Silas Barta

The proof that …999 = -1 seemed merely academic, until they started having computers represent negative numbers that way. The Gale-Shapley algorithm for the Stable Marriage Problem was obscure, until they started using it to match medical students to residencies. What are other cases where knowledge in one domain had surprising applications in another one? […]

At this meetup, we’ll discuss the Orthogonality Thesis, that any level of intelligence is compatible with any kind of goal i.e. there could exist a “Clippy” superintelligence that only cares about making paperclips. See the link for background on the topic, and the contrast with “inevitabilist” theses which argue e.g. “It doesn’t matter what kind

This week’s topic will be the Anthropic Principle: what can you expect to be true, conditional on you existing at all? Check out this LessWrong article for interesting applications of the concept, and see LessWrong’s knowledge base on the topic. *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar, in the cafe area. Look

With SXSW in town, we’ll use this meetup as a chance to share the things we love to do in Austin. *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar, in the cafe area. Look for the LW and SSC signs. People start arriving at 1:30 pm, and the main activity (such as it

This Saturday we will be doing a Partitioned Book Club of the book Legal Systems Very Different From Ours. In a partitioned book club, different participants read different chapters and then summarize them for the group. We will take turns giving short summaries of the chapters, and then have a general discussion about the ideas

At this meetup, we will once again share what we’re working on and use the chance to provide each other with encouragement and advice. Are you building something? Working toward a fitness goal? Changing careers? Developing a skill? Share what you’re doing! And, where applicable, see if someone else can take over your project and

You don’t always have an instructor like me at two of our previous meetups to help you use the applied rationality techniques that CFAR teaches. Fortunately, LLMs can step in! Longtime member Chris Canal wrote up skills files that can be loaded into Claude.ai to teach it to work through the techniques with you. We’ll

After the success of last week, I’ll be teaching more rationality techniques from the CFAR Workshop. Hamming Questions: What’s your biggest problem right now? Okay, why aren’t you working on it? We’ll get to the root. Who-Friending: Forming more meaningful connections with others by surfacing your individuality, as well as theirs. Trigger Action Patterns: Adopting

Coming off the heels of a local CFAR workshop, I’ll lead us in practicing some applied rationality techniques: Resolve Cycles: Setting a timer to see how much of an important goal you can accomplish within the limit. Pride/Self-Recognition: Turning everyday annoyances into a part of your identity you can be proud of. Finding Cruxes: Probing

Lightning talks again! We’ll take turns giving one, aiming for about 5 minutes each. What is a lightning talk? It’s where you introduce the group to something you’re familiar with and are comfortable talking about. It doesn’t have to be “rationality related”, just something you have a good enough understanding of that you can take questions about from