Discussion article for the meetup : Saint Petersburg meetup - "the lonely one"

WHEN: 31 October 2014 08:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE: Россия, Санкт-Петербург, Московский пр. 65,

We are resuming our bi-weekly schedule, even if I'm sitting at the meetups all by myself reading math papers!

Now very nice free venue is available thanks to its owner. It's a sports club, directions in the vk group (https://vk.com/c9h13no3ru). Please notify my if it's unavailable for someone without registration.

The plan is to try exercises on lonely dissent (from hpmor) if there is enough people (>=5).

Otherwise - unstructured talk/self-education on topics that are of interest for everyone.

It will last for at least 2 - 2,5 hours. You can reach me by phone - +7-(911)-843-56-44 or mail: efim.wool@gmail.com or vk: vk.com/timetravel.

Efim.

P.S. I will now give meetup different names in advance just for fun.

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint Petersburg meetup - "the lonely one"

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6 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 2:42 PM

Ooh, missed the announcement. I won't make it in time now. Anyhow, I'll keep it in mind to get in touch with you next time I'm there. Have a blast!

Nobody came last time?

Yeah. Although I always post notifications in russian social network (a lot of people subscribed to them) with poll "probability that I will attend" with choices "~1, ~.9 ~.7 ~.5 ~.2 ~0". There were two people, who answered .7, and six with .2 which using my calibration data from last polls and attendance clearly suggested that this time I am going to be alone =)

Sadly there are really few people who know english and so wast majority know LW only by translations on lessrwong.ru - which is very good, but really is only about 7% of old Elizers sequences.

I finished reading Eli's paper on TDT though)

Actually I was the one who answered that I'll be there with 0,7 probability=) Then after I didn't come I thought oh I need to support this poor guy he is trying something worhy. But forced with the outcome that I assigned 0,7 probability and didn't came previous time I couldn't assign more than 50% for the next meetup despite the fact that I am going to come this time for real

lonely dissent is something like succeding at Asch conformity experiments?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

Yes! This is exactly what I had in mind. HPMOR described special exercise that Harry tried on Chaos legion - one person is trying to say something obviously true, like "grass is green", or "sky is blue" while others play as good as they can repultion and horror. This in theory should familiarize people with feelings assoсiated with lonely dissent and help them notice this biasing force when they actually will get into similar situation.

This might even be a good idea since for example in russian military every day when someone is instructed on his daily duties on guard - simulation of extreme situations is necessary part of this instructions.