> Who: Anyone who wants. Please feel free to come even if you feel awkward about it, even if you’re not “the typical ACX reader”, even if you’re worried people won’t like you, etc.
It's been surprisingly helpful - I've talked to people who say it's the only reason they come.
People sometimes have skewed expectations about these meetups - either everyone will be such hopeless annoying nerds it will be agonizing to converse with them, or else so brilliant it would be presumptuous to dare to associate with them, or else weird cultists who all know each other from their previous cult interactions. There are some people of all these types, and I appreciate the special character they add, but mostly it's just normal people who found the blog off Twitter or something and are there to meet people and have a good time.
Contrary to popular belief, we sometimes get women, minorities, people over 65, people under 20, people who aren't in STEM, leftists, rightists, AI skeptics, working-class people, religious people - even the occasional cool person with good social skills. I won't claim all these people are represented at the exact same percent as the general population, but there are at least enough of them that the ones who do come don't feel totally alone and overwhelmed.
I find so weird that more women don’t follow ACX given women are more likely to voluntarily be into therapy/psychiatry and other vaguely associated humanity-related things. I get the geekdom associations and the rationalist community does an _excellent_ job of driving most women away with outright anti-woman (not even sexist!) perspectives, but the gender ratio is way worse than I expected. Like we go to academic conferences and publish despite all the sexism, why not break into informal academic-like circles?
Anyway, you’ll probably see at least one woman there this time :)
I think it depends how people found the blog; I came here via a roundabout way, having been pointed towards Scott by a mention in Leah Libresco's blog which I was following as part of a wider group of blogs by converts to Catholicism/intelligent non-believers discussing Catholicism.
Leah was part of the Rationality movement then, working at the Center for Applied Rationality. But I don't know if many people stumbled along the same path of "religion ->rationalism ->hey you guys seem cool, mind if I stick around?" to discover SSC and then the rest of it 😁
I honestly think it is an artefact of the "maths/science/philosophy/rationalism" space tending towards being heavily male since it's mostly guys who will be discussing those things in those ways. I wonder if the writing/book reviews might be a way to draw women in, since that's an avenue where women might be more approachable (think of book clubs, for example).
That makes a lot of sense, the book reviews were when I first got properly drawn into the community here. Before that I knew SSC/ACX existed but didn't care much for it other than Scott's antidepressant meta-study analyses.
Ooh I definitely do not mean without. A lot of "rationalist" men I have encountered in real life are (perhaps unwittingly) demeaning towards women, and tend to give vague arguments explaining away their behaviors when called out. For example I was (barely) part of this conversation at an elite university which I will not name where EAs were trying to put probabilities on things and it very quickly devolved into discussion of dimorphic performance on spatial reasoning tests and how it helps men do math better :/
Yeah, there is indeed this bias towards "Math better!" and "intelligence means doing math better!" and deriving the conclusion "doing math better means more intelligent" and "Intelligence is only thing that matters!" and from that "AI can do math fast, means can do math, means is truly intelligent and thinking" which last I dispute.
It's a social organisation for people who are good at maths, and God bless and keep them, it's harmless fun and keeps them off the streets 😁
Meanwhile, I'm still counting on my fingers when doing basic arithmetic, so I'm definitely skulking around here under false pretences!
>For example I was (barely) part of this conversation at an elite university which I will not name where EAs were trying to put probabilities on things and it very quickly devolved into discussion of dimorphic performance on spatial reasoning tests and how it helps men do math better :/
So, we have to rule out entire empirical possibilites, lest we be considered "anti-woman"?
Is it "anti-asian" to suggest muscle fibre composition differences explains why they can't run as fast as black people? What if it's true?
Sounds awesome! I wish I could attend Sunday's meetup.
I'm not surprised at all to hear that this phrase has been helpful. I always found it very encouraging. To be honest, I think it also makes me feel more welcome on this blog.
I came to the blog from Unsong, and also because of that would attend a meetup, if only it were local. But I'm in the Detroit area, and won't hold my breath.
"Some combination of bad planning and bad karma has once again brought me to New York City."
