I wanna +1 "research meetups" – I remember these as some of the most useful stepping stones towards me having a more agentic "hey, we can actually figure things out" mindset.
the idea of research meetups makes me think about how much initial research i've been delegating to claude lately. It'd be interesting to see the research methodologies of those who have the most effective workflows.
Blindfolded taste tests - Food, beer, etc
this is adjacent to a preference profiling exercise that can be fun in a larger group -- have everyone rank their preferences regarding some reference stimuli, matchmake pairs or groups based on preference similarity (or dissimilarity!), discuss favorite things and perhaps learn new things to try because if someone with similar preferences enjoys a given thing (or someone with dissimilar preferences loathes it) then it's likely to suit you
Anecdote: The Seattle meetup has a game night 1 week & a rationality meetup the next week, & enjoys this pattern.
Is this a thing that still happens? I'm in Seattle but I'm only aware of the reading group.
I'm no expert; I've never been there. I merely talked to someone from Seattle a couple weeks ago.
I just came back from Lighthaven with lots of fun ideas to bring home. One idea is that you can just post your notes to LW instead of leaving them in your private cloud.
[[Lightning Talk]] specific ideas
Venues