Astral Codex Ten

Michael

96 min read

Michael

Article

Michael is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 19 times across 19 issues between August 23, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Contact: Michael, michael19571202[at]outlook[dot]com”; “Please email Michael at spellcheckhealth@icloud.com”; “Contact: Michael (michael19571202@outlook.com)“. It most often appears alongside Scott, ACX, facebook.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 19
  • Issue count: 19
  • First seen: August 23, 2021
  • Last seen: April 01, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
MEMPHIS, TN (RSVP) Contact: Michael, michael19571202[at]outlook[dot]com, Google group Time: 1:00 PM, Saturday, September 25 Location: French Truck Coffee at Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104. Will have a sign that says "SSC Meetup". Coordinates: https://w3w.co/smiled.limbs.oiled Notes: We're a pre-existing meetup, we use Google groups to send emails.
Inline links: RSVP, Google group, https://w3w.co/smiled.limbs.oiled
LUSK, WY (RSVP) Contact: Michael Hendricks, m[dot]acx[at]ndrix[dot]org Time: 1:00 PM, Saturday, September 18 Location: Washington Park, 325 S Barrett Blvd, Lusk, WY 82225 (covered picnic benches in the center of the park) Coordinates: https://w3w.co/keys.besides.sprinkle
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/keys.besides.sprinkle
Open Thread 215
March 13, 2022 · Original source
Spellcheck Health is looking for an expert in genetic editing (CRISPR etc.) to ask questions of, and possibly join their startup project. Looking for practical expertise with modern techniques, especially with CRISPR variants that can handle multiple long edits. Deep interest in human gene therapy for curative, longevity, and general optimization purposes a huge plus. Please email Michael at spellcheckhealth@icloud.com if interested.
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
MEMPHIS, TN Contact: Michael (michael19571202@outlook.com) Date: April 16 Time: 1:00 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+RHC Location: French Truck Coffee at Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+RHC
Initial Conditions
April 22, 2022 · Original source
At the meetup, some people theorized that J names (eg John, Jack, etc) are so common that their holders need to differentiate themselves; instead of being the tenth John in your class, you go by JD or JT. But then how come there are so few JNs, JLs, or JS’s? Some people at the meetup thought those combinations sounded less melodious than “JD”, but I’m not really feeling it. Also, in my birth year, the three most popular male names were Michael, Christopher, and Matthew. How come "M" doesn't have the same initializing allure? How come I don’t know anyone who goes by MD?
Book Review: The Gervais Principle
May 10, 2022 · Original source
Clueless people aren’t necessarily stupid. They may be brain surgeons or rocket scientists. But they are fundamentally incapable of grasping the shifting, illegible nature of social reality. They retreat to objective reality - over-performing at their object-level job - and taking the official legible rules really seriously. They can be found carefully studying the Mission Statement, trying to figure out how best to embody its values. Or putting up inspirational posters in the hallways. Or trying to win the hokey competition for Best Office Morale so they can get the first prize pizza party or whatever. Office examples are Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute.
The mediocre develop faster than either the talented or the untalented An alternative way of looking at these three laws is to note that defense mechanisms emerge to sustain addictions even when the developmental environment that originally nourished it vanishes. Defense mechanisms though, are more useful as a partial catalog of phenomenology than as a foundational idea. These then are the developmental psychology roots of the Gervais Principle. Recall that Cluelessness goes with overperformance. That overperformance is caused by arrested development around a strength, which has been hooked by an addictive environment of social rewards. Mediocrity is your best defense against addiction, and guarantor of further open-ended psychological development. And yes, for the alert among you who have spotted a connection, arrested development is the dark side of strengths in the sense of Positive Psychology. A strength in one situation is merely an entrenched piece of arrested development in another. In our model, the three development stages – Clueless, Losers and Sociopaths – correspond to different patterns of arrested development and different strength-addictions. That is, development involves progressing from one stage (eg school) to another stage (eg the real world). But if you’re too good at an early stage, you become accustomed to the reward you get from success. Suppose you loved school and did great at it. Then you get invited to participate in the real world, a noticeably non-school-like environment. You try it, and instead of getting praise/reward/validation all the time, you get those things rarely or not at all. If you can, maybe you go back to school (ie get a PhD), a strategy with problems of its own. But if you can’t real-world actually go back to school, instead you might remain permanently stuck at a psychological stage where everything feels like school, where you try to distort your perceptions until your world-model looks vaguely school-like, and where you use your school-based skills and coping mechanisms for everything. The particular example I just gave, about school, is Rao’s explanation for Dwight Schrute: Dwight, with his stern German upbringing, lacked the normal encouragement of early-childhood creative-performance instincts (we see several glimpses of this, including his attempt to read horrifying medieval cautionary tales to the kids during bring-your-child-to-work day, and his own description of his childhood, which left his brother actually developmentally disabled). He has therefore developed none of the addiction to childhood applause-seeking performance behaviors that have trapped Michael. Instead, Dwight found relief in the graded, performance-oriented worlds of school and varied medieval-guild-like worlds, such as farming, animal husbandry and karate. His attempts to understand the world of management, which is decidedly not a world of grades or guilds, are based entirely on peripheral guild-like elements. He is the only one excited about the Survivor-style successor-selection event Michael arranges (in the bus on the way over, he asks, “Will there be business parables?”). When he attempts manipulation, his mind naturally turns to hidden microphones, doctored documents and other elements of tradecraft learned from spy novels, and only rarely to psychology. He banks the occasional tactical victory, but cannot play or win the mind games required to beat the Sociopaths. In Dwight’s world, everything worth learning is teachable, and medals, certificates and formal membership in meritocratic institutions is evidence of success. Even where play behaviors are concerned, the Dwights of the world can more easily get lost in points-and-rules worlds. It is significant that Dwight has never seen/read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is about creative-performance play), but is obsessed with gaming worlds and sci-fi/fantasy universes. Perhaps the clearest example of Dwight’s need for formal affiliation is his lame attempt at the insider stand-up comedy routine, The Aristocrats. To Dwight, everything is a formal contest, and there are always authority figures who provide legitimacy and rankings. He has no sense of humor (thanks to skipping early childhood), and has no idea how to actually evoke laughter, so he tries to ace the only formal membership test he can see, the ability to tell the Aristocrats joke. Michael, by contrast, can at least tell juvenile jokes, and Andy can manage some bad frat-boy humor. Rao argues that Michael Scott, the “boss” in the show, is stuck at an even lower level: Little children in normal environments win their first victories through creative performance: reciting nursery rhymes, drawing pictures, and demonstrating creative play behaviors. If they succeed too much, they get addicted to the typical adult reaction: Wow, aren’t you cute/clever? and, to a lesser extent, to admiration from younger siblings. In learning to thrive in this particular reward/penalty environment, little children rely mostly on responding to the emotional content of what they hear and see, since they do not understand much. With a few evolved defense mechanisms thrown in, to protect against adult realities that don’t conform to childhood environments, that’s exactly what it feels like to be Michael. When he hears somebody talking, all he hears is “blah blah blah good job, blah blah blah, how could you do this Michael?” in conjunction with facial expressions and body language. Michael’s head is a massive library of childlike mappings between situations, canned phrases and reactions. He is not completely responsible for his actions and utterances because he genuinely does not understand them. There is coherence in what Michael says though; he does not sound completely nonsensical because he reacts meaningfully to body language, facial expressions and emotional cues. “You talkin’ to me?” (borrowed from De Niro) is a belligerent line, and by pulling out that line when he feels threatened, and then displacing the tension with laughter, Michael is able to derail the conversation. His trademark joke, “That’s what she said!” is an extreme example. It makes no sense in most contexts where he trots it out; its only purpose is to dissolve tension and displace threats. Either laughing with Michael or throwing up your hands in frustration is a victory for him. The only effective response is to calmly ignore his disruptive actions, wait for the reaction to die down, and continue the conversation in dominant mode, like Cesar Milan with his dogs … Around Packer, his boorish friend, insulting and objectifying ways of talking about women gain approval, so he trots out borrowed, misogynistic man-talk. Withering under the collective glare of his politically correct employees, phrases like “respect women” gain smiles and halt frowns, so that’s what he offers. […] Here is why: delusions are closed logical schemes, where reality is mangled into the service of a fixed script through defense mechanisms, with the rest of the meaning thrown away. To manufacture original thought you have to look at/listen to reality in open ways for data. That is why Michael’s database is so full of movie lines. Movies are goldmines of canned situation-reactions that don’t require much present-reality data to retrieve. When kids quote adults or movies, they seem precocious, and gain approval. In an era where more kids are raised by TV than by parents, parroting movie lines comes more naturally than repeating bromides learned from parental figures or at churches and temples. Recall that social calendars force you through later stages whether or not you master previous ones. So what about later stages? Michael is not quite as enamored of medals and certificates as Dwight because (as a lousy student) he never got very good at earning them, and could therefore not get seriously addicted to them. Finally, Michael has poorly developed peer-affiliation drives. He wants to be the center of attention, not one among many equals in a huddle of peers. When Michael appears to be operating under a peer-affiliation drive (the sort that animates Andy), he is really casting child behaviors into a teen mould. He believes that specific people, rather than formal or informal groups, are cool or admirable (proxy parental figures, older siblings). If they are not cool or admirable, they must be made to view him as cool and admirable (younger siblings). I was struck by a line in an appendix, saying this is the same level that Nazi bureaucrats were at. Just for fun, let’s compare the rest of Rao’s profile of Michael with Arendt’s profile of Adolf Eichmann (all quotes taken from my Eichmann In Jerusalem review): Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath (“Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won’t do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me”), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might “do so under oath or without an oath,” declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? And: The judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was “empty talk” – except that they thought the emptiness was feigned, and that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts which, though hideous, were not empty. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he repeated it until it became a cliché) each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. Whether writing his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether speaking to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. And finally (this time in my voice): If [Arendt] has any thesis at all, it’s that Eichmann believed in something larger than himself. We usually encourage this sort of thing, but I think the prosocial version involves having a specific larger-than-yourself thing in mind. Eichmann (says Arendt) just liked larger-than-himself things in general, and the Nazi vision of eternal struggle for racial supremacy was the biggest thing he could find in the vicinity. We’ll later see that he had a strange respect for Zionists, and this was because they too believed in something larger than themselves. Eichmann’s infamous cliches were the cliches of pomp and circumstance and glory and high words, the ones which made him feel like he was engaged in a great enterprise whether or not there was anything behind them. The reason he admitted neither to “just following orders”, nor to a deep personal belief in anti-Semitism, was that his loyalty to Hitler came from neither. When Hitler said to kill all the Jews, he gladly complied; if Hitler had said to kill all the Christians, he would have done that too. Not because he was a drone following orders to save his skin, but because he believed. Not in any of the specifics of Nazi ideology. Not even in Hitler’s personal judgment. Just in whatever was going on at the time. IV. When he gets to the next section, on Losers, Rao mostly forgets the developmental psych. Now this is a book on status economics. Rao’s poetic description: Each of them – and they constitute 80% of humanity – is born the most beautiful baby in the world. Each is an above-average child; in fact the entire 80% is in the top 20% of human beings (it’s crowded up there). Each grows up knowing that he or she is deeply special in some way, and destined for a unique life that he or she is “meant” to live. In their troubled twenties, each seeks the one true love that they know is out there, waiting for them, and their real calling in life. Each time they fail at life or love, their friends console them: “You are a smart, funny, beautiful and incredibly talented person, and the love of your life and your true calling are out there somewhere. I just know that.” The friends are right of course: each marries the most beautiful man/woman in the world, discovers his/her calling, and becomes the proud parent of the most beautiful baby in the world. Eventually, each of them retires, earns a gold watch, and somebody makes a speech declaring him or her to be a Wonderful Human Being. You and I know them as Losers. Being a Loser means clinging to the delusion of being special, while also being fully accepted by your social group (indeed, your specialness only matters instrumentally and insofar as other people appreciate you for it). But these two imperatives are Scylla and Charybdis: insist too hard on actually being special and you’re a narcissist who everyone hates; try too cravenly to seek acceptance, and you’re acknowledging other people are better than you. Rao views Loserdom as a series of conspiracies to manage this paradox. The end solution looks something like "everyone is special in their own way”. Loser dynamics are largely driven by Lake-Wobegon-effect snow jobs, which obscure pervasive mediocrity. But unlike the delusions of the Clueless (false confidence of the Dunning-Kruger variety which we saw last time), which are maintained through the furious efforts and desperate denials on the part of the deluded individuals themselves, Loser delusions are maintained by groups. You scratch my delusion, I’ll scratch yours. I’ll call you a thoughtful critic if you agree to call me a fascinating blogger. And we’ll both convince ourselves that our lives are to be valued by these different measures. Loser above-averageness is generally not based on an outright falsehood. Unlike Michael’s pretensions to comic genius, which are strictly not true, Pam really is the best artist in the group. The delusion lies not in a false assessment of her artistic skills, but in the group choosing to evaluate her on the basis of art in the first place. In other words, Losers are too smart to fool themselves. They enter into social contracts which require them to fool each other […] At the life-script level, the game-playing social contract creates complete nominal illegibility. Each individual in a group is judged according to a custom life script that makes it impossible to compare two lives within the group. Pam’s life has a redemptive script based on the fact that she is the cutest one in the office, can paint well, and forms the “It” couple with Jim. Kevin’s is based on the fact that he is in a band. Creed’s uniqueness lies in his weirdness…Remember, you are unique, just like everybody else. A second, corollary paradox: Groucho Marx joked that he wouldn’t belong to any club that would accept him as a member. But then why do people ever associate in clubs? Suppose you joined a club that was clearly not good enough for you - maybe you’re a famous billionaire and they’re a bunch of losers who watch crappy TV in a basement once a week. Why would you be in this club? But suppose you tried to join a club that was clearly too good for you - you’re a poor person with no social skills, and you apply to the rich billionaires’ country club. Why would they ever accept you? This suggests that people won’t join clubs that are too much higher or lower status than they are. But why would they join clubs that are even slightly higher or lower status? Wouldn’t you expect nobody ever joins anything except in the vanishingly rare case where their status and the club’s status are exactly the same? Rao is trying to make the point that all associations require some level of status illegibility. If you knew status perfectly - if you went around with “Status: 6.8/10” tattooed on your forehead - then you could see a club all of whose members had statuses 6.2 - 6.5, and know that you could do better. So instead, the same social conspiracy that keeps people convinced they have useful talents, also keeps status illegible. This takes the form of everyone teasing each other, creating a constant churn of minor status increases and decrements which is too complicated for anyone to track properly. (Rao says that the single-highest and single-lowest status people in any group can sometimes be legible - creating an observable range for what status people in the group can be, ie “we’re for people between 6/10 and 7/10” - but the middle always has to be illegible, to allow the majority of people to preserve their polite fiction that they’re among the higher-status members of their group.) This section on status economics ends with a digression on jokes. Not as in knock-knock jokes. Jokes where one person makes fun of another, gaining status at their expense. These kinds of jokes are status economics transactions. According to Rao, the minimum viable Loser joke is three people: the joker, the victim, and an audience. The joker makes a joke. The victim has a chance to retort (eg “takes one to know one!”) and the audience decides how to mentally update everyone’s status. Rao uses examples from The Office, but I haven’t seen it, so I was thinking about an episode of Seinfeld: When George was stuffing himself with shrimp at a meeting, Reilly remarked, "Hey, George, the ocean called. They're running out of shrimp." Slow-witted George could not think of a comeback until later, while driving to the tennis club to meet Jerry. His comeback was: "Oh, yeah, Reilly? Well, the jerk store called, and they're running out of you." Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer did not think 'jerk store' was a good comeback mainly because "there are no jerk stores." Elaine suggests, "Your cranium called. It's got some space to rent." Jerry suggests, "The zoo called. You're due back by six." Kramer finally thinks George should just tell Reilly that he slept with his wife. After discovering that Reilly was let go from the Yankees and now works for Firestone, George flies to Akron, Ohio just to try the jerkstore line. When he says it, however, Reilly responds, "What's the difference? You're their all-time best seller." George, unprepared for this, ends up using Kramer's line. He's then told that Reilly's wife is in a coma. Rao asks: in what sense did Reilly successfully “score” on George? Suppose George had been a very stupid person, and hadn’t understood that Reilly’s comment was supposed to be teasing/hurtful; he would have been unaffected. Or suppose he had something totally outlandish (“Yes, but there are canyons on Mars”), then insisted that it was a brilliant comeback and let Reilly exhaust/embarrass himself trying to prove it wasn’t? In contrast, if there had been a third person there (let’s say a love interest who both George and Reilly were pursuing), this pointless narcissistic zero-stakes game would become relevant: the love interest gets to evaluate the two against each other, and award status to the victor. This isn’t always the wittier of the two. You can also imagine a world where George says “Excuse me, I have an eating disorder, I think it’s incredibly stigmatizing for you to bully me like this.” Then the third person gets to decide whether to treat this as Reilly making a hilarious joke and George being too thin-skinned to take it, or as Reilly saying something offensive and George bravely calling him out. Crucially, if she wants, she can let her decision hinge on whether she liked Reilly or George better to begin with, or whether one or the other would be a better ally in the future - so this is part status-transaction and part status-test. But in the actual Seinfield episode, there is no love interest. George and Reilly are trying to score points on each other, totally unaware that this is meaningless. For Rao, this is a sure sign of Cluelessness - anyone with social skills would realize no status could be gained or lost and the whole game is pointless. So Loser jokes are 3+ people, and Clueless jokes are 2 people. Continuing the pattern, a Sociopath joke must be for one person - the joker amusing himself, totally unconcerned whether anyone else appreciates it. V. Sociopaths aren’t necessarily evil. They’re just . . . unbeholden to anyone else. They might still follow the rules because it advantages them to do it, or because they have personally chosen to follow some moral code they happen to like. But they don’t crave approval from anyone, not even abstract concepts. If the Clueless come from arrested development, and Losers from normal development and its attendant status economics, Sociopaths are formed by a sort of dark enlightenment. They have a moment when they realize nothing is true and everything is permissible. Rao’s poetic side writes: Sociopathy is not about ripping off a specific mask from the face of social reality. It is about recognizing that there are no social realities. There are only masks. Social realities exist as a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated and specialized fictions for those predisposed to believe that there is something special about the human condition, which sets our realities apart from the rest of the universe. There is, to the Sociopath, only one reality governing everything from quarks to galaxies. Humans have no special place within it. Any idea predicated on the special status of the human — such as justice, fairness, equality, talent — is raw material for a theater of mediated realities that can be created via subtraction of conflicting evidence, polishing and masking. Mask is an appropriate term for any social reality created through subtraction, because an appearance of human-like agency for non-human realities is what the inhabitants require. By humanizing the non-human universe, we make the human special. All that is required is to control people who believe in fairness, is to remove any evidence suggesting that the world might fundamentally not be a fair place, and mask it appropriately with a justice principle such as an afterlife calculus, or a retirement fantasy. […] When a layer of social reality is penetrated and turned into a means for manipulating the realities of others, it is automatically devalued. To create medals and ranking schemes for the benefit of the Clueless is to see them as mere baubles yourself. To turn status-seeking into a control mechanism is to devalue status. To devalue something is to judge any meaning it carries as inconsequential. In terms of our metaphor of masks of gods, the moment you rip off a mask and wear it yourself, whatever that mask represents becomes worth much less. So the Sociopath’s journey is fundamentally a nihilistic one. The climactic moment in this journey is the point where skill at manipulating social realities becomes unconscious. Suddenly, it becomes apparent that all social realities are based on fictional meanings created by denying some aspect of natural, undivided reality. Reality that does not revolve around the needs of humans. The mask-ripping process itself becomes revealed as an act within the last theater of social reality, the one within which at least manipulating social realities seems to be a meaningful process in some meta-sense. Game design with good and evil behaviors. Losing this illusion is a total-perspective-vortex moment for the Sociopath: he comes face-to-face with the oldest and most fearsome god of all: the absent God. In that moment, the Sociopath viscerally experiences the vast inner emptiness that results from the sudden dissolution of all social realities. There’s just a pile of masks with no face beneath. Just quarks and stuff. Both Losers and Clueless are trying to manipulate other people’s impressions of them. Sociopaths are trying to manipulate reality. Reality includes other people’s impressions - if your goal is to become President, in some sense you care what the electorate thinks of you. But it’s an instrumental goal. Sociopaths crave the Presidency (or whatever) and use other people’s good opinions as stepping-stones. Losers and Clueless crave the good opinions directly. Once you stop craving other people’s good opinions, you lose some mental blocks that would normally prevent you from coming up with manipulative strategies. Rao says the most basic Sociopath manuever is “heads I win, tails you lose” - coming up with some way of arranging systems so that they get the credit for good results while avoiding the blame for bad ones. A simple strategy is to come up with a plan and appoint a Clueless pawn as Director Of The Plan. If the plan goes well, it was always your idea and you hand-picked and mentored the person who carried it out. If the plan goes poorly, it was always the director’s idea, you maybe thought it had some promise but he clearly bungled the execution. But this is a weak 101-level version of the maneuver; the real thing involves a bunch of bureaucracies, committees, and total deniability. Rao theorizes that most of the middle layers of companies are giant and powerful machines built by Sociopaths to guide and redirect the flow of blame and credit. Is everyone else against this? Do they view it as duplicity and oppression? Rao says no. Sociopaths aren’t just CEOs. They’re priest-kings, creating meaning for everyone else. The Clueless demand a world of legible rules, legible rewards and punishment, and a legible Authority tracking everyone’s balance. Sociopaths, who create companies, religions, governments, and every other form of authority, help Clueless people live in the legible gamified rank-able worlds their minds crave. I’m less able to follow Rao’s explanation of “Loser spirituality” and how Sociopaths control it. My guess is something like: Losers “worship” positive emotions, belongingness, and “good vibes”, within carefully obfuscated conspiracies of mutual status-blindness. These aren’t really capable of dealing with the real world: a typical fiction is that “we’re all really talented and gave our all on this project”, but in fact the project might be failing. Sociopaths are outside those conspiracies and outside local status competitions, ie your CEO isn’t going to share banter over a glass of beer with you. So they are allowed to (carefully, emotionlessly) communicate/represent/convey reality to the status-maintenance