Silas Barta

It’s been about a year since last time, so we’re going to use this meetup to practice the Double Crux technique of disagreement resolution. In this technique, you try to find some fact that, if you could be convinced of it, you’d change your mind (or at least would be a significant blow to you view). To […]

Is there a product that, by all rights, should be profitable to make, and which people would be willing to buy, but doesn’t exist? Share your thoughts on this “missing market”. We’ll also discuss what forces prevent it from existing. Is it Moloch at work? *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar,

We’re overdue for a day of sharing concepts. Let’s use this meetup to discuss concepts that have helped us to think about important issue. Nash equilibrium: a situation where no one can improve by changing their behavior alone. Superstimulus: something that is finely tuned to appeal to you and is much better than ancestral humans

Do you know of a technique that is bizarrely, disproportionately effective? Share it with your fellow rationalists this Saturday! *** 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.

Time for some more light-hearted fare! Let’s share what we find fun and funny. For extra credit, how have you used your rationality skills to have fun or amplify your humor? LW Humor Tag LW Fun Theory Tag *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar, in the cafe area. Look for the

Time one again to discuss health and wellness. Share your well-grounded knowledge of diet, exercise, supplements, and habits! LW health topic tag LW exercise topic tag LW well-being topic tag *** The meetup is at Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar, in the cafe area. Look for the LW and SSC signs. People start arriving at

In light of recent craziness in the world of prediction markets, let’s do another session where we review our positions on Manifold and related sites, and compare notes. What contracts seem to me mispriced or have too big a difference across the different sites? Are there markets we want to create? You might want to

In light of the presidential debate this week, let’s discuss the practice of debate. How can we make it more capable of discerning truth? What practices are currently followed in public debates that make it bad and determining what is correct? What constraint would you add to make it more productive? *** The meetup is

Coming off the heels of our recent Irrationalist Day, let’s discuss everyday life and whether it lives up to the standard of rationality, which Eliezer Yudkowsky operationalized as “systematized winning“. Are there systematic errors the general population makes? Do people generally do some particular thing wrong, and is it explainable by Moloch effects? Is there

Time once again for calibration practice! Using a series of numerical estimate questions about the real world, see if you can set a 75% confidence interval on the answers such that the correct answer is your interval 75% of the time, no more, no less. As in previous practices, we’ll draw questions from the game