March Meetups
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Skyler Crossman
Mar 2, 2026, 4:21:52 PM (15 hours ago) Mar 2
to Boston Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten Meetup
Hello all!
Do you want to run something?
Skyler here. I might run most Boston Rationalist events these days, but I'm glad when other folks run things too. The more the merrier. In particular, we've had pretty regular Wednesday Night meetups, and I'd love for someone else to take up board games the night of March 18th 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 is an easy activity you don't have to prepare for.
We once again have rather a lot of meetups planned for this month, so I've helpfully collected them in one place so as to have mercy on your inboxes.
A note: Owen's been running board game nights at his place most Saturdays. I've stuck tentatively planned ones on this list but in practice expect they might change between now and when you see his emails with a partiful link.
Also, last month despite checking things twice I got a couple dates wrong. Adjust your priors of a followup correction email appropriately.
March ̶M̶a̶d̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ Meetups
Board Games: 1v1 Edition
What: Board games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday March 4th, 7pm
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 some prototypes (including Chaos Investments!) and I invite you all to bring works in progress of yours as well. I'll mostly be bringing some games that are one player against another player- I'll have chess, Tak, Inside Moves, Fallen Leaves, and a lot of Yomi.
Talk by Nate Soares, author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
What: Watching a talk
Where: 1 Oxford St, Cambridge
When: Wednesday March 11th, 6pm
Style: Lecture
Run By: Harvard Science Book Talks
Nate Soares is the president of MIRI, and recently coauthored a book with Eliezer Yudkowsky on AI. Some of us were in a reading group last year on the book. He'll be in town for an evening talking about the book: RSVPs required and free here. (https://www.harvard.com/event/nate-soares)
(To be clear, as far as I know nobody in the local Boston Rationality community is involved in running this, it's just obviously relevant to our interests.)
Basics of Rationalist Discourse
What: Practice having better discourse norms
Where: 70 5th St, Apt 2,
When: Saturday March 14th, 2pm
Style: Dojo
Run by: Skyler and Evan
The Basics of Rationalist Discourse is a post on LessWrong that attempts to outline ten things that exemplify good discussion norms among rationalists. Today we're going to do three things: First, read the list together. Second, look at a few selected online argument threads, to see if we can exemplify what guideline the thread is notably lacking in. Third, to have some debates ourselves in small groups where two people try and argue some point, and a spotter helps them keep to good norms.
The goal is to raise the discourse waterline, at least within our group.
Board Games and hangout!
What: Board games!
Where: Somerville, MA. Owen's place
When: Saturday March 14th, 6pm
Style: Social
Run By: Owen
General hangout for LessWrong and Effective Altruism sorts.
Please use the partiful to RSVPs. Partiful usually goes up the week of.
Rationalist Practice Dojo
What: Drill a few skills
Where: 70 5th St, Apt 2, Cambridge
When: Saturday, March 21st, 2pm
Style: Dojo
Run By: Skyler and Evan
March ̶M̶a̶d̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ Meetups
Board Games: 1v1 Edition
What: Board games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday March 4th, 7pm
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 some prototypes (including Chaos Investments!) and I invite you all to bring works in progress of yours as well. I'll mostly be bringing some games that are one player against another player- I'll have chess, Tak, Inside Moves, Fallen Leaves, and a lot of Yomi.
Talk by Nate Soares, author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
What: Watching a talk
Where: 1 Oxford St, Cambridge
When: Wednesday March 11th, 6pm
Style: Lecture
Run By: Harvard Science Book Talks
Nate Soares is the president of MIRI, and recently coauthored a book with Eliezer Yudkowsky on AI. Some of us were in a reading group last year on the book. He'll be in town for an evening talking about the book: RSVPs required and free here. (https://www.harvard.com/event/nate-soares)
(To be clear, as far as I know nobody in the local Boston Rationality community is involved in running this, it's just obviously relevant to our interests.)
Basics of Rationalist Discourse
What: Practice having better discourse norms
Where: 70 5th St, Apt 2,
When: Saturday March 14th, 2pm
Style: Dojo
Run by: Skyler and Evan
The Basics of Rationalist Discourse is a post on LessWrong that attempts to outline ten things that exemplify good discussion norms among rationalists. Today we're going to do three things: First, read the list together. Second, look at a few selected online argument threads, to see if we can exemplify what guideline the thread is notably lacking in. Third, to have some debates ourselves in small groups where two people try and argue some point, and a spotter helps them keep to good norms.
The goal is to raise the discourse waterline, at least within our group.
Board Games and hangout!
What: Board games!
Where: Somerville, MA. Owen's place
When: Saturday March 14th, 6pm
Style: Social
Run By: Owen
General hangout for LessWrong and Effective Altruism sorts.
Please use the partiful to RSVPs. Partiful usually goes up the week of.
Rationalist Practice Dojo
What: Drill a few skills
Where: 70 5th St, Apt 2, Cambridge
When: Saturday, March 21st, 2pm
Style: Dojo
Run By: Skyler and Evan
Many of you may have heard Skyler's spiel on how it's not sufficient to read a blog post on how to make better decisions or observe more true things about the world, you should practice and drill as well. Today we're going to try this the way soccer practice or a karate dojo would do it; lots of repetition on several skills. If you were at the one last month, this will be pretty familiar to you, ideally plus some refinement and quality of life improvements.