conspiracies in a way where no particular member loses status by admitting reality first. Although in some vague sense the Sociopaths are oppressing and manipulating everyone else, this isn’t how it feels from the inside: both Clueless and Losers are grateful to the Sociopaths for taking the burden of confronting reality off their shoulders. If the Sociopath fails at this, and a Clueless or Loser has to confront reality unmediated, they’ll either have a very bad time but eventually bounce back, or become a Sociopath themselves. VI. So that’s The Gervais Principle. Is any of it true? I don’t find myself or the people I know best falling clearly into any of these archetypes. They’re useful to have around. I can see pieces of all of them. But none are a great match. I can see bits of myself in the Clueless archetype. I like legible systems. I’m the person who did really well on standardized tests, really badly at networking, and ended up in medical school because it was the highest you could go on test scores alone. I’ve occasionally suggested that all politics should be replaced with some kind of system for calculating how much utility every option has, then doing whichever one is best (bonus points if it’s on the blockchain). But I’m bad at listening to authority figures,and quit my last job to start my own company. Also, Clueless people are supposed to be bad at using language in original ways, and I’m a professional writer. Sociopaths are supposed to fiercely distrust collectivism and come up with their own, usually utilitarian-inspired morality, which I identify with. But I can’t manipulate my way out of a paper bag. Also, a few weeks ago I got in an argument with a clerk over the right amount of change, after double-checking it turned out I was wrong and the clerk was right, and even though this was in an airport and I will definitely never see that clerk again, I felt embarrassed about the interaction for hours, and still feel pretty bad about it. Doesn’t really feel very ubermensch-ish or transcended-the-need-for-other-people’s-good-opinion-y. I have a group of friends, and within that group of friends I’m acutely aware of the things I’m unusually good at vs. bad at, and I worry a lot about whether my strengths qualify me to be a member in good standing. My status within that group is illegible and I prefer that to the alternative. Does that make me a Loser? Who controls the microphone in my head? Whose approval do I crave? When I was younger, I remember pretty vividly that it would be whoever I had a crush on at the time. When I started blogging, it became my blog audience. But sometimes it gets hijacked by random store clerks. And I particularly remember being invited to an event with some big name tech people, fretting about whether they would like me, exerting some willpower to remind myself that I was valid with or without their approval, and then realizing afterwards that what I had actually done was fantasize about how if I wasn’t obviously craving their approval, they would be impressed by my independence and put-togetherness and respect me even more. So fine, I (and the few other people I know well enough to use as examples) don’t naturally fall into any of these categories. Whatever, Rao said (in one sentence) that everyone has multiple types. But then what’s the use of this categorization system? If I invent three random types of people: Green: introverted, long hair, likes the cold, complains too much
Inline links: defense mechanisms, The Aristocrats, Eichmann In Jerusalem, an episode, the real thing, that make me a Loser
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places
August 26, 2022 · Original source
HUNTSVILLE, AL Contact: Mike, mjhouse[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 3:00 PM Location: Barnes & Noble – 300 The Bridge St #100, Huntsville, AL 35806. I'll be in the cafe with a sign that says ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 866MP88H+53 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Barnes & Noble has an area for little kids. If you want to bring a service animal, that's probably fine, but I doubt they allow pets. PHOENIX, AZ Contact: Ben Morin, benjamin[dot]j[dot]morin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 15, 1:00 PM Location: Thirsty Lion Pub in Tempe. I will have a table with an ACX sign. Coordinates: 8559FVVQ+6C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: This will be our 5th meetup (started during the meetups everywhere last year). Notes: Please email if interested to be added to the email list, even if you can't make this event BELMONT, CA Contact: Moshe Z., belmont-acx[at]devskillup[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 2:00 PM Location: Twin Pines Park, Picnic Tables. The table will have some sign saying 'ACX Meetup' on it. Coordinates: 849VGP8C+RRG Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: You can join the mailing list here. BERKELEY, CA Contact: Scott Time: Sunday, September 18, 1:00 PM Location: Rose Garden Inn, a rationalist event space at 2740 Telegraph Ave. Come in through the front gate on Telegraph. Coordinates: 849VVP5R+X7V Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: The Bay rationality community has a mailing list, a Discord server, and a Facebook group. There are dinner meetups every Thursday at 7 PM in the East Bay, and occasional meetups in SF and South Bay. FILLMORE, CA Contact: Ryan, wiserd[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Wiserd#0906 Time: Saturday, October 1st, 6:00 PM Location: It's my house. There are a bunch of plants on the porch and garbage bins in the driveway. Coordinates: 856393VX+VQ Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP to my email or Discord. Kids and dogs are welcome in the back yard. Full vaccinations (on the honor system) and masks required. GRASS VALLEY, CA Contact: Max Harms, raelifin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Condon Park by the prospector statue. In the case of rain we'll change the location to a residence, so RSVP to get updated! Coordinates: 84FW6W8H+C5 Event link(s): LessWrong IRVINE, CA Contact: Nick C, cohenskijanuary1[at]mail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM Location: University Town Center Coordinates: 8554M526+7H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet once a month at the same location. LOS ANGELES, CA Contact: Vishal Prasad (koreindian), vprasadcs[at]gmail[dot]com, Contact me on Discord. I am "Vishal" on the server. Time: Saturday, October 8, 6:30 PM Location: 11841 Wagner St., Culver City, CA 90039 Coordinates: 8553XHWM+GP Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet weekly every Wednesday. We have been around for over 8 years. We discuss articles, watch movies, lift weights. We have a Discord server, a LessWrong group, and a website! Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much food to get. NEWPORT BEACH, CA Contact: Michael M, michaelmichalchik[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, August 27, 2:00 PM Location: Picnic tables next to 1900 Port Carlow community clubhouse. The park is verdant and pleasant and easy to access. Free street parking nearby. In case of bad weather, we have a couple of near by places to relocate to. Coordinates: 8554J48R+WCX Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We will meet most Saturdays at 2pm until whenever. There will be short suggested readings and question most weeks to spur conversation, but they are optional. Each week we will ask if people have had something happen recently that surprised them or changed the way they looked at the world. Something that should or did update their priors. Participation is optional. Notes: Its a public park with tables and BBQ's so you can bring food and well behaved pets. We may regularly go on casual walks in the surrounding area. SAN DIEGO, CA Contact: Julius, julius[dot]simonelli[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 3:00 PM Location: We will meet up in Bird Park. I will be wearing a red shirt. Coordinates: 8544PVQ8+Q7 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Join our Discord server SAN FRANCISCO, CA Contact: Derek Pankaew, derekpankaew[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 11:00 AM Location: We'll between in the Panhandle, between Ashbury and Masonic, with a 'ACX' sign. Coordinates: 849VQHC3+V8 Event link(s): LessWrong SAN JOSE, CA Contact: David Friedman, ddfr[at]daviddfriedman[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: 3806 Williams Rd, San Jose, CA 95117 Coordinates: 849W825J+6P Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Before Covid we hosted every month or two. No structure, just conversation and food. We feed everyone who is still there at dinner time. We have done it once or twice since Covid. I have an email list of interested people. Notes: Kids are welcome. Please RSVP to my email so I will have a rough count of how many we are feeding. SAN MARCOS, CA Contact: Eric F., EricF14159[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 2:00 PM Location: Hollandia Park Soccer Field. At the tables near the top parking lot. Coordinates: 85544VW4+RV Event link(s): LessWrong BOULDER, CO Contact: Josh Sacks, josh[dot]sacks+acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 16, 3:00 PM Location: 9191 Tahoe Ln, Boulder, CO 80301 Coordinates: 85GP2V96+JQ Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so we know ~ how many people to expect! CARBONDALE, CO Contact: Nick, naj[at]njarboe[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 1:00 PM Location: Sopris Park - Center covered picnic tables - blue shirt with ACX sign on table Coordinates: 85FJ9QXP+QMF Event link(s): LessWrong DENVER, CO Contact: Ian Philips, iansphilips[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: palebone#2796 Time: Sunday, October 2, 11:00 AM Location: We'll be in the backyard patio of St. Mark's Coffee House. I'll wear a white shirt with (my brothers') baby faces on it and have a brown hat on. Coordinates: 85FQP2VP+9R Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet typically 4 times a year. LAKEWOOD, CO Contact: Steven Zuber, stevenjzuber[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, October 5, 7:00 PM Location: We meet in the clubhouse located in this townhome community: 8769 W Cornell Ave Lakewood, CO 80227 Coordinates: 85FPMW64+MW Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We meet the first Wednesday of every month. Informal, casual atmosphere with occasional presentations by people. Notes: Check the Meetup page or Facebook group for updates. FAIRFIELD, CT Contact: Justin Barclay, barclay[dot]justin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 10:00 AM Location: South Pine Creek Beach. I'll set up near the lifeguard stand. Coordinates: 87H84PCH+CM Event link(s): LessWrong MANCHESTER, CT Contact: Mike, park-mike[at]outlook[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 5:00 PM Location: Near flagpole on top of hill Coordinates: 87H9QFFH+J7 Event link(s): LessWrong NEW HAVEN, CT Contact: RM, acx[dot]meetup[dot]nhv[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 12:30 PM Location: Cross Campus (Yale University), New Haven, CT 06511. We'll be on the grass on the northern half of Cross Campus, closest to Sterling Memorial Library. I'll be wearing an orange shirt. Coordinates: 87H9836C+8VG Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Feel free to bring friends! The vibe will be welcoming and relaxed, and you can stay for any amount of time. Please email me if you're thinking about coming so I can get the right number of Insomnia cookies! WASHINGTON, DC Contact: John Bennett, WashingtonDCAstralCodexTen[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 6:00 PM Location: Froggy Bottom Pub: 2021 K Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20006 Coordinates: 87C4WX33+3J Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: The Washington DC ACX/SSC group has been active since the first Meetups Everywhere in 2017. We have Monthly Socials downtown, hikes, board game days, and other cultural events. We're looking to spin up more rationality Dojo-type events with nearby groups in the coming months. Notes: We've rented out the Froggy Bottom Pub for the night, dinner and soft drinks will be provided. Alcohol available for purchase if desired, but no purchases are required. Metered street parking on nearby blocks is free after 6:30. Closest Metros are Farragut West and Farragut North. CAPE CORAL / FORT MYERS, FL Contact: Shawn Spilman, shawn[dot]spilman[at]outlook[dot]com, 508 655 8123 Time: Sunday, October 2, 1:00 PM Location: 929 SW 54th Ln, Cape Coral, FL 33914 Coordinates: 76RWH224+44 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: RSVP via email. I can be flexible about the date. GULF BREEZE / PENSACOLA, FL Contact: Christian, christian[dot]h[dot]williams[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, October 12, 7:30 PM Location: The Bridge Bar - 33 Gulf Breeze Pkwy A, Gulf Breeze, FL 32561 Coordinates: 862J9RCF+G6 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by emailing me. Thanks! If I don't hear from anyone, I won't be there. I work for Metaculus, but promise not to talk your ear off about forecasting. (Unless you want it talked off.) MIAMI, FL Contact: Eric Magro, eric135033[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: eric135#4943 Time: Sunday, September 11, 5:00 PM Location: Buckminster Fuller Fly's Eye Dome 140 NE 39th St #001, Miami, FL 33137 ----- Look for a paper sign on a table that says ACX MEETUP west of the dome. Coordinates: 76QXRR65+V2 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Miami ACX started in 2017. Our official meetup happens monthly in either Miami or Broward. There are activities happening on a weekly basis from Miami to Palm Beach. We have a Facebook group, Discord server, and Meetup.com group. ORLANDO, FL Contact: Noah Topper, noah[dot]topper[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 7:00 PM Location: 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL. We'll be meeting up at UCF's pavilion near Garages A and I. I'll have a pretty ACX Meetup sign. Coordinates: 76WWJQ2X+82 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We try to meet up once a month, so far they've just been casual social meetups with natural discussions of rationality topics. Here's our Discord link :) Notes: RSVPs on LessWrong would be greatly appreciated. :) TALLAHASSEE, FL Contact: JF, jf19o[at]fsu[dot]edu Time: Monday, August 29, 2:00 PM Location: Landis, FSU. I will be wearing a black shirt Coordinates: 862QCPR3+PX Event link(s): LessWrong ATHENS, GA Contact: Dallon, knox[dot]dallon[dot]a[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: