April Meetups
Jackie Bredenberg
April Meetups
Board Games: April Fool’s Edition
What: Board Games!
Where: Jackie’s place, near Central Square
When: Wednesday April 1st, 6:30pm
Style: Antisocial
Run By: Jackie
In honor of April Fool’s Day, we will not speak entirely in lies. Accidental truthtellers will not be hit with the inflatable Neanderthal stick. All games will be played according to their usual standard rules. Also, there will be no other shenanigans. I won't supply any snacks, board games, or cute cats. Please don’t use the Partiful in the discord to RSVP.
Aumann Trivia
What: Trivia with a rationalist twist
Where: 70 5th St, Apartment 2, Cambridge
When: Saturday April 4th, 2:00pm
Style: Light dojo
Run By: Evan
Aumann's agreement theorem, roughly speaking, says that two agents acting rationally (in a certain precise sense) and with common knowledge of each other's beliefs cannot agree to disagree. More specifically, if two people are genuine Bayesians, share common priors, and have common knowledge of each other's current probability assignments, then they must have equal probability assignments.
Today we’ll play a trivia game where you can use each other’s confidence to try and converge on a correct answer.
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board Games!
Where: Owen's place, near Davis Square
When: Saturday April 4th, 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.
Double Crux in a Box
What: Argument practice
Where: 70 5th St, Apartment 2, Cambridge
When: Saturday April 11th, 2:00pm
Style: Dojo
Run By: Skyler & Evan
Arguing about important things doesn’t usually lead to people changing their mind. Double Crux is a technique for making discussions more productive and understanding the actual reasoning of those who disagree with us, and sometimes it even helps to better understand the foundations of your own beliefs.
We’re going to meet up, learn about the Double Crux, and then break into pairs with someone we disagree with to practice finding out why our views are different and what might change our minds.
The technique was developed by CFAR, and the canonical post on Double Crux is here.
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board Games!
Where: Owen's place, near Davis Square
When: Saturday April 11th, 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.
A Lovely Day For a Hike
What: Going outside in the woods
Where: Meet at Oak Grove Station, then Middlesex Fells Reservation
When: Saturday April 18th, 2:00pm
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler
The Middlesex Fells are a reservation up near the Oak Grove stop on the Orange Line. We’ll go for a meandering walk in the woods, likely about three hours with a bit of uphill to it, and welcome spring in by smelling some flowers and feeling the bare stone.
Bring a water bottle and comfortable shoes. We might split into two groups for the athletic and the leisurely hikers, but even the leisurely will want to be comfortable with a good walk.
Board Games: Playing The Long Game & Oops It’s Time To Overthrow The Organizer Day
What: Board Games!
Where: 17 Hills Court, Malden MA
When: Saturday April 18th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like. This one is at Skyler’s place up in Malden; this means that he’s not limited to what fits in a backpack and might pull out some of the games that take longer to play. No Honor Among Thieves, Mythwind, and Mysterium are under consideration, he’s got a bunch of extra Magic: the Gathering decks to play around with, as well as hopefully a new version of Chaos Investments!
First though, we’re going to run Oops It’s Time To Overthrow the Organizer Day. We're going to schedule a future rationalist meetup: and by we, I mean anyone who hasn't run one in the last year. You can ask some of the existing organizers questions- I'll be there where you can ask questions, as will hopefully a few other recent organizers, but we won't do it ourselves.
This doesn't mean I'm stepping away from running meetups in Boston! But the most common way for a meetup group to die is for the lynchpin organizers to get busy and stop doing it, and then nobody else knows how or is confident enough to step up. Consider this practice in case I get hit by a bus- and hey, we get an extra meetup out of it. (The title "oops it's time to overthrow the organizers" is based on the fictional holiday from dath ilan.)
Board Games: Betrayal Edition
What: Board Games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday April 22nd, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Jason
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like. Jason plans to bring some betrayal-themed games.
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board Games!
Where: Owen's place, near Davis Square
When: Saturday April 25th, 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: Pocket Edition
What: Board Games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday April 29th, 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. The rule for tonight is that all the games I’m bringing have to fit in my pocket. That means Tak, Deep Sea Adventure, Fae Kin, etc.
ACX Spring Schelling
What: Open Social!
Where: Sennott Park, 305 Broadway, Cambridge
When: Saturday May 2nd, 2pm
Style: Social
Run By: Skyler, Owen and Dan
If you can only make it to one or two meetups a year, this is the one you should target. There's no required reading, workshops, or other specific agenda for this, just show up and talk to interesting people! If you're new to Astral Codex Ten and wondering what this is all about, see: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/about This meetup is announced on the blog in conjunction with other spring ACX Everywhere meetups in other cities around the world.
Vegetarian and vegan pizza will be served around 3:00. Please feel free to come even if you feel awkward about it, even if you’re not ‘the typical ACX reader’, and even if you’re worried people won’t like you. Children are also welcome; the park has a playground and plenty of space to run around. When you show up, look for one of the guys in the tall striped hat, possibly near a canopy in case it rains. If you'd like to hear about other ACX events in Boston, you can find our email list, facebook group, and other places we announce meets here: https://linktr.ee/bostonacx (Or just hang out on this discord)
Housekeeping
Here’s a link to the Discord, which has Partiful links to RSVP for some of the above events.
As always, if you want to run something, that’d be awesome! The more the merrier. In particular, we've had pretty regular Wednesday Night meetups, and I'd love for someone to take up board games the night of April 15th so we keep up the streak. (It can be pretty easy to run! Aeronaut is a pub with good seating that you don't need to reserve and board games are an easy activity you don't have to prepare for.)