Melbourne Less Wrong Meetup
There seems to be enough Melburnian Less Wrong visitors to justify having monthly meetups. Just the other day, I ran into some at my local restaurant, and the thread Where are we? lists four (not including me). There’s probably more out there.
Details
Time: 6pm, Saturday 2nd October
Place: Don Tojo
I’ll be there with a Less Wrong sign.
List of people attending:
Patrick
toner
luminosity
Ppeach
wedrifid
Byron
Yurifury
ShardPhoenix
Ok, it’s fixed for Saturday 2nd. Reply to this comment if you want your name added to the guest list.
I’ll be there.
Thank you for organising this. I’ll come. It’s a good choice of venue.
I’ll almost certainly attend this.
Details sound good to me. I’m generally open most times for meet ups if it would need to be moved. Budget is a little tight, so my only real problem with meet ups would be expensive venues.
Don Tojo isn’t expensive. You can get a meal for $6.10. If you’re really concerned, I’ll lend you the money.
Thanks for the offer. That sounds very affordable though, I’ll be fine.
When is there going to be another Less Wrong meeting? it seems like things dissipated over christmas. Looking forward to the next one.
Tell, don’t ask.
Unless, of course, you know you suck at organising folks and are willing to sacrifice probability of a meetup to reduce the probability that your meetup is a totally embarrassing failure and discourages others from bothering to try in the future. Could happen. ;)
If you’re really that social-awkwardness-risk-averse, please keep it to yourself so as to avoid infecting others.
This was rude and not necessary.
I did suggest that I am or anyone else in particular is incapable of organising social occasions with strangers. Nor did I suggest that the person avoiding the risk must be doing so because of a personal aversion to social awkwardness. The consideration expressed is actually consistently p(desired event), allowing simple maximisations.
I actually like to give the “Tell, don’t ask!” exhortation myself—it is applicable in a wide range of social situations. It is usually a far more effective strategy for achieving a desired result in terms of human influence. It is definitely applicable in this case too, and If it hadn’t been said would have provided the link myself, in the same words, right before I added the necessary disclaimer.
Organising social events with strangers is not a trivial task. It may seem that way for many of us because we have the appropriate instincts for mind reading and have been training on related tasks since we were children. For some it is actually either extremely difficult or overwhelmingly stressful. In those cases, and many others, it is actually a wiser choice to simply express interest but leave the initiative to those who have already established the connections and routine.This is even more likely to be the case when there is a possibility that those who have previously organised the events will perceive an incursion into their social turf and passively sabotage you—another area that is less obvious how to navigate for some that others. (But also something that is less dangerous now that there are laws to stop the worst of ape social retributions.)
In conclusion: Tell, don’t ask (except for when you shouldn’t).
Er, sorry. I’m not sure how to say it better, though; perhaps I should unpack a bit.
This community is mostly made up of nerds, who as a class tend to consistently and expensively overestimate the embarrassment resulting from public failure. The community as a whole would be significantly better off if its members were on the whole bolder.
If a given person feels they’re unable to contribute to the boldness effort, then I respect their personal decision, but ask that at the least they refrain from encouraging others to be timid as well.
I agree with this evaluation and the sentiment. I aggressively and consistently encourage boldness but like to do so from a position of accepting a realistic evaluation of how the how the world, and you in particular, work. This is in contrast to popular self-help enforcement of ‘positivism’ through denial. In particular I cannot endorse the shaming or negative labelling of those who don’t support a cookie-cutter prescription for what constitutes positive, practical action.
There is no discouragement of boldness here. This is about acknowledgement that circumstances are not the same for everyone and that boldness just isn’t the only factor in play. Boldness is the limiting factor here for some people—but there are others for whom the avoidance of social cowardness is just not the relevant consideration. I refuse to alienate or invalidate the experience of those for whom this kind of event management is an outright unhealthy choice.
EDIT: It occurs to me that this looks like I’m saying the point is a big deal. Rather than the intended expanded endorsement of an utterly trivial point. What is a little important is that I challenge slurs on my social confidence—which is a core component of my identity!
You in particular I would be surprised to learn lacked social confidence.
I’m having a hard time thinking of an actual case where someone genuinely should avoid managing such an event and might actually try to manage one if encouraged too much and/or insufficiently discouraged. So I guess it comes down to the empirical question.
I just don’t see the value in giving people excuses to be timid.