leonard#4208 Time: Saturday, October 15, 3:00 PM Location: Hendershots on Prince Avenue Coordinates: 865RXJ68+2W Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I might bring some board games ATLANTA, GA Contact: Steve French, steve[at]digitaltoolfactory[dot]net Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: Bold Monk Brewing - 1737 Ellsworth Industrial Blvd NW suite d-1 · Atlanta, GA (upstairs – look for the ACX Atlanta sign) Coordinates: 865QRH2F+V8 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We've been in existence for four years – we have a dedicated crew and a very active Slack group Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or Meetup.com HONOLULU, HI Contact: Matt Popovich, mattpopovich[at]outlook[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 4:00 PM Location: We'll meet at Magic Island at Ala Moana Beach Park, 1201 Ala Moana Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96814. From the parking lot, walk along the left side of the peninsula out toward Magic Island Lagoon. We're usually near the end of the peninsula, somewhere around the bathroom building. Look for the large 'ACX' sign. Coordinates: 73H475M3+JP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Honolulu Rationality hosts discussion meetups about twice a month in Ala Moana Beach Park. Check us out on our website BOISE, ID Contact: Julia and John, jae[dot]miomu[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, October 7, 6:00 PM Location: Old Timer's Shelter in Ann Morrison Park. I will have an ACX sign. Coordinates: 85M5JQ6P+96 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP and feel free to bring kids. CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, IL Contact: Ben, cu[dot]acx[dot]meetups[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 9, 7:00 PM Location: Siebel Center for Computer Science, Room 4403 Coordinates: 86GH4Q7G+H8F Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Discord server Notes: RSVPs are appreciated but not at all required. You can RSVP by email or by pinging me in the Discord server. Suggested entrance is the East side of the building (see Coordinates) - we'll try to make sure at least that door is unlocked, but if it isn't then ping us on email or Discord. CHICAGO, IL Contact: Todd, info[at]chicagorationality[dot]com, https://chicagorationality.com/ Time: Sunday, September 18, 1:00 PM Location: Grant Park - North side of Balbo between the tracks and Columbus Coordinates: 86HJV9FH+84 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Chicago Rationality does a monthly discussion meetup (typically the first Saturday of the month) and a monthly social meetup (typically the third weekend of the month) Notes: Sign up for our email list to be notified of future meetups EVANSTON, IL Contact: Uzair, uzairq93[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 7:00 PM Location: 626 Church Street, Evanston IL 60201 Coordinates: 86JJ28X9+5WQ Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: The venue is a pub but it's really more of a restaurant, big long tables available so space should be fine and non drinkers shouldn't feel too out of place. BLOOMINGTON, IN Contact: Avery, acxbloomington[at]fastmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 16, 2:00 PM Location: Switchyard Park. Will be at one of the tables near the Rogers Street parking lot. I will bring a cardboard sign that says “ACX”. Coordinates: 86FM4FX6+4Q Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We met last year for Meetups Everywhere and it was fun! Here's a link to our Discord. Notes: You can RSVP via Discord or email, but you are encouraged to show up even if you did not RSVP! WEST LAFAYETTE, IN Contact: NR, mapreader4[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 1:00 PM Location: 1275 1st Street, West Lafayette, IN 47906. We'll be in the south of the Earhart Hall lobby (not the dining court) near the piano, and I will be wearing a green shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 86GMC3GG+728 Event link(s): LessWrong LEXINGTON, KY Contact: Nathan, nwculley[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 7:00 PM Location: Blue Stallion Brewing. 610 W. 3rd St., Lexington, KY 40508. We will have a sign indicating we are the ACX meetup. Coordinates: 86CQ3F4X+VF Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet 1-2 times a month to talk about ACX, books, memes, etc., often over drinks and board games. NEW ORLEANS, LA Contact: Blake, blake[at]philosophers[dot]group Time: Sunday, September 4, 11:11 AM Location: Petite Clouet Cafe. Look for the group with an iPad that has a People’s Pint sticker. Coordinates: 76XFXX73+8R Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Website Notes: Hybrid in-person and online, video link sent weekly. Email for the link. BOSTON, MA Contact: Robi Rahman, robirahman94[at]gmail[dot]com, 7039818526 Time: Saturday, September 10, 5:00 PM Location: Boston Common, at the Parkman Bandstand gazebo Coordinates: 87JC9W3M+PR Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com Notes: We'll be providing food at the meetup, and giving out free books related to ACX, rationality, and effective altruism. Email the hosts if you'd like a particular book or you have any dietary restrictions. Our group is also doing a tour of the JFK Presidential Library on September 9, you’re welcome to join! NORTHAMPTON, MA Contact: Alex, alex[at]alexliebowitz[dot]com Time: Friday, September 9, 6:00 PM Location: The Deck, 125A Pleasant St., Northampton MA 01096. The official address is bizarre and inaccurate; it's the outdoor dining part of a group of bars & restaurants in a former rail station... a whole block away from Pleasant St. The simplest way to get to The Deck is to enter The Platform, one of the other restaurants, by its street entrance around 36 Strong Ave., here (make sure to look at street view). Go inside and ask them to show you to The Deck. We'll have a sign. Coordinates: 87J9899F+H7H Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We started in the 2018 Meetups Everywhere and is still going strong. We aim to meet about once every two weeks. At most meetups we get about 5-7 people out of a rotation of 15-20; Meetups Everywhere and other special events tend to bring in a few more than usual. We're a totally social meetup with no 'format' or suggested readings. Although it's not rare for us to touch on ACX articles and related topics, the conversation varies wildly, and you are welcome even if you're the most occasional ACX reader. Notes: We have a (not very active) Discord where you can DM me or post on a public channel. I'm most responsive by email. There is a small chance we'll have to change the location to somewhere else in Northampton. Please check the Less Wrong or Facebook posts on or after August 26 to get the final word on location. BALTIMORE, MD Contact: Rivka, rivka[at]adrusi[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 7:00 PM Location: UMBC outside of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, on the north side. I will have a sign that says ACX meetup. Parking is free on the weekends. Edit: Rain is forecasted; if it’s raining, we will be inside of the Performing Arts building, on the ground floor just inside the entrance. Coordinates: 87F5774P+53 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet Sundays at 7pm — half are in person and half are virtual. Notes: There will be pizza and drinks DETROIT, MI Contact: Matt Arnold, matt[dot]mattarn[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Tuesday, September 20, 7:00 PM Location: Tenacity Craft, 8517 2nd Ave, Detroit, MI 48202 Coordinates: 86JR9WG9+R6 Event link(s): LessWrong MINNEAPOLIS, MN Contact: Timothy, tmbond[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: Meet at the picnic tables near the southeast corner of Powderhorn Park - the ones by the parking lot. I will be wearing a green Google t-shirt and have a sign that says ACX. Coordinates: 86P8WPRW+76 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I will bring some snacks (but not a full lunch, so eat before or bring something if you'll be that hungry). Please RSVP on LessWrong. KANSAS CITY, MO Contact: Alex, alex[dot]hedtke[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 6:30 PM Location: We will be in the courtyard above Whole Foods (which is also an apartment complex). You can enter through the apartment lobby, located on Oak Street. We will have runners shepherding people from the entrance up to the courtyard. Coordinates: 86F72CM8+RR Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com SAINT LOUIS, MO Contact: JohnBuridan, littlejohnburidan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 1:00 PM Location: Lily Pond Shelter, Tower Grove Park, St. Louis Coordinates: 86CFJP4R+XV Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: BYOB WEST PLAINS, MO Contact: Liam, liamhession[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 12:00 PM Location: 10/40 Coffee, 24 Court Square, West Plains, MO Coordinates: 868CP4HW+CV Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Hoping to get anyone from around the Ozark region DURHAM, NC Contact: Will Jarvis, willdjarvis[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 8, 7:30 PM Location: Ponysaurus Brewing Company, 219 Hood St, Durham Coordinates: 8773X4Q3+QW Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet weekly! We also have a Discord LAKEWOOD, NJ Contact: Ben L, mywebdev3[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 29, 8:30 PM Location: TBD Event link(s): LessWrong MORRISTOWN, NJ Contact: Matt, matt[dot]brooks[at]impactmarkets[dot]io, Discord: Matt B#0216 Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM Location: 10 N Park Pl, Morristown, NJ 07960 (at the center of the Morristown Green) Coordinates: 87G7QGW9+RJ Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: This is the first meetup, come be a founding member of the Northern NJ ACX/EA/LW group! PRINCETON, NJ Contact: Danny K, dskumpf[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 3:00 PM Location: Palmer Square, Princeton, NJ 08540. On the green right outside The Bent Spoon and Rojo's Roastary, near the big tree. I'll have some sort of ACX Meetup sign! Coordinates: 87G7982Q+2CP Event link(s): LessWrong LAS VEGAS, NV Contact: Jonathan Ray, ray[dot]jonathan[dot]w[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 11:45 AM Location: At El Segundo Sol restaurant with giant ACX MEETUP signs Coordinates: 85864RHJ+3H Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet regularly and mostly just socialize. We have a new Discord server. RENO, NV Contact: Steven, stevenl451[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Steeven#7407 Time: Friday, September 2, 5:30 PM Location: We'll be in Crissie Caughlin Park, near the tables and the swing set Coordinates: 85F2G46W+FG Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs and please RSVP on LessWrong if you are going BUFFALO, NY Contact: George Herold, ggherold[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 1:00 PM Location: 932 Welch Rd. Java Center, NY 14082 Coordinates: 87J3W467+8P Notes: Last-minute location change! LONG ISLAND, NY Contact: Gabe, gabeaweil[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, October 27, 7:00 PM Location: Whales Tale in Northport Coordinates: 87G8VJRW+99 Event link(s): LessWrong NEW YORK CITY, NY Contact: Jasmine, jasminermj[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 4:00 PM Location: Pavillion @ Rockefeller Park, Warren St / River Terrace Coordinates: 87G7PX9M+4J3 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: OBNYC has a Discord and a Google Group; the Google Group is the main mailing list we use for events NEWBURGH, NY Contact: Pedro David Bonilla, proportionatetoevidence[at]gmail[dot]com, Cell 8452001681 Time: Saturday, September 24, 10:00 AM Location: Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 1421 NY-300, Newburgh, NY 12550 Coordinates: 87H7GWCH+GF Event link(s): LessWrong ROCHESTER, NY Contact: Skivverus, skivverus[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Skivverus#5915 Time: Saturday, October 8, 1:00 PM Location: 4870 Culver Road; will be wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and glasses, and may or may not have figured out a sign due to just getting back from honeymoon. Look for a pair of parrots, one white, one green with a yellow/orange head. Coordinates: 87M46FM6+Q5P Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Venue very near amusement park; non-bathroom, non-parking amenities are therefore available but not free. Plan accordingly. Not particularly attached to specific location named, just happen to live reasonably close to there; alternative suggestions acceptable. Canadian visitors also welcome should your logistics permit; airport transportation available. RSVP via Discord preferred, but email will also work. CLEVELAND, OH Contact: Jack Zhang, LukeZhao9[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 1:00 PM Location: Picnic tables at Wade Oval (university circle) Coordinates: 86HWG96Q+GC5 Event link(s): LessWrong COLUMBUS, OH Contact: Daniel, daniel[dot]m[dot]adamiak[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 3:00 PM Location: Jeffrey Park - Clinton Shelter. I will be wearing a red shirt. Coordinates: 86FVX3C3+QF Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet once a month. We discuss EA, AI and other two letter initialisms. Occasionally we go for walks in local grottos and nature trails. Notes: Email me if you want to be added to the mailing list to receive any updates or future invites. RSVPing is appreciated. TOLEDO, OH Contact: Scout, scout[dot]sivar[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 12:00 PM Location: Black Kite Coffee Coordinates: 86HRMCCV+9R Event link(s): LessWrong OKLAHOMA CITY, OK Contact: bean, battleshipbean[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 1:00 PM Location: Edmond Public Library/Shannon Miller Park. I will be wearing a hat that says USS Iowa on it. Coordinates: 8674MG3C+MW Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Had four people last year and a good time, moved to Edmond because a lot of us are up here. ALBANY, OR Contact: Kenan (he/him), kbitikofer[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM Location: Bowman Park, Albany, Oregon. In or near the shelter. I will wear a bright red shirt and carry a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 84PRJWR7+XC6 Event link(s): LessWrong CORVALLIS, OR Contact: Ethan Ashkie, ethanashkie[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, September 7, 6:00 PM Location: Common Fields, in the reserved outdoor seating