Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the seating area next to the Valu-Mart with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches at 7pm for 15 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at my apartment front door for 7:30 instead. (There is free city parking at Bridgeport and Regina, 22 Bridgeport Rd E.)

Discussion

This week, we'll be discussing Scott's Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons, from  2017. I think it holds up exceedingly well.

We'll use it as a springboard to discuss the epistemic landscape, and how it's changed since 2017 (some starting points: Trump is no longer POTUS; Twitter is now X; Substack now exists; BuzzFeed no longer exists; AI Risk is now almost a mainstream topic of conversation), as well as our own (hopefully rising) sanity waterlines.

Some questions I'd be interested in discussing:

• When have you changed your mind very quickly on a deeply held belief, if ever? When have you slowly changed your mind (over the course of months or years) on a deeply held belief, if ever? 
• Consider a belief you once held firmly but have since abandoned or significantly modified over time. What were the key milestones or events that contributed to this transformation?
• Have you ever resisted changing a belief despite accumulating evidence or persuasive arguments against it? What were the reasons for your resistance (emotional? social? intellectual?), and how did you eventually navigate this conflict?
• Re: raising the sanity waterline, what personal practices or habits have you adopted to ensure you're engaging with the world in a more rational, open-minded way, if any?
• Is there any topic you'd like to do an adversarial collaboration on?