Notes on Meetup Ideas

Commander Zander17 Jun 2025 0:11 UTC
12 points
4 comments2 min readLW link

I just came back from Lighthaven with lots of fun ideas to bring home. One idea is that you can just post your notes to LW instead of leaving them in your private cloud.

  • Futarchy—Try it out for the meetup? Brainstorm how to try it?

  • Manifold—Making markets about our city, etc

    • ‘Which films will our movie night attendees enjoy?’

      • After watching, attendees vote thumbs up or thumbs down. Majority up → resolve yes.

      • Gaming the market increases attendance, so … no problem!

  • Laptop Research meetups

    • Meetup format: Research a topic & draft a Google Doc. Then post it as a official report of what the meetup has learned.

      • X Risks

        • Resilience: Where we learn about the state of the art on seed vaults, bunkers, & biopreservation submarines. Then learn about what humanity might do next to implement these ideas.

        • Specific risks

          • World War 3

          • Future Cyberwar

          • Biowar

      • Solar

      • Chinese industrial development

      • Georgism

      • Clinical Trial Abundance

      • Local History

      • Buddhist Cosmology

    • Meetup format: Research all options, then pitch them, then each pick your favorite.

      • Perhaps even a prize for the Principal Investigator of the most popular option.

      • Conlangs

        • Esperanto

      • Geoengineering

      • Nutrition schools of thought

      • Anthropic Probability Paradigms—SIA, SSA, etc

      • Secular Religions

        • eg Church of the Infinite Game

      • ‘What line of research will solve AGI Alignment?’

      • Coolest Poet

        • I hear rationalists like Ginsberg & Auden

  • Laptop Task Meetups

    • Coworking, Project Time

    • Actually making bets against each other

      • First provisionally, then at the end of the meetup, reaffirm consent & post the bets publicly.

    • Discord Bots

    • Let’s Generate Prose

    • Let’s Generate Music

    • Planning & Deploying Surveys

    • Concrete Future Timelines

      • Scenario rebutting AI 2027 (monetary prize)

    • Kialo Improvement

    • Elastomeric Respirator Fitting

      • paste from a Lighthaven speaker

        • Future pandemics are likely enough that everyone should have a well-fitting reusable high-filtration mask (“elastomeric respirator”). But not every mask fits every face. I’ll have a large selection of elastomerics, along with fit testing equipment.

    • Republic Headcount—List exactly which professions are needed in the smallest viable human settlement.

  • Debates

    • Long Now tradition—You must paraphrase opponent’s opening statement to their satisfaction before you can respond.

  • Our Knowledge Wishlist

    • Spreadsheet or page of topics we wish we knew more about (quantum mechanics, philosophy of mind, history of China, etc). Members can vote on which they wish to learn more about. Then in later meetups we can research & present on the top topics.

  • Games

    • Anecdote: The Seattle meetup has a game night 1 week & a rationality meetup the next week, & enjoys this pattern.

    • Random Chess, Bughouse Chess

    • Rock Paper Scissors Poker

    • Go

    • [[Quizbowl]]

    • AI 2027 Tabletop Exercise

      • Variants

        • Slower tech development, more time for others to react

        • Variant where OpenBrain is slower than DeepCent

    • Outdoor Games

      • Laser Tag

      • Fugitive

      • Jet Lag

      • Assassins

      • Hypothetical ‘Epistemic Capture the Flag With Traitors’

    • History Lecture with Live Betting

      • or even based on a YT video

      • Based on a game

        • Sports??

        • Tabletop games

        • Chess

        • Video games

  • Rationalist Hand Signals

  • Blindfolded taste tests—Food, beer, etc

  • Outdoor

    • Birding

    • Orienteering?

    • Snorkeling

    • Surfing

    • Frisbee Golf

  • Infiltrate a Church + Debrief after

    • (yes, infiltrate = attend)

    • Infiltrate a Magic Crystal Shop

  • [[Lightning Talk]] specific ideas

    • 5 Season [[Calendar]]

    • Recommended Fiction

Venues

  • Regulars’ Homes

    • Obstacle—Host is incentivized to throw a party instead of hosting a meetup

      • Solution—Incentive vanishes for activities that are better-suited to our meetup crowd than to their friend group.

  • Coffeeshops

  • Boba shops

  • Breweries

  • Dessert shops

  • Rentable Rooms

    • Peerspace—but $100 /​ hour is a little steep

  • Parks

  • Malls

  • Food Courts

  • Library Multipurpose Rooms

Commander Zander17 Jun 2025 0:11 UTC
12 points
4 comments2 min readLW link