near the entrance Coordinates: 84PRHP5P+VQ Event link(s): LessWrong EUGENE, OR Contact: Ben Smith, benjsmith[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, August 31, 7:00 PM Location: The Barn Light, 924 Willamette St, Eugene 97401 Coordinates: 84PR2WX4+VV Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much pizza to get, but if you forget, don't worry about it, we want you to come along anyway PORTLAND, OR Contact: Sam F Celarek, support[at]pearcommunity[dot]com, 513-432-3310, Discord: Sam Celarek#2845 Time: Friday, September 9, 5:00 PM Location: 205 NW 4th Ave Coordinates: 84QVG8FG+V4 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Portland Effective Altruism and Rationality is very active. We have book clubs, bi-weekly AI safety meet-ups, bi-weekly topical meet-ups, bi-weekly socials, and have an active Discord. Notes: We would prefer you RSVP on Meetup.com a week beforehand so that we can get the right amount of food! HARRISBURG, PA Contact: Phil, acxharrisburg[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: Ever Grain Brewing Co, 4444 Carlisle Pike, Camp Hill, PA 17011 - We will be sitting at one of the picnic tables outside with an ACX MEETUP sign Coordinates: 87G562QQ+8P Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Small monthly meetup group based out of Harrisburg - celebrating 1 year of actuality! You can see more of our events on LessWrong. INDIANA, PA Contact: Eric, ericindianapa[at]gmail[dot]com, 717-256-2717 Time: Saturday, September 24, 11:00 AM Location: Caffè Amadeus in downtown Indiana, PA. I will have a sign with 'ACX Meetup' on one of the tables. Coordinates: 87G2JRFX+48 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP via email or text message so I know how many to expect. PHILADELPHIA, PA Contact: Wes and Diana, rationalphilly[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 22, 6:30 PM Location: The Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square. The meeting room is in the basement, look for the signs. Coordinates: 87F6WRXG+FQ Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We tend to meet in downtown Philly on the last Thursday of the month. We're aiming to make the Ethical Society our new steady location. We have many links: Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group Notes: We'll be ordering food from a local restaurant, so no need to eat first. BYOB PITTSBURGH, PA Contact: Justin, pghacx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: Westinghouse Shelter @ Schenley Park (W Circuit Rd near Schenley Dr). We have the outdoor shelter reserved, so light rain shouldn't be a problem, but in the event of extreme weather, we may relocate indoors (our default 'contingency indoor location' is Crazy Mocha Coffee on 2100 Murray Ave in Squirrel Hill). Coordinates: 87G2C3Q4+773 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet monthly-ish for general discussion and chit-chat, email me if you'd like to be notified of future meetups. STATE COLLEGE, PA Contact: John Slow, auk480[at]psu[dot]edu Time: Thursday, September 8, 5:00 PM Location: Old Main. I will be carrying an ACX meetup sign. Coordinates: 87G4Q4WP+HV Event link(s): LessWrong SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO Contact: Dan Gelfarb, danielgelfarb[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: Lote 23, back corner under the tents. I will be wearing a blue shirt with a sign that says ACX meetup on it. Coordinates: 77CMCWVM+W32 Event link(s): LessWrong PROVIDENCE, RI Contact: James Bailey, feanor1600[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Prospect Terrace park, to the right of the Roger Williams statue Coordinates: 87HCRHJV+24 Event link(s): LessWrong SIOUX FALLS, SD Contact: S. C., villainsplus[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 2, 5:00 PM Location: 410 E 26th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 - the pavillion on the west side of McKennan Park, or the tables just south of it if I can't book it. I'll be the guy with the grill. Coordinates: 86M5G7JH+W57 Event link(s): LessWrong MEMPHIS, TN Contact: Michael, michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Monday, September 5, 1:00 PM Location: French Truck Coffee at Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104. We will be at one of the many tables near French Truck Coffee and I will have a sign that says ACX MEETUP. Coordinates: 867F5X2P+QHC Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet about every month or so. We've been around since 2019 but only regularly since mid 2021 due to the pandemic. We have a Discord server. NASHVILLE, TN Contact: Ellen, enwiegand[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 11:00 AM Location: OneCity Nashville (8 City Blvd, Nashville, TN 37209), next to the volleyball courts. I'll have a pink ballcap that says SPINSTER on it. Coordinates: 868M552H+XW Event link(s): LessWrong AUSTIN, TX Contact: Silas Barta, sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 12:00 PM Location: 4001 N Lamar, Austin Texas, park by Central Market near stone tables and tents Coordinates: 86248746+8C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Austin LessWrong has a weekly focused discussion, a weekly social mixer, a weekly online book club, and a monthly movie night. Been around since 2011. Notes: Location may change as we are talking to other venues BRYAN/COLLEGE STATION, TX Contact: Kenny, easwaran[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 9, 5:00 PM Location: Back patio of Torchy's Tacos at Texas and New Main. I'll have a yellow umbrella and pinkish/purple hair Coordinates: JMFC+4J Event link(s): LessWrong DALLAS, TX Contact: Ethan Morse, ethan[dot]morse97[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: ethanmorse#5255 Time: Sunday, September 11, 12:00 PM Location: Union, 3705 Cedar Springs Rd, Dallas, TX 75219. We'll be in the upstairs conference room. Coordinates: 8645R55R+9M9 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much food to get HOUSTON, TX Contact: Eric Magro, eric135033[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Empire Cafe, 1732 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77098 ---- Look for a table with an ACX MEETUP sign. Coordinates: 76X6PHVW+5H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: There are meetups every week. We have a Discord and a Facebook group. WACO, TX Contact: Mike, BaylorACX[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 1:00 PM Location: Cameron Park, picnic tables next to Jacob's Ladder Coordinates: 8634HVG2+V9 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please email me if you're thinking about attending! Would love to start an ACX community here :) SALT LAKE CITY, UT Contact: Ross Richey (aka Jeremiah), wearenotsaved[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 3:00 PM Location: Liberty Park near the ChargePoint stations Coordinates: 85GCP4WF+VJ Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet every other month, we do book clubs and movie nights as well. Notes: Will be outdoors. If the weather looks bad, email event organizer to check on location. CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA Contact: RL, effectivealtruismatuva[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 5:00 PM Location: 12 Rotunda Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903 - We’ll meet at the picnic tables across the street from The Virginian. There will be an ACX sign. Coordinates: 87C32FPX+3H4 Event link(s): LessWrong LYNCHBURG, VA Contact: Craig, craigbdaniel[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Three Roads Brewing - I will be wearing a purple t-shirt and will place an ""ACX"" card on the table Coordinates: 8792CV65+5G NORFOLK, VA Contact: Willa, walambert[at]pm[dot]me Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Pagoda & Oriental Garden, 265 W Tazewell St, Norfolk, VA 23510. I will be wearing a bright green shirt, will have a large green & yellow hat on, and will have a sign with ACX Meetup on it. Coordinates: 8785RPX4+W3 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: Hi! Virginia Rationalists was co-founded in Norfolk VA earlier this year by Willa & Yitzi with the goal of growing a thriving ACX / LW / EA community in our city & the state of Virginia. We meet every week at Fair Grounds cafe on Wednesday evenings from 5-7:30pm Eastern Time. We have a Discord server and a Twitter. RESTON, VA Contact: James, jrbalch333[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 1:30 PM Location: The matchbox at 1900 Reston Station Blvd, Reston, VA 20190 on the 1st floor of the giant Google building. I'll be holding a copy of Sapiens. Coordinates: 87C4WMX6+9X Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Email me to be added to the WhatsApp group RICHMOND, VA Contact: Cedar, cedar[dot]ren+acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com, @Cedar at this Discord server Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:30 PM Location: Richmond Public Libraries, West End Branch 5420 Patterson Ave, Richmond, VA 23226 Coordinates: 8794HFHQ+3G Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong & optionally reach out to me on Discord to introduce yourself! BURLINGTON, VT Contact: Forrest, lucidobservor[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Battery Park, at the benches in the south-western corner of the park, near the cannons facing the lake. I will have an 'ACX Meetup' sign. Coordinates: 87P8FQJH+8P Event link(s): LessWrong BELLINGHAM, WA Contact: Alex, bellinghamrationalish[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 29, 5:30 PM Location: Lake Padden Park, at one of the tables near the lake by the dog park. If it's rainy, we'll meet in one of the two covered gazebo areas just north (right, if you're facing the lake) of the planned spot. If the forecast looks really bad (e.g. very cold), I'll post an indoor location to the Meetup.com page at least three days in advance. Coordinates: 84WVMHX3+GM Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Bellingham Rationalish discusses (in good faith!) topics in and around rationality. We usually meet the evening of the last Wednesday of each month. Our first meeting was a 2021 ACX Everywhere meetup. Notes: Please RSVP on Meetup so I have an idea how many people to expect. Kids, animals, food, beverages, etc. are all welcome. SEATTLE, WA Contact: Nikita Sokolsky, sokolx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 5:00 PM Location: Optimism Brewing (1158 Broadway, Seattle) Coordinates: 84VVJM7H+4Q Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong (or FB/Meetup) for planning purposes MADISON, WI Contact: Mary Wang, mmwang[at]wisc[dot]edu Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: 1022 High St. Blue house with red porches. If weather permits, we'll be in my large backyard, which has more seating now than last year. If rain, come in the side door. There will be air purifiers and open windows. Masks optional. Look for a sign at the end of the driveway that says ACX/SSC Meetup. Coordinates: 86MG3H3X+XW Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We have met fortnightly in the past, but quit last year when it got too cold to meet outside. We typically have shared a meal, sat around my kitchen table and talked. Have held a Solstice celebration.
Inline links: 866MP88H+53, LessWrong, 8559FVVQ+6C, LessWrong, 849VGP8C+RRG, LessWrong, here, 849VVP5R+X7V, LessWrong, mailing list, Discord server, Facebook group, 856393VX+VQ, LessWrong, 84FW6W8H+C5, LessWrong, 8554M526+7H, LessWrong, the server, 8553XHWM+GP, LessWrong, LessWrong group, website, 8554J48R+WCX, LessWrong, Facebook event, 8544PVQ8+Q7, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Discord server, 849VQHC3+V8, LessWrong, 849W825J+6P, LessWrong, 85544VW4+RV, LessWrong, 85GP2V96+JQ, LessWrong, 85FJ9QXP+QMF, LessWrong, 85FQP2VP+9R, LessWrong, 85FPMW64+MW, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, 87H84PCH+CM, LessWrong, 87H9QFFH+J7, LessWrong, 87H9836C+8VG, LessWrong, 87C4WX33+3J, LessWrong, Facebook event, 76RWH224+44, LessWrong, 862J9RCF+G6, LessWrong, 76QXRR65+V2, LessWrong, Facebook group, Discord server, Meetup.com group, 76WWJQ2X+82, LessWrong, Discord link, 862QCPR3+PX, LessWrong, 865RXJ68+2W, LessWrong, 865QRH2F+V8, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 73H475M3+JP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, our website, 85M5JQ6P+96, LessWrong, 86GH4Q7G+H8F, LessWrong, Discord server, 86HJV9FH+84, LessWrong, Chicago Rationality, 86JJ28X9+5WQ, LessWrong, 86FM4FX6+4Q, LessWrong, our Discord, 86GMC3GG+728, LessWrong, 86CQ3F4X+VF, LessWrong, 76XFXX73+8R, LessWrong, Website, 87JC9W3M+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com, here, 87J9899F+H7H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord, 87F5774P+53, LessWrong, 86JR9WG9+R6, LessWrong, 86P8WPRW+76, LessWrong, 86F72CM8+RR, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 86CFJP4R+XV, LessWrong, 868CP4HW+CV, LessWrong, 8773X4Q3+QW, LessWrong, a Discord, LessWrong, 87G7QGW9+RJ, LessWrong, 87G7982Q+2CP, LessWrong, 85864RHJ+3H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, 85F2G46W+FG, LessWrong, 87J3W467+8P, 87G8VJRW+99, LessWrong, 87G7PX9M+4J3, LessWrong, Discord, Google Group, Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 87H7GWCH+GF, LessWrong, 87M46FM6+Q5P, LessWrong, 86HWG96Q+GC5, LessWrong, Clinton Shelter, 86FVX3C3+QF, LessWrong, 86HRMCCV+9R, LessWrong, 8674MG3C+MW, LessWrong, 84PRJWR7+XC6, LessWrong, 84PRHP5P+VQ, LessWrong, 84PR2WX4+VV, LessWrong, 84QVG8FG+V4, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, 87G562QQ+8P, LessWrong, on LessWrong, 87G2JRFX+48, LessWrong, 87F6WRXG+FQ, LessWrong, Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group, 87G2C3Q4+773, LessWrong, 87G4Q4WP+HV, LessWrong, 77CMCWVM+W32, LessWrong, 87HCRHJV+24, LessWrong, 86M5G7JH+W57, LessWrong, 867F5X2P+QHC, LessWrong, Discord server, 868M552H+XW, LessWrong, 86248746+8C, LessWrong, Austin LessWrong, JMFC+4J, LessWrong, 8645R55R+9M9, LessWrong, 76X6PHVW+5H, LessWrong, Discord, Facebook group, 8634HVG2+V9, LessWrong, 85GCP4WF+VJ, LessWrong, 87C32FPX+3H4, LessWrong, 8792CV65+5G, 8785RPX4+W3, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, Twitter, 87C4WMX6+9X, LessWrong, this Discord server, 8794HFHQ+3G, LessWrong, 87P8FQJH+8P, LessWrong, 84WVMHX3+GM, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 84VVJM7H+4Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 86MG3H3X+XW, LessWrong, Facebook event
Another Bay Area House Party
October 19, 2022 · Original source
“Heyyyyy, I haven’t seen you in forever!” says a person whose name is statistically likely to be Michael or David. “What have you been working on?”
