38 Comments
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MartinW's avatar

The meetup in Helmond, The Netherlands, wins the prize for most appropriately-named meeting location: "The Motte".

Yes, it's named for an actual non-metaphorical medieval motte.

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George's avatar

I am punically tempted to undertake the 3.5 hr journey to it.

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sclmlw's avatar

I'd rather be at the bailey, than forced into the motte.

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Gunflint's avatar

Surely not at Old Bailey tho!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bailey

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tcheasdfjkl's avatar

I think "Truth Coffee Roasting" in Cape Town at least ties!

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MostlyCredibleHulk's avatar

I really didn't expect to have a meetup in ID... and yet there it is! Exactly at the date I am out of town. Sigh... Well, hopefully it won't be the last time.

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avalancheGenesis's avatar

Wonder if this is the "vertically-longest" post ever. A real shame Substack doesn't have integrated sortable tables.

>6. In case people want to get to know each other better outside the meetup, you might want to mention reciprocity.io, the rationalist friend-finder/dating site.

Got super excited to learn about this for 5 seconds, then noticed that it requires a Facebook account, after which I felt very sad instead. Just another version of the "degraded blockchain" problem...well, all the more incentive to skip work for that Sunday SF meetup. Maybe. "Yeah, sorry, I sprained my Bayes last night" "Your what?" "You know, that joint where reality cleaves?"

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Shaked Koplewitz's avatar

For NYC, we also have a discord and a Google group (add to the event links?) The Google group is the main mailing list we use for events.

Discord: https://discord.gg/Hfktfhrs

Google group: https://groups.google.com/g/overcomingbiasnyc

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mingyuan's avatar

Added!

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Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston's avatar

Ouch, missing the Portland one (Fri Sept 5th) by one day (I get there on Saturday), and the Berkeley one (Sun 18th) by flying back to Australia the night before. Better luck next time I guess...

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Sam C's avatar

Not that you have to, but I (Sam, a Portland organizer) will be back in Portland by this Wednesday the 31st and pretty free. Specifically, myself and some other rat-adjacent people would be happy to grab lunch with you after the Ai safety meetup on September 4th (next Sunday) around 4pm :).

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Relonidek's avatar

The meetup's Friday, September 9. There's no Friday, September 5—I'm assuming you looked at the calendar for August.

I mention this only because you caused me a good thirty seconds of wondering if I'd misread the post, or if it had been edited at some point... I wanted to spare anyone else the same moment of confusion.

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Sam C's avatar

That is correct! It is September 9th at 5pm. I didn't catch that reading his comment the first time.

Here is the meetup event just to be super clear. https://meetu.ps/e/LmFp7/tBP5c/i

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Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston's avatar

Sorry, yes, my mistake!

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Nancy Lebovitz's avatar

Philadelphia: the meeting room is in the basement. I think there were signs for the meeting last night (very good), but I didn't see them and spent some time looking for the room. I wasn't the only one.

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Edmund  Nelson's avatar

Sad that the berkeley and SF meetups happened on the same day :/

Speaking of this anyone wanna carpool from south bay to either the SF or Berkeley meetup? I can bike to your house/an acceptable meeting spot (like a park)

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Matt's avatar

I don't have a car, but I'll be BART buddies with you; we can meet up at Milpitas station.

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George's avatar

I am very surprised by the lack of any meetups in Thailand :(

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Piotr's avatar

In Lublin, free coffee awaits people brave enough to come and make jolly conversation in polish, pidgin, english or latin :) persons speaking different languages, including angelic ones, are welcome as well!

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Kenny Easwaran's avatar

I realized I forgot to add identifying information for the Bryan/College Station meetup at Torchy's Tacos. I'll have a yellow umbrella and pinkish/purple hair. (If Scott or Mingyuan can add that sentence to the information in the post that would be excellent, but I hope this comment has enough searchable text that people will find it.)

I'm glad to see how many other Texas cities are having meetups this time! Houston and Waco seem like good additions, and I'll see if I can make it to this (I'm likely to get to the Austin one as well as Bryan/College Station).

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mingyuan's avatar

Added!

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Brett van Zuiden's avatar

One idea for meetups in light of the recent EA discussions: donating 10% of your income feels really intimidating/scary, especially in high cost of living areas like San Francisco. I think social proof would help people like me see that yes, real people do this, they make it work, and they don’t have to give up a normal lifestyle to do so. So at meetups, give people the option of adding a little adornment to their name tag or similar (maybe a smiley face? Green dot?) if they donate 10%+ to altruistic causes. It would be very persuasive to walk into a room and be one of the few people without a smiley face!

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myst_05's avatar

I don't think I'd want to go to a meetup where people will shame me for not spending more money on things they find important...

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Scott Alexander's avatar

I don't think even real EA meetups do that, and this blog isn't officially an EA space.

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Zhani's avatar

Any suggestions for which Bay Area meet-up to attend as a first-time attendee? I'm roughly equidistant from the Berkeley, SF, and San Jose locations so no strong preference as to travel time.

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Scott Alexander's avatar

I'll be at Berkeley, usually more people come to the ones I'm at, and we're also going to have a really nice venue.

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Alex's avatar

Given that the SF and Berkeley meetups are happening at the same day two hours apart, any concern about attendance being split? (Or is this intentional to avoid too many people at each one?)

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Scott Alexander's avatar

This was totally my fault - Berkeley was originally scheduled on the same day as San Jose, and I rescheduled to avoid that, and like an idiot I didn't realize I'd moved it right onto SF.

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Skivverus's avatar

Addendum/correction for the Rochester meetup - it's not the 1st of October, it's the 8th. Will still be out of town on the 1st.

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mingyuan's avatar

Fixed!

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Mohammad Ruhul Kader's avatar

None in Dhaka, Bangladesh! Anyone reading this from Bangladesh?

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ReformedHegelian's avatar

Really happy about 3 meetups in Israel this time. Enjoyed the Tel Aviv one last year.

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Senjiu's avatar

Even though I have not planned on going to any of the meetings it is nice to see them happening all over the world. :)

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Jacob Falkovich's avatar

!אנחנו (רחובות) על המפה ונישאר על המפה

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Mormegil's avatar

The CZ/Prague meeting is listed as Saturday Oct 8 here, but as Thursday Oct 6 on LW and in the Facebook event…?

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mingyuan's avatar

Oh no, sorry! Thursday October 6th is the correct date; I've now fixed it above

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Pierre Vandenberghe's avatar

Amsterdam meetup! Due to the weather, we have decided to switch to an indoor venue. The meetup will now be at the Kanarie club (address in the description.) See you tomorrow :)

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SaraL's avatar

Any other ACX readers in Iceland? Fancy a meetup?

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