OC ACXLW Meetup: Halloween Edition — Haunted Houses & Post-Discontent Societies — October 25, 2025
 #107

Date: Saturday, October 25, 2025
 Time: 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
 Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik
 Email: Michaelmichalchik@gmail.com

Introduction:
 Two eerie, rationalist-friendly topics. First, a classic “haunted house” narrative from early 20th-century Washington, D.C., told through vivid reportage and audio storytelling. Second, Isaac Arthur’s framework for “post-discontent” societies, where systems resolve unrest not by ending scarcity but by removing dissatisfaction itself.

Discussion Topics:

Topic 1: A Real Haunted House?

• Readings: Short narrative case study of a family plagued by strange footsteps, bells, dread, and failing health.
  
   
  • Neatorama: A Real-Life Ghost Story
    
     
    • URL: https://www.neatorama.com/2012/10/22/A-Real-Life-Ghost-Story/
      
       
• Audio: Modern retelling that captures the atmosphere and investigative arc.
  
   
  • This American Life — Ep. 319, Prologue: And the Call Was Coming from the Basement
    
     
    • URL: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/319/and-the-call-was-coming-from-the-basement/prologue-13
      
       

Topic 2: Post-Discontent Societies

• Video: Isaac Arthur explores civilizations that stabilize by editing psychology rather than solving scarcity.
  
   
  • Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur: Machine Overlords & Post-Discontent Societies
    
     
    • URL: https://youtu.be/g807KawBOq0?si=25aXvDvXp7Owv02a
      
       
• Text (adaptation): Concise transcript-based essay framing definitions, mechanisms, and ethics.
  
   
  • The Post-Discontent Society: When Contentment Replaces Abundance
    
     
    • URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ofX9hMBkc77RIJ8d4OSOxHYKy4ToXkDJS3EFkpS1_KU/edit?usp=sharing
      
       

Questions for Discussion:

• Topic 1: Which single observation would most strongly update you toward a naturalistic explanation? What evidence would you design to test competing hypotheses quickly?
  
   
• Topic 2: Where is the boundary between education, cultural conditioning, and coercive mind-editing? What safeguards—consent, reversibility, exit rights, auditability—are non-negotiable?
  
   

Summaries:

• Topic 1 Summary: A family reports escalating “haunting” phenomena in a gas-lit home: nocturnal sounds, apparitions, malaise, and environmental oddities. Physicians and household investigation provide a naturalistic resolution that collapses the spooky theory stack into a simple, testable mechanism.
  
   
• Topic 2 Summary: Post-scarcity meets needs; post-discontent removes the desire for unmet needs. Such systems can appear benevolent, efficient, and stable, yet they trade autonomy for engineered satisfaction. Key axes: coercion vs consent, reversibility, detection from the inside, and implications for civilizational trajectories.
  
   

Conclusion:
 Bring a skeptical mind and a taste for the uncanny. Read the short pieces, sample the audio or video, and come ready to map hypotheses, weigh evidence, and debate the ethics of contentment engineered at scale.