“Oh man,” says Michael or David, “The most exciting startup. Just an amazing startup. We’re doing procedural myth generation with large language models.”
Maybe Michael or David senses your skepticism. His tone becomes more confrontational. “And if myths are really just for ‘galaxy-brainers who are too obsessed with the classical western humanities tradition’, then explain why my startup has already gotten $10 million in funding from Peter Thiel!”
Highlights From The Comments On Telemedicine Regulations
April 03, 2023 · Original source
Some people countered that drug addiction was very bad, and preventing it is worth some inconvenience. For example, Michael van der Ruyt:
Inline links: Michael van der Ruyt
Some people express concerns about “pill mills”, unscrupulous companies that hire doctors to prescribe to anyone who asks. These are pretty common for Adderall in particular. Michael:
Inline links: Michael
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
BORDEAUX, FRANCE Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2023-04-22[at]weboroso[dot]anonaddy[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 22nd, 05:00 PM Location: Place Victoire, south of the column/the Turtles. I wear a mask in places with a lot of strangers, and I will be holding a foldable-keyboard handheld. I will also write an A4 ACX Meetup sign. https://www.openstreetmap.org/?query=44.83054%2C-0.57268#map=19/44.83057/-0.57262 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCJG+7XG Event Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/muYXAfbsJj4RCkEYY/ssc-acx-meetups-everywhere-spring-bordeaux-22-april-17-00
Inline links: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?query=44.83054%2C-0.57268#map=19/44.83057/-0.57262, https://plus.codes/8CPXRCJG+7XG
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 13th, 01:30 PM Location: French Truck Coffee, Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium. 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104 We'll be at a table with a sign that says ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHC Notes: We meet monthly and we have a Discord: https://discord.gg/3C74kCmsD9
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHC, https://discord.gg/3C74kCmsD9
Highlights From The Comments On Housing Density And Prices
May 10, 2023 · Original source
Makeshift housing in a North Dakota oil boom town (source) If each person creates half a job, the original 1,000 oilmen attract 500 service workers, those 500 attract another 250, and so on until population stabilizes at 2,000 people. In this model, if there are fewer than 2,000 houses in the town, demand exceeds supply (no matter what is going on in the rest of the country), but if there are more than 2,000, supply exceeds demand. So if we imagine Google’s presence as an oil-like resource, the extra demand for housing in the Bay should gradually decline: at some point, you will have finished housing the Google workers and the service workers who support them. But this isn’t right either, because Google isn’t a natural resource - it’s a company founded by Bay Area residents. If you got more Bay Area residents, you would (with some delay) get more Googles. Or: Austin gets lots of jobs from Tesla. Tesla wasn’t founded by Austinites. But it moved to Austin when it became a known “tech hub”, ie a place with lots of tech companies and tech employees. It wouldn’t have moved to Austin if Austin was still an uninhabited plain or a one-horse town. So as Austin got bigger, it attracted more tech companies. So in both the Bay Area case and the Austin case, having more people attracted more tech companies, either because the residents themselves found the company or because the company gets attracted to this newly bustling city. Potential counterargument: Each new Bay Area resident gives the Bay another lottery ticket to found the next Google. If having the first Google gets it an extra 1 million people, but there are 300 million people in the US, then those extra 1 million only give it a 1/300 chance of winning the next lottery. So even though the Bay Area won the lottery once, and this made it have high demand, this doesn’t mean the high demand will cause it to win more lotteries. If you win the lottery once, spend all your winnings on more lottery tickets, and keep doing this forever, you haven’t invented an infinite money printing machine, eventually you’ll just lose. Potential counter-counter-argument: the Bay got Google, and Facebook, and Apple, and . . . so these can’t all be separate lotteries. I think you should probably model it as a high-level lottery to become the next hub of a tech-sized industry, plus many low-level lotteries where once you’re the tech hub, you’re attracting lots of techies, and each techie gives you a ticket in a lottery where the denominator is the number of techies to found the next big tech company. And the Bay might have half the US’s techie population. So maybe here there is a self-sustaining lottery-winning cycle, at least until tech plays itself out and nobody wants any more tech companies. And that might take a long time. Tom (author of Tom Thought) writes: The primary drivers of demand for living in NYC are the specific opportunities available in NYC. It is true that on long time horizons, one of the reasons these opportunities have tended to collect in NYC is that it is a dense place. But those aren't the only reasons - NYC is much more important than other, bigger cities in other parts of the world for complex historical reasons. Even if a catastrophe were to wipe out half the city, there would still be a great deal of demand to live near important institutions like Broadway, Wall Street, Port of NY & NJ, Columbia, etc (assuming those institutions survived the catastrophe). Increasing the number of housing units has a very mechanical impact on how many people can live in the place. But it has only a second-order impact on the types of institutions that drive demand to live in the city. People don't just generically crave to live near other people for the most part (a handful of urbanist freaks like myself excepted). The Bay Area is a great example of this. It is much less populated than other much cheaper cities. Density isn't why people want to live there - it's access to a specific culture and specific institutions. Demand for that is not simply a function of density - some people want to be part of Bay Area culture and others don't. Adding more units will induce some demand as a second-order effect, but will bring prices down as a first-order effect. To relate this to your model: we might be able to say that the country has a certain number of abstract "culture points" that have been allocated to different cities by various historical forces. Each culture point a city has increases demand to live in that city by a certain amount. Adding more people to the city may allow it to generate additional culture points over time, or acquire culture points from other cities, but this doesn't happen right away, and is determined by a host of factors other than just density. Under this model, we expect a place like NYC to always cost much more than North Dakota (since NYC possesses a large number of culture points), but we would also expect that adding additional housing units to NYC would bring costs down (since there are now additional housing units per culture point). Perhaps this process will over time allow NYC to steal away some culture points from Chicago, Boston, or other cities, but this is a secondary effect. This just seems to be passing the buck. Yes, people move to New York because it has Broadway, Columbia University, and Wall Street. Why does it have those things? Because one in every X New York citizens founds a good artistic/educations/financial institution, and New York has a large population of employees to work at those institutions and customers to patronize those institutions. If Conanicut Island had a population of 10 million people instead of Manhattan, there would be lots of great institutions on Conanicut and it would have more culture points. I don’t think it’s a culture-point game and population/density just sort of occasionally redistributes culture points, I think to a first approximation culture points just track population/density. Maybe they track the population/density of upper class people better than the total population/density, but I don’t think this is a big enough distinction to sink the argument. 3. Comments About Chinese Ghost Cities Some people brought these up as a good natural experiment: the Chinese really did try building millions of houses on their equivalent of a North Dakota plain. What happened? Jeremiah Johnson (author of Infinite Scroll) writes: You currently seem like you're at the stage of understanding the thought experiments pretty well, but not understanding them on a DEEP level. For example with your hypothetical, this has actually happened before! Kind of. China built a bunch of 'ghost cities' basically out of nothing, and while there was an initial craze of speculation and tons of investment and building... nobody went to live in those cities most of the time. And now they're deeply distressed assets worth basically nothing. When nobody actually lives in the ghost city, it doesn't matter that they have super dense housing. There's no demand. (the only reason they might be worth something is that the CCP very, very much does not want to pop their huge housing bubble and is likely to bail out some of the parties involved) Parmenides (author of Last House On The Left) writes: I think your mixing up the agglomeration effects of density, which is what induces the demand, and the housing supply. You can't just build a city and expect people to move in, China has tried that. But if you have the agglomeration effects of density and shortage of housing due to artificial constraints, which we have all across the US, then you get dense areas with high housing costs. sdwr writes: Think of China's ghost cities / apartment blocks. Prices surely can't be that high there. Maybe the answer is that developers are good at their job, and build supply where theres demand for it? But several other people object that although the Western press made a big deal about Chinese ghost cities a few years ago, it mostly just took a couple of years for people to move in, and now at least some of them seem to be thriving. For example, Michael quotes the Wikipedia article, Under-occupied Developments In China: Reporting in 2018, Shepard noted that "Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities". Ash Lael writes: I'm sceptical of the Chinese "ghost city" phenomenon. I haven't explored the issue rigorously but my impression is that in areas that were previously dismissed as "ghost cities" like Ordos Kangbashi, the population is now large and growing. I think we in the west are so used to infrastructure bottlenecks and short sightedness and anti-construction policies that the idea of it being possible to build the housing and infrastructure to accomodate expected demand ten years in the future is completely foreign to us. Perhaps building brand new cities before they are even needed is what the YIMBY utopia looks like. See also Bloomberg: China’s Ghost Cities Are Finally Stirring To Life After Years Of Empty Streets. This wasn’t trivial. It looks like the Chinese government had to put in some work to make people move in, including opening good schools and universities there. Probably if they had just built apartments in the middle of the desert and nothing else, they would have stayed empty. But that’s even more of a reductio ad absurdum than the original ghost city plan. Kangbashi, China’s most famous ghost city. What are housing prices like in the ghost city? Again from Bloomberg: Sitting on the southern outskirts of Inner Mongolia’s Ordos City (population 2.2 million), Kangbashi was the archetypal ghost city 10 years ago, with barren boulevards and empty buildings standing forlornly in the desert. Local officials are adamant that things have changed. They say 91% of homes in the district are occupied. In fact, after a yearslong construction freeze, the government approved six housing projects in 2020 and expects 3,000 homes to be built by the end of this year. Apartments in a new development are selling for 9,500 yuan per square meter, and downtown they go for 15,000 to 16,000 yuan, according to Liu Yueyue, 28, a salesman at a new residential development in the district’s northeast. “Would houses in a ghost town sell at such high prices?” asks Liu. Half of his customers come from outside Kangbashi, and most are parents who want to send their children to the well-regarded local schools, he says. Looking at this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Kangbashi seems squarely in the middle - for example, Wuhan and Xian are also in the 15,000 - 16,000 range. I claim this supports my argument: surely twenty years ago, houses in this particular deserted corner of Inner Mongolia would have been dirt cheap (if any even existed). But if you build a city there, it becomes just as expensive as any other city! Here it’s very obvious that the density caused the high prices instead of the other way around. Still, the Chinese housing market is weird, with significant vacancies even in expensive, well-developed cities. Paul Botts: No official vacancy rates are published in China and no specific definition of it exists there. Various think tanks and researchers both within that country and elsewhere have published estimates ranging from as low as 11 percent to as high as 24 percent. Those estimates have been for varying samples of Chinese cities, have used various definitions of housing vacancy rate, etc. The best (as in most systematic) estimate yet produced has come from researchers at a university in Liaoning. They used night-time urban lightsheds captured by a new (2018 launch) Chinese satellite having a new level of light sensing technology which allows separating out light from parks and plazas. They covered a large sample (49 cities), and made their sample representative of city type, city size, regions within China, etc. They also crossed-referenced with local housing data to ensure accurate balancing of their sample and to confirm that the satellite was successfully identifying light coming from housing blocks. They found vacancy rates of just under 20 percent in China's Tier 1 cities, and found rates above 20 percent in 40 of the 49 cities. They found the highest vacancy rates in western and northeastern cities, which are also the newest ones; that finding is consistent with the hypothesis of significant numbers of recently-built ghost cities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data And Phil H (author of the blog Tang Poetry) writes: The price of housing in China has skyrocketed over the past few decades, as all those extra apartments have been built. I live in a pleasant but unremarkable southern city, and I paid London prices (about 4.5m yuan/$650k for a 1,300 sq ft flat). That seems to match Scott's hypothesis that high density leads to high prices. House prices here have risen much faster than incomes. They've risen in rural areas, too, but the increases in price in cities have been stratospheric. 4. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Considering Tokyo, Even Though I Included A Section In The Post On Why I Didn’t Think Tokyo Was Relevant I won’t name and shame people, but for example: You excluded Tokyo from your dataset. Tokyo has much higher density than SF and much lower price per sqft. Tokyo just kills this. Tokyo is bigger than New York and has significantly lower rent because they build more housing! This is in a wealthy country with even lower interest rates than the US. I don't think you have justified excluding non-US metros, like Tokyo, or Auckland. Doesn't this lead to the natural conclusion that there is a sufficient level of housing to build, and that the problem is that the USA's many metros are structured to prevent housing? It seems like you're just arguing that US metros are bad at building housing, which is also what Matt Yglesias is arguing. "Change my mind about housing, but don't mention Tokyo" is like saying "Change my mind about gun possession, but don't mention Switzerland." You can't test the effect of allowing new housing unless you're willing to look at cities that do, in fact, allow it. Tokyo and NYC both attract tons of new residents But Tokyo's housing rents have been stable, while NYC rents keep rising. Why? Tokyo has permissive housing construction laws. NYC makes building new housing almost illegal. Yes, dense cities are attractive, and that makes them get more dense over time. But it only makes them more expensive if you forbid new housing to keep up with the new residents. Tokyo! But I’m like the 10th person to bring it up… As I wrote on the original post (not even edited in! it’s been there the whole time!): I worry someone will bring up Tokyo as a counterexample. But I think Tokyo managed to build its way to low housing prices in the context of the rest of Japan also having good housing policy. Even if that isn’t true, Tokyo on its own is a quarter of the Japanese market, so it might be able to exhaust the entire pool of Japanese house-seekers by itself! That is, yes, you’re all correct that cities are only expensive in the context of more demand for city housing than the (NIMBY-constrained) city housing market can currently supply. You are all correct that if this problem were solved at the national level, then city housing would be cheap, and every additional city house would make it cheaper. My claim is that marginal changes - like Oakland building an extra 10,000 units, but everyone else staying the same - will most likely increase Oakland prices. Yes, if Oakland unilaterally built 50 million units, that would soak up the entire excess demand and probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). Yes, if the entire US switched to good housing policy at the same time, that would probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). But if we don’t do any of that stuff, and just build another 10,000 houses in Oakland, I think it would probably increase prices in Oakland. Some other people brought up that Japan has a declining population, and it’s much easier to have low house prices when your population is declining (compared to some previous time when number of houses presumably matched number of people), but ddd pointed out that people continue to migrate from the Japanese countryside to Tokyo, so its population continues to increase. Also, Mike (I’m stitching together two comments here): In a country with a declining population, you would expect that fewer homes are being built per capita because there's little to no competition for existing homes. But it's exactly the opposite! Japan builds far more homes per capita than the US does, despite their declining population […] As a result, the average Japanese home is very new and the average house is torn down and replaced after a relatively short 30 years. They're living in nice new homes for cheaper. 5. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Understanding Economics Maximum Limelihood Estimator writes: I think you're making a very common mistake here of confusing supply/demand with *quantity* supplied or quantity demanded. (This is very common! we teach students about this in micro 101 because it's so easy to make!) What you're seeing is that the quantity supplied is correlated with housing prices (true!). But this is very different from establishing that the supply curve--i.e. the amount of housing that would be produced at any given price, and what moves up/down when we regulate/deregulate supply--is positively correlated with price. Figuring out what supply curves look like is a lot less intuitive and requires some high-grade econometrics, which is why economists had to set up a whole commission just to study this particular problem (the Cowles Commission). In terms of resources for understanding how these concepts are different, a micro 101 textbook will cover this distinction. For the econometrics side of this, I've heard good things about Scott Cunningham's *Causal Inference Mixtape*, although I haven't personally used it. My claim is that increasing density within a city shifts the demand curve for housing within that city, because of increasing desirability. MLE later gets more on point: The effect you're discussing here is kind of real in a sense. When the marginal utility of housing increases for *other* people, density arguably becomes more desirable for me, which is kind of like the demand curve shifting up. These are called bandwagon goods and discussed here: http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf In theory, the bandwagon effect could be so strong that parts of the demand curve are upward-sloping. Solutions like this are not, technically, prohibited by the laws of mathematics, just the laws of economics. (And arguably of physics--see paper for conditions where these kinds of bandwagon effects imply the amount of housing in the city would have to be negative). In practice, this effect exists but just can't overcome the normal, non-weird economics that says "making more of a good makes the prices fall." Again, I claim the existence of Manhattan vs. Conanicut shows that sometimes it does. I cannot find the words “housing”, “real estate”, or “land value” anywhere in that paper. Alex Poterack writes: There's two things going on here: confusing shifts in demand with movement along the demand curve, and getting causation backwards. You're assuming density causes prosperity, rather than prosperity causing density. There are ways the former can happen, but the bigger thing is that, for a wide range of historical reasons, you can make a lot of money in NYC and SF, so lots of people want to live there, so they get very dense. This is the prosperity shifting demand right, so at any given price, more people want to live there; this drives prices up, and they go higher the more fixed supply is. If you built a bunch of housing in Oakland, lots of people would move there because it's cheaper, which is movement along the demand curve; it's still the same number of people who want to live there at any price. Now, it's possible that the increased number of people living there makes the city more prosperous (this is the phenomenon of induced demand), which would shift demand right, but there are way more differences between NYC/SF and Oakland than just the density, so I don't think it would shift demand enough to offset this. In particular, if it's just a small increase in small, it's also a small increase in density, so there's almost no shift in demand (but there is movement along the curve). I still think this is missing my point, but I present it here in case anyone else is enlightened by it and wants to try further to convince me I’m making this mistake. 6. Comments By Famous People Who Potentially Have Good Opinions Scott Sumner is an economist and blogger; he writes: It is certainly the case that building more housing can make a city more desirable, and that this effect could be so strong that it overwhelms the price depressing impact of a greater quantity supplied. But studies suggest that this is not generally the case. Texas provides a nice case study. Among Texas’s big metro areas, Austin has the tightest restrictions on building and Houston is the most willing to allow dense infill development. Even though Houston is the larger city, house prices are far higher in Austin: Houston pretty much describes the “Oakland with more housing” outcome that Alexander views as somewhat far-fetched. Only in this case, it’s Austin with more housing. Alexander seems too quick to accept the, “If you build it they will come” idea—that you can build more housing and thereby boost demand so much that prices actually rise. I started the post with a graph of about 50 cities, showing a positive correlation between density and price. I’m having trouble seeing how Sumner’s point isn’t just “if you remove 48 of those cities and cherry-pick two, the relationship is negative”. My attempt to place Austin and Houston on the original graph, using Sumner’s data plus a few other things available online. Why weren’t they on there already? Maybe because the graph is metro areas and Sumner was talking about Austin and Houston as cities, but I’m not sure and agree this is confusing. Everyone knows Austin is more expensive than Houston because Austin is a trendy tech and culture hub and Houston isn’t (and relatedly, because Austin’s median family income is 50% higher than Houston’s). Unless someone wants to claim that its failure to build housing helped turn it into a trendy tech and culture hub, I don’t think there’s much point to this comparison. It’s true that Houston’s bigger size didn’t let it leapfrog over Austin to become a trendy tech and culture hub, which goes against some of what I claimed in the first part of this post. But I never claimed there would be a perfect 1-1 correlation between city size and trendiness, or that you could never find a pair of cities where one was bigger but the other was more trendy. Just that there would be a correlation. Moving on: Here’s the problem with this argument. It mixes up population change due to economic effects such as the benefits of agglomeration, with population changes due to regulatory changes such as less strict zoning. If you look at things this way, then the stylized facts work against Alexander’s argument. Over the past 50 years, increasingly strict zoning has reduced housing construction on big cities like New York and San Francisco. As a result, their populations have increased by less than in cities with less strict zoning, such as Houston. If Alexander were correct, then the price gap between the tightly controlled cities on the coast and the more laissez-faire cities of Middle America should have shrunk over time. Instead, the price gap has widened. New York and San Francisco were always more expensive than other cites, but with tighter zoning and less new construction the gap has become far wider. During the last fifty years, there was also deindustrialization and demographic sorting. This is just the Austin vs. Houston story all over again. Alexander is implicitly viewing this outcome as a “problem” for the city that builds more housing. They must sacrifice so that the rest of the country can gain. But in his scenario, Oakland is better off. Indeed if it were not better off, then why would more people choose to live in Oakland? In order for it to be true that building more housing boosts housing prices, it must also be true that the quality of existing houses (including neighborhood effects) rises by more than enough to offset the increase in supply. That means the new housing construction must make Oakland such a desirable place to live that the amenity effect overwhelms the quantity effect [...] Of course, economic change always has winners and losers. Here’s how I would describe the impact of allowing more housing construction in Oakland, in the unlikely event that this did raise housing prices: 1. America would benefit. 2. Oakland would benefit. 3. Poor people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 4. Affluent people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 5. Homeowners in Oakland would benefit. 6. Some renters in Oakland would benefit (from a more economically dynamic city.) 7. Some renters in Oakland would suffer from higher rents. In the much more likely case where new housing construction would lower prices, the impact described in #5 and #7 might reverse. Either way, there is no defensible argument for not building more housing in Oakland, regardless of the impact on price. If building more housing reduces its price, then there is a strong argument for allowing more housing construction. If building more housing raises its price, then the argument for more construction is even stronger. I agree with all this. Jeremiah Johnson is a co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism, host of the Neoliberal Podcast, and a YIMBY activist (not to be confused with Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, who killed 300 Native Americans and ate their livers). He writes: Here's why you're wrong in a single sentence: Demand causes high prices, not new units. Prices are high in SF and NYC because those are desirable places to live for a huge number of people. People all over the country and the world would live there if they could, and prices reflect that. The fact that the densest cities are the most expensive is true. But the high prices are not caused by density - rather, the density and the high prices are both a consequence of crushingly high demand […] There's a feedback loop, but what matters here is the elasticity, which is less than one. We can measure this empirically. New housing lowers prices via the mechanism of adding supply, which is basic economics and how we expect markets to work. New housing could raise prices if it also made the city a more desirable place to live and shifted people's preferences, such that there was more demand to live there after the new housing is built. If you think it's unclear which of these effects would dominate, luckily we have empirical data that over and over and over shows adding housing supply does indeed lower prices on a local level. This is a fairly well established result that replicates well. edit: I'm actually thinking about drawing out the weighted DAG graphs here to make the conceptual stuff easier, but it would be pretty long. I'd love to do this as a guest post. I’m skeptical of the empirical results because they don’t match the much stronger “Manhattan vs. Conanicut island” empirical results, and if I try to think about why, the best explanation I can think of is that the Manhattan experiment has been going on longer (ie long enough for Manhattan’s extra residents to found businesses and institutions that attract new people). I’ve told him he can try pitching this guest post to me; in either case, I would be interested in seeing the graphs. Several other people also posted this graph that Johnson helped make famous: Hopefully by now you can predict my objection: the places in the southeast corner are mostly unfashionable red state Sun Belt cities; the places in the northwest corner are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities. My conclusion is that trendy liberal coastal cities are both more NIMBY and more desirable, and if you use this to draw any conclusions about housing policy you’ll just end up confused. But maybe I should take this same lesson to heart myself. Dense cities are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities; uninhabited tundra in North Dakota isn’t. Maybe the demand is just for trendy liberal coastal cities, and once you attain that status, extra density doesn’t matter that much. Maybe Oakland has already maxed out its “trendy liberal coastal city” status, and even if it became Manhattan-sized, it wouldn’t get any trendier, or would get trendier only with a long time lag. There are a few very trendy small coastal villages in California (think eg Sea Ranch); maybe these (rather than North Dakota) are the natural control group for San Francisco. I think they are still cheaper than SF, but maybe not by very much. Cameron Murray is a housing economist whose work some other commenters recommended; he also writes the blog Fresh Economic Thinking. He very kindly showed up and wrote: I think you are in general right that agglomeration effects are real, which is why bigger cities have higher value to residents. I agree that people move locations. But I think you can go a step further. If one city is growing faster and densifying, surely those people are not demanding homes in other cities and those cities build slower. This is part of the spatial equilibrium story that further makes claims about “build density and get cheap homes” less plausible. 7. My Final Thoughts + Poll Thanks to everyone who commented on this post and helped me refine my thoughts. I’m willing to concede the following points: It might be that only attracting the sort of educated people who found companies, universities, etc will make housing prices go up. Less educated people will take more jobs than they create and not ratchet up the city’s desirability level. (I’d previously told commenters talking about “gentrification” that it was irrelevant to the mechanism I was talking about here, but maybe it isn’t - maybe “gentrifiers” are the people creating more jobs and institutions than they consume, and so homes that attract them in particular will increase demand more than they increase supply? Maybe this discussion does reduce to the gentrification discussion?)
