We're a community that is especially vulnerable to nerd sniping, as communities go. I'm fond of partaking in a little nerd sniping myself. While the original xkcd paints this pastime in a malicious light, I argue that this is in fact a great thing in general. One of my favorite ways to do this, and one that I think the rationalist community is neglecting, is Handing People Puzzles. 

At Meetups

I once spent a few weeks going to various rationalist meetups in Berkeley, and almost every person I'd meet, I'd start the conversation by silently handing them a small 3D printed puzzle with two pieces that fit together in an unintuitive way. They go for a hand shake? I reach out with a puzzle in my hand. They go for small talk or "So what do you do?", I smile and hand them a puzzle. I know I'm not the only person to ever do this, and hopefully this post means I'm far from the last. 

The reviews for this technique were all around highly enthusiastic. Things that I think worked really well:

• It broke the existing conversational mold really well: People were no longer stuck in variations of "So what do you do?". Really committing to the act, turning even normal greetings like handshakes into something else really drives this point home.
• It was a genuinely engaging puzzle: one outlier solved it in about 30 seconds, the rest of the people took 15-30 minutes. You can vary puzzle difficulty based on how long you want this window to be. Most people can talk while solving this type of fit-things-together puzzle since it's entirely nonverbal, but their attention is still divided.
• It's memorable: people knew that I was the one handing out the puzzles, and I suspect that that gave them a handle by which to remember other things about me better. 

There are some conditional drawbacks:

• Some people really do just want to talk at the meetups, and their puzzling life is already saturated. Let the conversation flow a different way instead.
• You may want to have shorter conversations than the solve time for any sufficiently interesting puzzle, or you may want to have the person's full and undivided attention, even the parts that would go to background puzzle fidgeting. This strategy is pretty incompatible with that stance.

At Houses

Rationalists tend to have rather distinctive interior design, and this is no accident. There are the standard hallmarks of a nice space: comfy couches, warm lighting, and blankets. There are also the hallmarks of a gathering space for often deeply nerdly people: piles of books, giant whiteboards, and sometimes, though not often enough, puzzles strewn about.

When somebody comes into a space for the first time, they grasp for some way to engage with it: they sit down on the couch, find something to direct their attention to. Hopefully, they find something puzzling on the table to play with, something that piques their curiosity and makes them struggle with something novel for a little bit, for this is the rationalist way. 

I really enjoy when someone new comes into my house and picks up something that fascinates them, and I think this is generally good for the same reasons that I listed about meetup-type social interactions.

Puzzle Recommendations (Not Exhaustive!)

• The puzzle I used in my anecdote is the fifth of these from George Hart.
• Rubik's Cubes are classic, but usually either too easy (for people who know how) or too hard (for people who don't). Variants that I think are great for this purpose are:
  • Dino Cube (people can usually figure this out without previous knowledge
  • The 2x2 Rubik's Cube, which is significantly easier than the 3x3 but still nontrivial for people who aren't familiar.
• My house has a Brainstring R (other similar puzzles available at that link) which looks really cool, but is broken so I haven't tried it. Even still, it successfully grabbed the attention of at least one visitor and sparked a conversation.
• Anomalous objects that aren't classically "puzzles" but that can be very puzzling:
  • The MetMo Piston, a precision machined air piston that behaves pretty curiously.
  • Musical instruments that are uncommon in Western music and easy to make a sound on:
    • Ocarinas (you can also 3D print these!)
    • Jaw harps (you can also use a hair tie as a low-quality one, but that doesn't quite fit the purpose of this post.)
  • Jeweller's Loupes, cheap handheld microscopes with a surprising amount of magnification. Depending on lighting, you can see some people's individual skin cells. I cannot overstate how fun it is to point it at various things in your environment. This exercise also leads to puzzles like "Why does the couch weave look like that?" or "Why do skin cells look like that?"

Follow-up post: Being Handed Puzzles