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board games!
Where: Somerville, MA. Owen's Place
When: Saturday March 21st, 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: Max Games Edition
What: Board Games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday March 25th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Max
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like, Skyler won't be running it and may not be there at all but plans to hand Max a backpack full of stuff and things. There is no theme. Max said he keeps meaning to fit Go into this.
Intro to Glowficcing
What: Glowfic Writing
Where: Remnant Taproom and Cafe, 2 Bow Mkt Wy, Somerville
When: Saturday, March 28th, 2pm
Style: Other
Run by: Emily and Skyler
Glowfic is a fanfiction format with some popularity in rationalist circles, typically co-written between two authors who each take turns writing a couple paragraphs of the story at a time before tagging the other author to take the next turn. Examples of stories written this way are Kappa and Alicorn's Effulgence (which takes another look at how the rationalist fanfic Luminosity could have turned out) and Eliezer Yudkowsky and Lintamande's Planecrash (mostly D&D with a side of decision theory.) Glowfic stories tend to have a lot of oddball takes on popular culture characters, an emphasis on competence and making the world better, and crossovers between two different worlds. None of that's a hard and fast rule though.
If you're already a fan or if you're curious and interested in trying some writing, you're invited to bring your laptop (or your phone if your thumbs are very ready for it) and a couple of story premises this afternoon! No previous fiction writing experience is required, but a willingness to try is!
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board games!
Where: Somerville, MA. Owen's Place
When: Saturday March 21st, 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.
Housekeeping
Announcements
We have a lot of places we announce meetups. (The mailing list, meetup.com, LessWrong, etc.) I try and announce things in all the places, but the mailing list and the Discord are the places I'm most consistent about and least likely to forget.
There's also adjacent groups like Boston Effective Altruism, Boston TPOT, and Boston Fractal around. (Also kind of Boston LessWrong, though these days Boston LessWrong and Boston ACX have kind of merged a bit.)
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board games!
Where: Somerville, MA. Owen's Place
When: Saturday March 21st, 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: Max Games Edition
What: Board Games!
Where: Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler St, Somerville
When: Wednesday March 25th, 6:30pm
Style: Social
Run By: Max
Board games! Bring your favourites if you like, Skyler won't be running it and may not be there at all but plans to hand Max a backpack full of stuff and things. There is no theme. Max said he keeps meaning to fit Go into this.
Intro to Glowficcing
What: Glowfic Writing
Where: Remnant Taproom and Cafe, 2 Bow Mkt Wy, Somerville
When: Saturday, March 28th, 2pm
Style: Other
Run by: Emily and Skyler
Glowfic is a fanfiction format with some popularity in rationalist circles, typically co-written between two authors who each take turns writing a couple paragraphs of the story at a time before tagging the other author to take the next turn. Examples of stories written this way are Kappa and Alicorn's Effulgence (which takes another look at how the rationalist fanfic Luminosity could have turned out) and Eliezer Yudkowsky and Lintamande's Planecrash (mostly D&D with a side of decision theory.) Glowfic stories tend to have a lot of oddball takes on popular culture characters, an emphasis on competence and making the world better, and crossovers between two different worlds. None of that's a hard and fast rule though.
If you're already a fan or if you're curious and interested in trying some writing, you're invited to bring your laptop (or your phone if your thumbs are very ready for it) and a couple of story premises this afternoon! No previous fiction writing experience is required, but a willingness to try is!
Board Games and Hangouts
What: Board games!
Where: Somerville, MA. Owen's Place
When: Saturday March 21st, 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.
Housekeeping
Announcements
We have a lot of places we announce meetups. (The mailing list, meetup.com, LessWrong, etc.) I try and announce things in all the places, but the mailing list and the Discord are the places I'm most consistent about and least likely to forget.
There's also adjacent groups like Boston Effective Altruism, Boston TPOT, and Boston Fractal around. (Also kind of Boston LessWrong, though these days Boston LessWrong and Boston ACX have kind of merged a bit.)
Interest in more Hamlet?
I had a bunch of fun with the rationalist Hamlet play reading. It seemed like other folks did as well. I floated the idea in the Discord of doing another couple read-throughs, and then starting to practice it and build up to a performance. If that idea sounds fun let me know or let folks know in the Discord? This is still at the 'neat idea that I don't know how much time to make for' stage.
Alternately we could do some other play reading. I'm a big Shakespeare fan. Sadly I think there's only the one Rationalist rewrite of a play. (Yet, growth mindset, etc =P )
Alternately we could do some other play reading. I'm a big Shakespeare fan. Sadly I think there's only the one Rationalist rewrite of a play. (Yet, growth mindset, etc =P )
Do you want to run something?
Skyler here. I might run most Boston Rationalist events these days, but I'm glad when other folks run things too. The more the merrier. In particular, we've had pretty regular Wednesday Night meetups, and I'd love for someone else to take up board games the night of March 18th 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 is an easy activity you don't have to prepare for.
Shoutout to Owen who's taken a good Saturday night niche!
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