But Scott! Hustle and bustle! City living! All the ethnic cuisines in restaurants run by quaint foreign folk for you to experience! Museums, art galleries, concerts, nightlife, loads of fun opportunities to meet lots of strangers for casual and exotic sex'n'drugs'n'rockandroll! Multicultral and diverse! Not some small town Midwest monoculture where they probably haven't even heard of polenta yet, and that was the popular cuisine fad of the 00s! 😁
EDIT: Oh, and of course I was forgetting the most important thing of all: urban density! All those millions crammed in together in the best use of high rise, high density, housing! So beautiful a sight for a YIMBY surely it must bring a tear to the eye? 😥
It's worth pointing out that the observed crime rate doesn't tell the whole story. If people have to change their behavior, sometimes radically, to avoid victimization, the city should count as unsafe. Let's say that NYC overall has the same crime rate as a particular city in elsewhere in the US. This parity doesn't reflect the fact that the crime rate in the other city may be in spite of the fact that people, especially women, might be comfortable walking around anywhere in the city alone, at any time of day etc. - if people behaved the same in NYC, it may have a much higher crime rate. Which is to say, if young e.g. white or asian women know to not walk around alone at night in south bronx or east brooklyn and this aversion leads to a lower crime rate, it's not really fair to chalk this up to NYC being a safe city.
While your point is valid, I think there's a good chance this effect actually favors NYC. NYC is a very 24-hour city, so you actually do have lots of people walking around at night.
But a person's sense of safe and unsafe zones is a matter of their personal psychology, their media consumption, their upbringing and their personal experiences. You can't assume that a person's map of what is safe is correct, or consistent with that of others. Or that it is effective in reducing their exposure to crime.
Yes, some people avoid circumstances that are unsafe. But other people avoid circumstances that are perfectly safe (for example, a lively neighborhood full of poor brown people that doesn't accord with their suburban upbringing's sense of safe space). Since we don't know how realistic and effective people's "crime avoiding" decisions are, I don't think we can use them to argue that there are "missing crimes" gumming up the stats.
It has to be said, too, that a lot of people aren't avoidant at all. I'm thinking of people tapping on their laptops on the subway at 1 AM or wandering drunk through supposedly bad neighborhoods. Enough people take the risks you claim they avoid to supply victims. Most are not victimized because the crime rate is genuinely low.
Yes, exactly my point. It took until 2023 to even get an unambiguously good policy approved, and it's already tied up in years worth of nimby lawsuits.
It's discouraging *cars* from coming to New York. If you could implement a package of YIMBY policies in NYC you'd upzone for construction, implement congestion pricing, and replace some car traffic with transit. (Well, possibly not: if the drivers are willing to pay a lot to drive in crowded areas, it may be socially optimal to simply charge tolls and let them keep doing it.)
I don't think I've been that close to the WTC site since before 9/11. I didn't know any victims of the attack so I'm not sure why it makes me as uncomfortable as it does... Do any other New Yorkers here feel that way?
I wouldn't usually recommend a 2+ hour commute for a 3-hour meetup (though some people do this), but since Scott is coming I think this one will be worth it.
There's also a biannual meetup in Massapequa, Long Island which you might be interested in.
> Who: Anyone who wants. Please feel free to come even if you feel awkward about it, even if you’re not “the typical ACX reader”, even if you’re worried people won’t like you, etc.
I really like this bit of the meetup invitations.
It's been surprisingly helpful - I've talked to people who say it's the only reason they come.
People sometimes have skewed expectations about these meetups - either everyone will be such hopeless annoying nerds it will be agonizing to converse with them, or else so brilliant it would be presumptuous to dare to associate with them, or else weird cultists who all know each other from their previous cult interactions. There are some people of all these types, and I appreciate the special character they add, but mostly it's just normal people who found the blog off Twitter or something and are there to meet people and have a good time.
Contrary to popular belief, we sometimes get women, minorities, people over 65, people under 20, people who aren't in STEM, leftists, rightists, AI skeptics, working-class people, religious people - even the occasional cool person with good social skills. I won't claim all these people are represented at the exact same percent as the general population, but there are at least enough of them that the ones who do come don't feel totally alone and overwhelmed.
