I'm in Exeter, unfortunately I still have exams at that time (and a lot of other work to finish),
Sorry 'bout that! The usual advice is that people should be bold and just post a time & place for a first meetup, to allow people to just show up, but it looks like it would be good to start collecting preferences for future meetup times -- when's good for you? Are you going to be in the area after your exams? If you're coming from Exeter, I'm guessing weekends would probably be better for you, right?
That's alright, I'd definitely recommend going ahead with the meetup.
I have to work full-time in Exeter in June (so could perhaps make it some time on a weekend then), but after that will move to Sheffield to start a PhD in Machine Learning :)
(peeks at comment history) Aw, it would be really cool if you could make it, you sound really interesting to talk to!
I do find going to meetings of people I don't know difficult -- I worry about people having social expectations I don't want to meet (which is unhelpfully abstract and I find it difficult to come up with a good example, but perhaps this gives the idea: being asked what I like on TV and people finding it strange if I don't watch very much TV at all). I've gotten better with this over the years, but going to a completely new group still doesn't feel easy. FWIW (n=1) I found the first LW meetup I went to pleasantly undemanding in that direction (of course the above example is misleading there, I wouldn't have expected watching little TV to sound weird in an LW context). Anyway, if there's something others could do to help, you could let us know here in advance?
(Can I ask -- it sounds like you're doing your MSc in experimental psychology, right? How did you get there from linguistics -- are you doing psycholinguistics, or are you shifting fields? I just started my PhD in an interdisciplinary project on decision-making, and though the majority of my own training is in maths, I have one of my three or four disciplinary legs in psychology -- it would be cool to be able to talk to somebody with an LW perspective about psychology topics!)
Hi Benja, thanks for the reply / encouragement. :) I will seriously consider making it to this or another Bristol meetup (I may well in fact be away that weekend, as it's the bank holiday weekend).
I am indeed doing my MSc in experimental psychology, as a precursor to a PhD in psycholinguistics which I should be starting in the autumn (in the same department). So it's sort of a shift in fields, but not an especially dramatic one - I took a reasonable amount of experimental psychology during my linguistics undergrad. The decision-making project is really cool! Decision-making is definitely an interest of mine within psychology - I did some work with Simon and Guarav on one of their projects last term (edit: no, actually, I forgot we had another term in there; it was in the autumn), so we have some people in common. It definitely sounds like we could have a fun conversation.
Ah, the bank holiday -- drats, I could have thought of that... But great that you're considering coming! :-) And really cool to hear that you've been working with Simon and Gaurav!
BTW, if you're interested in decision making, you should consider coming to some of the Thursday seminars -- we often have really interesting people visit (e.g. recently we've had Mike Shadlen, who did some of the ground-breaking work on the neuroscience of decision making that Luke mentions in his crash course).
Back in 2010, Bristol had 4000+ unique LW visitors, but we've never had a meetup -- let's try and see what happens! I'll be in the Friska on Queens Road (on the Clifton triangle, right next to the university campus) on Saturday the 25th at 3pm, with a LessWrong sign and a paperback of HPMOR. Anyone going to join me? :-)