Hello everyone!

Marta has found a list of fun activities for rationalist groups to do, and I've selected two of them:

The first is practicing double cruxing. The idea of a crux is that when you have an opinion, it is a factual belief that your opinion depends on, and that if you changed your belief about this fact, it would change your opinion on the other issue.

An example might be someone who thinks schools should mandate uniforms because they think that they improve discipline in the school. If they were convinced that discipline problems are exactly the same in schools with mandatory uniforms, they would stop thinking it is useful.

In a double crux exercise, you find two people who disagree about something, and you try to make the disagreement more productive by having them work together to identify a sub fact that they disagree about, and which is a crux for both of them.

We'll be doing this based on the exercise described here: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/eqtiQjbk83JHyttrr/p/ya59PtGeYnCG25eWn

The second exercise we'll try is dissent collusion, which is designed to help us grow comfortable with dissenting or assenting to a larger group. Some of us may conform too easily to what others think, while some of us tend to dissent out of a defiant habit. Either way, you should expect some social pressure when it’s your turn, but the purpose is to have a safe place to practice the skill.

The exercise is described here, and if you are a close reader, you may note that I copied the suggested announcement text: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/eqtiQjbk83JHyttrr/p/q7ZHzPpCsFFq4LpkC

We'll meet in the museum garden by Kalvin, because I'm bored with summer meetings on Margit Sziget, and I think the collection of benches is somewhat better there. Also if it is raining, we can try retreating to Altair Teahouse that is only a block away.

We'll meet in the north east corner of the museum garden, by where google maps has the marker 'Himfy lant'. link

I hope to see you all there, and hopefully we'll have lots of fun becoming more productive disagreers!

Tim