I find so weird that more women don’t follow ACX given women are more likely to voluntarily be into therapy/psychiatry and other vaguely associated humanity-related things. I get the geekdom associations and the rationalist community does an _excellent_ job of driving most women away with outright anti-woman (not even sexist!) perspectives, but the gender ratio is way worse than I expected. Like we go to academic conferences and publish despite all the sexism, why not break into informal academic-like circles?
Anyway, you’ll probably see at least one woman there this time :)
I had been wondering what part of it is networking effects.
I think it depends how people found the blog; I came here via a roundabout way, having been pointed towards Scott by a mention in Leah Libresco's blog which I was following as part of a wider group of blogs by converts to Catholicism/intelligent non-believers discussing Catholicism.
Leah was part of the Rationality movement then, working at the Center for Applied Rationality. But I don't know if many people stumbled along the same path of "religion ->rationalism ->hey you guys seem cool, mind if I stick around?" to discover SSC and then the rest of it 😁
I honestly think it is an artefact of the "maths/science/philosophy/rationalism" space tending towards being heavily male since it's mostly guys who will be discussing those things in those ways. I wonder if the writing/book reviews might be a way to draw women in, since that's an avenue where women might be more approachable (think of book clubs, for example).
That makes a lot of sense, the book reviews were when I first got properly drawn into the community here. Before that I knew SSC/ACX existed but didn't care much for it other than Scott's antidepressant meta-study analyses.
Um, what kind of "outright anti woman perspective" do you mean? Or did you mean "without"?
Ooh I definitely do not mean without. A lot of "rationalist" men I have encountered in real life are (perhaps unwittingly) demeaning towards women, and tend to give vague arguments explaining away their behaviors when called out. For example I was (barely) part of this conversation at an elite university which I will not name where EAs were trying to put probabilities on things and it very quickly devolved into discussion of dimorphic performance on spatial reasoning tests and how it helps men do math better :/
Yeah, there is indeed this bias towards "Math better!" and "intelligence means doing math better!" and deriving the conclusion "doing math better means more intelligent" and "Intelligence is only thing that matters!" and from that "AI can do math fast, means can do math, means is truly intelligent and thinking" which last I dispute.
It's a social organisation for people who are good at maths, and God bless and keep them, it's harmless fun and keeps them off the streets 😁
Meanwhile, I'm still counting on my fingers when doing basic arithmetic, so I'm definitely skulking around here under false pretences!
>"AI can do math fast, means can do math, means is truly intelligent and thinking" which last I dispute.
You're just straight up making things up at this point
>For example I was (barely) part of this conversation at an elite university which I will not name where EAs were trying to put probabilities on things and it very quickly devolved into discussion of dimorphic performance on spatial reasoning tests and how it helps men do math better :/
So, we have to rule out entire empirical possibilites, lest we be considered "anti-woman"?
Is it "anti-asian" to suggest muscle fibre composition differences explains why they can't run as fast as black people? What if it's true?
>outright anti-woman (not even sexist!) perspectives
Lol give me a break
>Like we go to academic conferences and publish despite all the sexism
Scott posted about research showing that systematic 'sexism' in science is a myth.
Sounds awesome! I wish I could attend Sunday's meetup.
I'm not surprised at all to hear that this phrase has been helpful. I always found it very encouraging. To be honest, I think it also makes me feel more welcome on this blog.
I came to the blog from Unsong, and also because of that would attend a meetup, if only it were local. But I'm in the Detroit area, and won't hold my breath.
"Some combination of bad planning and bad karma has once again brought me to New York City."
But Scott! Hustle and bustle! City living! All the ethnic cuisines in restaurants run by quaint foreign folk for you to experience! Museums, art galleries, concerts, nightlife, loads of fun opportunities to meet lots of strangers for casual and exotic sex'n'drugs'n'rockandroll! Multicultral and diverse! Not some small town Midwest monoculture where they probably haven't even heard of polenta yet, and that was the popular cuisine fad of the 00s! 😁
EDIT: Oh, and of course I was forgetting the most important thing of all: urban density! All those millions crammed in together in the best use of high rise, high density, housing! So beautiful a sight for a YIMBY surely it must bring a tear to the eye? 😥
I don't think NYC is a YIMBY paradise. We can't even get congestion pricing, and there's no tall buildings between FiDi and Midtown.
