Silas Barta

This week’s topic will be genetic engineering and inequality.  What impact will genetic engineering have on the future, in particular, the increases differences between humans. Should we be worried?  Are we headed toward Gattaca? LW Tag for genetics *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar, in the cafe area. Look for the […]

With AI all over the news, it’s time to have a discussion of AI risk, Friendly AI, and the Alignment Problem.  Some links to get you up to speed: LW repository on AI risk LW repository on Alignment Eliezer Yudkowksy’s open letter advocating shutdown of post-GPT4 AI *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001

Lightning talk again! We’ll take turns giving one, aiming for about 10-15 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

Reminder that we’re having our twice-yearly megameetup this Saturday, June 3rd, at The Brewtorium, 12pm-5pm. This is at a different location from, and replaces, our usual meetup. See the announcement and RSVP here.

Time to take a chance to (re)discover the rationalist virtues! Check out Yudkowsky’s original Twelve Virtues of Rationality, and talk about which ones feel meaningful to you. Related, you also might want to check out this recent Substack piece on intellectual humility by Gena Gorlin. *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar,

We’ll use this meetup to have fun with ChatGPT. Bring your own experiments with ChatGPT or related projects and have fun testing out new ideas with the group! *** 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,

We’ll have another group debugging session. Bring your problems, your solutions, and your willingness to listen! *** 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 will begin at 2:30 pm. Please follow posted

In place of the usual meetup, Nicole has invited us to attend her baby shower! Amazon registry link. Time: May 6, 2:00 pm Location: Contact someone you know in Austin LW. Nicole’s invitation message: Please join us for a nontraditional baby shower by celebrating the upcoming birth of our second son Connor and all of

This time we’ll talk about self-determination in the context of rationality: specifically, how do you stay focused on doing what is the rational thing to do against outside influences? How do you fight akrasia? A few of us will be missing this for Eeyore’s birthday, an Austin tradition. However, Nicole will be present to lead

We’re going to try a new activity this time! We’ll try to answer (rationalist-themed) questions as a group, but where each person only gives three words of the answer at a time. This will test both our knowledge and our ability to coordinate — plus, probably, give a new appreciation for generative language models. ***