Inline links: source, Tom Thought, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!86gT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5788a8dd-c5ee-4111-be67-9c1533f7410b_335x172.png, Infinite Scroll, writes, Last House On The Left, writes, writes, quotes, Under-occupied Developments In China, writes, China’s Ghost Cities Are Finally Stirring To Life After Years Of Empty Streets., https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AAuI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d6a6159-a16f-45e3-b15a-e62cb2c73336_1200x900.jpeg, this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Paul Botts, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data, Tang Poetry, writes, ddd pointed out, Mike, Maximum Limelihood Estimator, gets more on point, http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf, writes, writes:, far higher in Austin, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tAF8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F03f2b338-da84-4d85-b71c-0ce2e02e10e1_685x559.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mLwn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9cf942da-5716-49e8-a177-20140681e7fc_573x421.png, Center for New Liberalism, the Neoliberal Podcast, Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, Johnson helped make famous, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tg5t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc490a60a-3e97-4b73-9806-79bb967b5172_608x550.png, Sea Ranch, some other commenters, Fresh Economic Thinking, wrote
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE), GIRONDE, FRANCE Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2023-09-23[at]weboroso[dot]anonaddy[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 23rd, 3:00 PM Location: Parc Peixotto, middle of the path connecting the two main entrances (once we meet we'll seek which benches to try to grab). Initial position: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.80900/-0.58978 (Send me your phone if you expecte to be late and want an SMS when we deside which direction in the parc we shift) I will bring an A4 sign with «ACX Meetup» on it. I usually wear a mask in high-stranger-density settings. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know that someone is indeed coming. This will be a small meetup with no fixed topic, so whatever you want to discuss, we can discuss it!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA Contact: Michael Contact Info: maswiebe[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 28th, 7:00 PM Location: East Van Brewing Company, upstairs Coordinates: https://plus.codes/84XR7WGH+PH
Inline links: https://plus.codes/84XR7WGH+PH
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, USA Duplicate of Newport Beach Contact: Michael Michalchik Contact Info: michaelmichalchik[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 2nd, 2:00 PM Location: We usually start in the front patio of my yard at 1970 port Laurent and weather permitting go for a walk in the park and the surround wild areas. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8554J47R+Q8 Group Link: Send requests to be included on the mailing list to michaelmichalchik[at]gmail[dot]com Notes: This meeting repeats most Saturdays year around. Email me with the subject line ACXLW to be added to the mailing list.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8554J47R+Q8
In The Long Run, We're All Dad
December 22, 2023 · Original source
People expressed a strong preference for common older names like John and Mary. Does this contradict the finding above that people with very common names were least happy? Not necessarily - the common names on the question above included all common names (the #1 most common name for boys born last year is “Liam”), so maybe people like common older names in particular? But I looked at people in the sample named John, Michael, Mary, and Sarah, and they didn’t differ much from the overall common names category. So people may think they would like names like these, but actual Johns and Marys wish they were named something a little more unusual.
Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity
January 11, 2024 · Original source
Michael Strong writes:
Inline links: writes
Michael is a big player in the charter cities world and I appreciate his input.
Inline links: a big player
Like Michael, I think the theoretical case for charter cities and SEZs is strong. Rethink Priorities tried to supplement that with an empirical case, but it fell flat because most of them are poorly designed half-efforts that don’t work, and the empirical results reflected that. The natural next step would be to come up with some objective criteria for “well-done charter city / SEZ”, do a report-level amount of work demonstrating that these do work, and then argue that whatever we’re debating (eg CCI) fits the criteria for a well-done CC/SEZ and so its expected return should be in the group we’ve now proven to be good, not the other group Rethink Priorities proved to be bad. This would be a big effort, and AFAIK nobody has done it yet. So I continue to classify good CC/SEZs in the bin of “theoretically strong case, not super-strong empirical evidence yet”.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
BORDEAUX, FRANCE Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2024-05-25[at]weboroso[dot]anonaddy[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 25th, 2:00 PM Location: Mériadeck, Esplanade Charles de Gaulle, between the fountain and Hôtel du Département (administrative building to the west / nearest short side of Esplanade to the fountain). I will have an A4 «ACX meetup» sign. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.83735/-0.58601 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCP7+WHG Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I see who is coming — email me your phone number if you are likely to be late and you want an SMS when we decide to move away from the meeting point. I will do a «wrap-up» point one hour after the beginning so that those who want to leave can leave and not miss any coordination stuff; I will stay at least two hours if anyone wants to stay that long (and possibly longer, we'll see).
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCP7+WHG
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michaelmichalchik[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 2:00 PM Location: 1970 Port Laurent place, Newport Beach 92660 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8554J47R+Q8 Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/ytkHvpQrvLHFcyDhx Notes: By the time this annual Meetup happens we will have had over 60 meetups almost every single one of which was attended. I would say our attendance rate is about 96 or 97%. Sometimes it's just the two of us, but there have been as many as 15 people. Typical turnouts are three to five.
Inline links: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/ytkHvpQrvLHFcyDhx
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 1:00 PM Location: French Truck Coffee in Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave #167, Memphis, TN 38104. I'll be at a table with a sign that says ACX MEETUP Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW Group Link: https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW, https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2025-04-12[a t]weboroso[period]anonaddy[period]com Time: Saturday, April 12th, 2:00 PM Location: Initial meeting in the park Square of Professor Jacques Lasserre, behind 164/166 cours de l'Argonne (Maison Internationale), tram B Bergonié, entries from rue Grateloup and rue Colette, far side from the cours de l'Argonne: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.824715/-0.576945 — I will have an A4 ACX Meetup sign. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCFF+V6 Notes: So that I know if anyone is coming, please mark Yes or Maybe at LW, or write me an email. I will try to make sure we are within the park / within the line of sight of the specified location for at least 15 minutes after the posted time. Email me your phone number if you want me to text you updates if/when we move from there (e.g. if you are not sure about being able to make it on time but are interested to join a bit later).
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCFF+V6
Contact: Michael Michalchik Contact Info: michaelmichalchik[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 5th, 2:00 PM Location: 1970 port Laurent place. White garage door, brick entrance into a duplex. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8554J47R+Q8 Group Link: Email me to be put on our weekly mailing list. Michaelmichalchik. Put keyword in subject line Acxlw Notes: RSVP is appreciated but not required
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8554J47R+Q8
Contact: Michael Bacarella Contact Info: michael[period]bacarella[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Wednesday, April 09th, 06:00 PM Location: Beergarden. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/84PR3V3W+C6G Group Link: https://discord.gg/9U8 [remove this bit] DH4dUem Notes: Hosted by the ACX/EAs of Willamette Valley Meetup (see our Discord!)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/84PR3V3W+C6G
Open Thread 386
June 16, 2025 · Original source
2: Thanks to everyone who commented on The Claude Bliss Attractor. Two especially good categories of comment - one arguing that the tendency of iterative AI art to produce black people was caused not by a bias towards diversity, but by AI art adding a dark sepia tone to everything - as the figures in the art get darker and darker, the AI interprets them as ethnically African and adds black features to “match” (and see this comment by Michael) - and another arguing that even though Claude had a slight bias towards being a hippie, it has slight biases towards lots of things (eg coding) and it still requires more explanation for why the hippie spirituality is what eventually shines through.
Inline links: The Claude Bliss Attractor, one, and see this comment by Michael, another
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
June 18, 2025 · Original source
ACX Grants (almost) always approves of pivoting to AI safety research, but I still wonder what might have been with the original project. Michael says that “The types of software projects in clinical trials that we were initially intending to do seem on track to fall to AI by 2030. We DID succeed at deriving new math techniques, and AI does not yet have a clear path to solving that kind of creative research-level math.”
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Michael Contact Info: meetup-2025-09-13[a t]weboroso[period]anonaddy[period]com Time: Saturday, September 13th, 2:00 PM Location: Initial meeting in the park Square of Professor Jacques Lasserre, behind 164/166 cours de l'Argonne (Maison Internationale), tram B Bergonié, entries from rue Grateloup and rue Colette, far side from the cours de l'Argonne: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.824715/-0.576945 — I will have an A4 ACX Meetup sign. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCFF+V6 Notes: So that I know if anyone is coming, please mark Yes or Maybe at LW, or write me an email. I will try to make sure we are within the park / within the line of sight of the specified location for at least 15 minutes after the posted time. Email me your phone number if you want me to text you updates if/when we move from there (e.g. if you are not sure about being able to make it on time but are interested to join a bit later).
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRCFF+V6
Contact: Michael Bond Contact Info: bond[a t]spokenaac[period]com Time: Saturday, September 20th, 12:00 PM Location: McKenna's - Outside on the back patio if the weather is nice, inside in the back if it's not. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86FWCG7W+5C Notes: Sandwiches and drinks alcoholic and non- will be available for purchase at the counter, I'll be wearing a baseball cap with something odd on it. The park across the street will be having their annual dachshund races, so a good time is guaranteed for all.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86FWCG7W+5C
Contact: Michael B Contact Info: michael[period]bacarella[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Wednesday, September 10th, 6:00 PM Location: Beergarden. 777 W 6th Ave, Eugene, OR 97402 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/84PR3V3W+C6G Group Link: https://discord.gg/Ba2 [remove this bit] TYVgxzw Notes: Hosted by the ACX/EAs of Willamette Valley Meetup (see our Discord!)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/84PR3V3W+C6G
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2026-04-16[@]weboroso[.]anonaddy[.]com Time: Thursday, April 16th, 6:00 PM Location: Parc Peixotto, middle of the path connecting the two main entrances (once we meet we’ll seek which benches to try to grab). Initial position: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.80900/-0.58978 (Send me your phone if you expect to be late and want an SMS when we deside which direction in the parc we shift). I will bring an A4 sign with «ACX Meetup» on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or send an email. If you would like to come but the date or the place doesn’t work for you, please write, too! Currently I know of one other person who will probably be there, and we are flexible. I will post a LessWrong comment if there is a change.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W
Contact: Kevin Macmichael Contact Info: kvnmac1[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 11th, 1:00 PM Location: We’ll be at Kiwanis park, by the benches. I’ll have an ACX Meetup sign with me. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86RQGMFP+VJ Group Link: https://discord.gg/YfY [remove this bit] acWJu Notes: Please join the discord or email me so I know how much food to bring
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86RQGMFP+VJ
Contact: Michael B Contact Info: michael[.]bacarella[@]gmail[.]com Time: Wednesday, April 8th, 6:00 PM Location: beergarden. 777 W 6th Ave, Eugene, OR 97402 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/84PR3V3W+C6 Group Link: https://discord.gg/swA [remove this bit] exPcjNS
Inline links: https://plus.codes/84PR3V3W+C6