And if I convince everyone of that, including myself, then by practical definition I don’t. And that is the greatest benefit of boldness. Boldness, done safely and with appropriate stress management measures in place, can change who you are for the better. It worked for me.
The question I ask is whether there is an actual case where someone genuinely should avoid managing such an event and does not actually try to manage one if encouraged too much but is negatively impacted by ongoing messages that all people ‘should’ do things which they personally should not do. I don’t want to make those individuals collateral damage of a censorship program for other folks who cannot function without denial and being mislead.
As well as empirical evaluation this position incorporates an ethical judgement with respect to whether a consequence of benefit to a majority justifies doing harm to a minority in this particular instance. That the intervention involves epistemic distortion does actually influence my evaluation here more than it would for some others. Willingness to make allowances for the non-typical also varies from person to person.
Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. I was imagining that it would be easy for shy people to ignore exhortations of boldness; in retrospect, I should have known better.
I can’t be sure, but my guess would have been that they would be more sensitive to such things. I associate ‘shyness’ with increased sensitivity to social stimulus.
What are the details for the LessWrong meetup for December?
Good suggestion. Good for 2nd or 3rd October.
Patrick,
I’ve just accepted a role in Melbourne. I won’t be there until November, but would be interested after we arrive.
Cheers,
David
Good to hear, I’ll see you at the next one.
I might be up for it.
Apologies from me. My October 2nd is already booked for another party. (Not that I attend a lot of parties.)
Would October 3rd be better?
That’s 5 “yes” and one “busy”. I humbly suggest either something like http://www.doodle.com/ or you stick with the 2nd.
Good suggestion. Sorry Virge, I’m gonna have to stick with the 2nd, hopefully you can come to the next one.
Thanks Patrick. As it looks like turning out, I think my 3rd is going to be completely taken up anyway. Maybe next time.
Just out of curiosity, what did running into people at the restaurant go like?
Very well. We shook hands, swapped stories and had a beer.
I was thinking more “how did you know they were LW people,” sorry for being unclear.
Oh. One of them was wearing a Singularity Institute T-Shirt.
In that case I may have to consider buying one. I’ve also had some interesting conversations prompted by my Bayes rule shirt. :)
Does your shirt just have the equation on it?
I kinda want a Bayes rule shirt that has a visual representation on it, like how its explained here. http://oscarbonilla.com/2009/05/visualizing-bayes-theorem/
I’d think it would stand out more, as well as giving you a visual aid to explain what it means.
Good idea. Which of the possible representations do you think would be the most catchy on a shirt? If there is a particularly good one I could probably make one.
I was thinking of something like this on the front and maybe the back like this one.
I quite like the “It’s not just a statistical method, it’s the law” part.
Did you make that other shirt you link to? How does that work?
That has potential. Although I’m wary about including pictures with circles within circles on a t-shirt for some reason. I wonder if rectangles would look ok?
No, but I believe anyone can design the shirts on Zazzle by uploading pictures. I have not done so myself yet.
If you’re hinting at them looking like boobs, there are ways around that (eg full size and mostly vertical orientation). If you aren’t, then I’m confused.
I like circles (or smooth arbitrary blobs) more than rectangles because side by side rectangles aren’t as clear with where the overlap is (or if it’s just 3 distinct rectangles), and any other orientation hints at some importance of the shape. Not that it would ruin the shirt though..
The one you linked too was actually not too bad. And yes, I was referring to boobs. Some of the others that I wanted to include were frustratingly borderline.
Circles does allow for side by side, as you say. I’m not sure whether I like the idea of the more distinctive shape of rectangles at an angle or not. I would definitely want to include letters if I was using rectangles—optional with circles.
My friend knows someone that does shirts, and can get some made for us cheaply.
If you have a particular way you’d like to see it done, you should draw it up and send it to me.
I think parallel bar charts like in Yudkowsky’s essay would be nice.
How did this go? I’m not in Melbourne, but I am in Australia so if I ever visit I think I would like to attend one.
Good attendance. Possibly suffered from a lack of things to do, but I imagine now that we’ve met up and got a feel for it, we’ll have some ideas on what else to do next time.
Is this confirmed to go ahead? I’ll be there if so.
It is.
Errr, you had better remove me from the list. I just noticed that I have a wedding to go to on the 2nd. Oops.
Edit: No, leave me on but tentatively. I should be able to make it by 6pm.
@
Sounds good. Just down the road from my uni. I’ll stop by.