Summary: We’re running a free retreat for LessWrong users (lurkers) who aren’t yet working on existential risk mitigation but might be interested, in the hopes of catalyzing some of them into people who are. It’s called the Lurkshop. Apply here by December 1st, ideally sooner! If you refer a friend and we accept them, we’ll give you $100. We cover all costs, including flights. Please apply even if you don't think you have skills that seem directly relevant to reducing x-risk!

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Do you read LessWrong?

(Presumably!)

Are you doing anything about the dire existential warnings you're hearing about?

(Probably not!)

If you want to be, we're offering an all-expenses paid workshop, Dec 16 (noon) to Dec 18 (10pm) in Berkeley, CA to come meet community members, talk with each other, and otherwise engage with the main plot of the world. If this goes well we might offer more programs like this, so please apply even if the dates don’t work well for you and we might invite you to those future programs!

What? Why?

LessWrong is one of the places in the world where words mean things and people think openly about the hardest problems facing the world, and we'd like to get to know the people who read it a bit better and help them make progress on the world’s problems.

The rationality community mostly exists on online forums. Forums are great, but it’s really hard to replicate some important aspects of in-person conversations.

You can have different kinds of interactions and conversations in face-to-face interactions, which are useful for building trust, context, and deeper relationships
- It’s helpful to be able to have conversations that aren't mostly in public. There's a lot that people want to talk about that's sensitive or personal or private
- It’s helpful to be able to have long conversations with lots of context that are laser focused on you and your situation
- You probably can't find a cofounder just by writing LessWrong comments.
Forums make the community feel remote and actions feel impossible
- The rationality community is not some distant mythical group—it’s a bunch of people!
- Many people quite like you are doing big ambitious risky projects, and seeing that helps people realize they can do those kinds of projects too
- There really isn’t someone on top of all the important stuff. Come see for yourself how disorganized and incompetent everyone is!

Notably, this retreat probab...

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