I'm encouraged to see a LW meetup scheduled for Ottawa - I lived in the city from 2008 to 2010. I now live in California and have done a fellowship with SIAI. Congrats on getting a group together!
Hey, it's the post that started it all in Ottawa, four years ago to the day!
How we and Less Wrong have changed! The lives of the Ottawa regulars have seen great developments during this quadrennium and Less Wrong has played a surprisingly influential and positive role in many. Some personal reflections follow.
With my interests in computer science, atheism, seasteading, microeconomics, polyamory, philosophy of personal identity, futurology, life hacks, etc., it was just a matter of time until I followed a link to lesswrong.com in about 2010, and once I did of course I was hooked. Here I found an awesome convergence of fascinating new and old big ideas from practical to theoretical and back, truly brilliant people, intense curiosity, munchkinism, transfixing personalities, and grand quests, all with a maximal signal-to-noise ratio. I've been continually delighted to discover that thinkers I respected from outside Less Wrong have been drawn in to the site or its social sphere. Thinking back to when I attended my first meetup on April 28, 2011, I can't help but be moved by the journey we've been on together since then.
Over years of personal intellectual progress my relationship to the site pivoted. My "philosophical" questions were "answered" in the Wittgensteinian sense. Reverence for Eliezer's intellect gave way to a taste for parody and frustration with his roundabout writing style; FAI concerns, CEV, and fun theory gave way to moral nihilism, CEV criticisms, David Pearce's Hedonistic Imperative, and not wanting to live a life constantly fretting about vague future doom. Unfortunately, the SIAI visiting fellows program was terminated before I could take part and more art less stink never materialized. Most recently, my interest in AGI modeling concluded with the statement of the zero prime program.
Activity on the site has decreased in recent years as people have found more specialized communities. However, I still very deeply cherish the friendly, altruistic culture of Less Wrong and the network of people it connected. Lesswrongers are my people and I love you all.
Less Wrong meeting:
Date: Thursday April 28, 7:00pm until at least 9:00pm.
Venue: 347 Preston St., cafe seating behind the security desk.
Bayes study group: Anyone in the region interested in learning how to do Bayesian statistics is welcome to join us. High school algebra and calculus are the prerequisites for Bayes, but if you don't know them, I'll be happy to teach them to you.
Date: Tuesday April 26, 9:00pm to 10:00pm.
Venue: 347 Preston St., cafe seating behind the security desk.
