Abraham.
You can read online or as an epub.
You can listen online or to Skyler's narration.
Partiful : https://partiful.com/e/K6DzCGklCmylGdxfiHJq
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board Games!
Where: Owen's place, near Davis Square
When: Saturday May 16th, 6pm
Style: Social
Run By: Owen
General hangout for LessWrong and Effective Altruism sorts. Please use the partiful to RSVP. Partiful usually goes up the week of.
Board Games Played Wrong
What: Board Games!
Where: Jackie’s place, near Central Square
When: Wednesday May 20th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Jackie
Bored of playing games the way the designers intended? Let’s try some silly variants and rules modifications. Feel free to bring your own! There will also be snacks and a friendly cat. Please use the Partiful in the discord to RSVP.
AI World-Model Building
What: Predictions and Prediction Payoffs, talking about AI
Where: Near Porter (RSVP for address)
When: Saturday May 23th, 2pm
Style: Research Group/ Dojo
Run By: Skyler and hopefully Taymon
“What is going to happen with AI, and how can we make that go well?” is a live subject these days. We’re going to take a crack at it.
This meetup is going to be a bit of an experiment. It’s default-exclusive for one thing; I’m planning to be pickier about RSVPs, saying yes to about half the folks who’d come. It’s aiming to produce a finished artifact for another; we’re going to try and lay out our best models for how AI goes well, what the best lines of success are, and then type it up. Maybe we publish it, maybe we do something else with it.
Suggested reading: AI 2027, Situational Awareness, Machines of Loving Grace, If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, Superintelligence FAQ. Don’t feel like you have to read all of that, but if you’re unfamiliar with any of it we predict you’ll be happier at some other meetup. Likewise a laptop is suggested but not required.
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board Games!
Where: Owen's place, near Davis Square
When: Saturday May 23rd, 6pm
Style: Social
Run By: Owen
General hangout for LessWrong and Effective Altruism sorts. Please use the partiful to RSVP. Partiful usually goes up the week of.
Board Games: Card Games
What: Board Games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday May 27th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like, I'll plan to bring some of mine. Tonight I plan to bring a prototype (Chaos Investments!) and I invite you all to bring works in progress of yours as well. Otherwise, I’m planning to bring card games- we’ll have Goats and Goblins, Fae Kin, as well as 52 decks for poker, hearts, skull, rainbow, and whatever else.
Look for the guy in the bright bandanna!
LessOnline Pre-Socializing
What: Virtual Socialization with rationalists from other cities
Where: Online, very likely Gather Town - I expect to send a followup email with details
When: Saturday May 30th, 2:00pm
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler
A bunch of us are going to LessOnline, a big rationalist conference in California next week. As an occupational hazard, I know a bunch of cool rationalists from other cities who are also going to LessOnline. This has inspired me to dip into running an online meetup for a change. Don’t worry, it’s not going to be a zoom call with too many faces to fit on the screen and no chance to actually talk.
Show up, get a bit of matchmaking done, find out what the rationalists from other meetup groups are like.
Housekeeping
Here’s a link to the Discord, which has Partiful links to RSVP for some of the above events. Jackie has also restarted updating the ACX Boston Google Calendar. I want to emphasize the main two places that we try and announce everything at are the Discord and this very email list, so if you're in one of those two spots you should be seeing all the important stuff. If you're not in this email list. . . congratulations on your espionage I suppose, would you like an invite?
This list of meetups is not exhaustive. There's adjacent cool groups such as Effective Altruism, Fractal, and This Part of Twitter which all have meetups around Boston, and you can check out their pages for their event announcements. It's also not exhaustive because we've started doing impromptu stuff like random mid-week rock climbing or dinners. It’s also not exhaustive because you can add things yourself! If you’re stuck for what to run, a board game meetup at a pub is pretty easy, as is a discussion group for an Astral Codex Ten article in a park. Aeronaut Brewery and Sennott Park are both great spots, as neither needs any reservations or any particular setup.
Hope to see you in person!
-Skyler