LessOnline (May 31—June 2, Berkeley, CA)

[Ben Pace]

Link post

A Festival of Writers Who are Wrong on the Internet^[1]

LessOnline is a festival celebrating truth-seeking, optimization, and blogging. It’s an opportunity to meet people you’ve only ever known by their LessWrong username or Substack handle.

We’re running a rationalist conference!

The ticket cost is $400 minus your LW karma in cents.

Confirmed attendees include Scott Alexander, Zvi Mowshowitz, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Katja Grace, and Alexander Wales.

Less.Online

Go through to Less.Online to learn about who’s attending, venue, location, housing, relation to Manifest, and more.

We’ll post more updates about this event over the coming weeks as it all comes together.

If LessOnline is an awesome rationalist event,
I desire to believe that LessOnline is an awesome rationalist event;

If LessOnline is not an awesome rationalist event,
I desire to believe that LessOnline is not an awesome rationalist event;

Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

—Litany of Rationalist Event Organizing

1. ^

   But Striving to be Less So

[Elizabeth]

How do other people feel about the list of invited authors? I feel dubious about a single list with both invitees and confirmed attendees (even if they’re in different colors), but if most people don’t find it confusing or misleading it seems less important.

Suggested voting: use percentage reacts, with 0 being “I absolutely find this confusing or misleading” and 100 being “I find this extremely clear”

[MondSemmel]

Did you see the checkbox “Only show authors confirmed attending”? I didn’t understand the color coding without that, but found it very clear once I checked the box.

[Elizabeth]

I’m on that list (in green) and first heard about this when I was invited, so I knew what the list meant going in. But as a general person with opinions, I felt that having an “invitee” list, especially one that mixed in confirmed attendees, was misleading and mildly manipulative. But since almost everyone finds it intuitive, including @Zack_M_Davis, most of my concerns are allayed.

[Raemon]

That’s actually not (that much of) a crux for me (who also thinks it’s mildly manipulative, but, below the threshold where I feel compelled to push hard for changing it).

[metachirality]

Did y’all contact the people who got free tickets?

[Ben Pace]

I’ve sent like 80 emails out, still tracking them all down!

(If anyone has contact info for The Last Psychiatrist or Hotel Concierge or Christian Rudder from the OK Cupid blog, I’d appreciate a connection.)

[MondSemmel]

For Christian Rudder, maybe you can contact Penguin Random House, his publisher for the book “Dataclysm”? Either to ask for his contact data, or to directly forward your conference invitation.

[MondSemmel]

For the benefit of others, what’s the application deadline?

[Ronny Fernandez]

I believe there isn’t really a deadline! You just buy tickets and then you can come. Tickets might sellout is the limiting factor.

[Alex_Altair]

Feedback on the website: it’s not clear to me what the difference is between LessOnline and the summer camp right after. Is the summer camp only something you go to if you’re also going to Manifest? Is it the same as LessOnline but longer?

[Saul Munn]

thanks for the feedback on the website. here’s the explanation we gave on the manifest announcement post:

In the week between LessOnline and Manifest, come hang out at Lighthaven with other attendees! Cowork and share meals during the day, attend casual workshops and talks in the evening, and enjoy conversations by the (again, literal) fire late into the night.

Summer Camp will be pretty lightweight: we’ll provide the space and the tools, and you & your fellow attendees will bring the discussions, workshops, tournaments, games, and whatever else you’re excited about organizing.

Here are the types of events you’ll see at Summer Camp:

• Hackathons (or “Forecastathons”)

• Organized discussions and workshops

• Jam sessions and dance parties

• Games of all kinds: social deception games, poker, MTG, jackbox, etc.

• Campy activities: sardines, s’mores, singalongs

• Multi-day intensive workshops, e.g. a CFAR-style workshop or a Quantitative Trading Bootcamp (Note: these may come at some extra cost, TBD by the organizers)

let me know if you have other questions.

[Ben Pace]

Both our teams (LessOnline and Manifest) are putting together big events on the consecutive weekends, and my guess is that there’ll be a number of folks who want to travel for both. So for everyone around in the interim we’re offering housing on-site, food, and will be helping folks run their own sub-events.

I haven’t got anything to announce there yet but I have ~3 events in the early stages of being organized, all of which I personally want to attend.

[OrthernLight]

Go through to Less.Online to learn about who’s attending, venue, location, housing, relation to Manifest, and more.

While I may be missing the obvious, I didn’t see the location anywhere on the site. (‘Lighthaven’, yes, but unless I’ve badly failed a search check, neither the LessOnline nor the Lighthaven website gives an address.)

Google Maps seems to know, but for something like this, confirmation would be nice; I don’t quite trust that Google isn’t showing a previous location or something else with the same name.

[habryka]

We’ll send out location details to anyone who buys a ticket (and also feel free to ping us and we’ll tell you).

I’ve had some experience with people trying to disrupt events, and trivial inconveniences of figuring out the address makes a non negligible difference in people doing stuff like that.