Right now it looks like his karma means watching out for and dodging burning and collapsing cranes, seeing as how the meet-up is in Manhattan ☹
https://abc7ny.com/crane-fire-nyc-collapse-new-york/13550582/
EDIT: Then again, a trip to NY may be safer because at least that way he'll avoid the naked people shooting guns in the road on the bridge
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naked-woman-san-francisco-bay-area-bridge-firing-gun/
New York City is still, statistically, one of the safest places to live in the country.
It's worth pointing out that the observed crime rate doesn't tell the whole story. If people have to change their behavior, sometimes radically, to avoid victimization, the city should count as unsafe. Let's say that NYC overall has the same crime rate as a particular city in elsewhere in the US. This parity doesn't reflect the fact that the crime rate in the other city may be in spite of the fact that people, especially women, might be comfortable walking around anywhere in the city alone, at any time of day etc. - if people behaved the same in NYC, it may have a much higher crime rate. Which is to say, if young e.g. white or asian women know to not walk around alone at night in south bronx or east brooklyn and this aversion leads to a lower crime rate, it's not really fair to chalk this up to NYC being a safe city.
While your point is valid, I think there's a good chance this effect actually favors NYC. NYC is a very 24-hour city, so you actually do have lots of people walking around at night.
But a person's sense of safe and unsafe zones is a matter of their personal psychology, their media consumption, their upbringing and their personal experiences. You can't assume that a person's map of what is safe is correct, or consistent with that of others. Or that it is effective in reducing their exposure to crime.
Yes, some people avoid circumstances that are unsafe. But other people avoid circumstances that are perfectly safe (for example, a lively neighborhood full of poor brown people that doesn't accord with their suburban upbringing's sense of safe space). Since we don't know how realistic and effective people's "crime avoiding" decisions are, I don't think we can use them to argue that there are "missing crimes" gumming up the stats.
It has to be said, too, that a lot of people aren't avoidant at all. I'm thinking of people tapping on their laptops on the subway at 1 AM or wandering drunk through supposedly bad neighborhoods. Enough people take the risks you claim they avoid to supply victims. Most are not victimized because the crime rate is genuinely low.
You are aware that construction of gantries for congestion toll cameras in Manhattan has already started?
Yes, exactly my point. It took until 2023 to even get an unambiguously good policy approved, and it's already tied up in years worth of nimby lawsuits.
How is congestion pricing a yimby policy? You're explicitly discouraging people from coming to New York!
It's discouraging *cars* from coming to New York. If you could implement a package of YIMBY policies in NYC you'd upzone for construction, implement congestion pricing, and replace some car traffic with transit. (Well, possibly not: if the drivers are willing to pay a lot to drive in crowded areas, it may be socially optimal to simply charge tolls and let them keep doing it.)
I don't think I've been that close to the WTC site since before 9/11. I didn't know any victims of the attack so I'm not sure why it makes me as uncomfortable as it does... Do any other New Yorkers here feel that way?
my god
Nope. I feel more like a 9/11 last responder https://twitter.com/metalgearobama/status/1439370309564452869
Here's our local OBNYC thread about this meetup, with some suggested reading. See you on Sunday!
https://groups.google.com/g/overcomingbiasnyc/c/h1bfWCNF6JU/m/7iz9SnlNCAAJ
Hi Robi, how are NYC meetings in general? I have recently moved to Long Island, and am debating whether the meeting is worth the 2+ hour commute.
I wouldn't usually recommend a 2+ hour commute for a 3-hour meetup (though some people do this), but since Scott is coming I think this one will be worth it.
There's also a biannual meetup in Massapequa, Long Island which you might be interested in.
Thanks!
Don't people sometimes hang out afterwards too?
Yes, usually.