Brussels meetup group

• WARNING: this page is definitely not regularly updated.
• web page: LessWrong Brussels
• contact : Roxolan and Axel
• venue : La Fleur en Papier Doré, Rue des Alexiens 55, 1000 Brussels
• frequency : monthly (second Saturday of the month at 1am)
• average attendance : 4-5 people

Sample Past meetups

• the 11th of February 2012
  • individual interests, individual situation (studies, work, ...), position with Less Wrong, shared some interesting book titles
• the 17th of March 2012
  • how to handle personal crisis
• the 16th of April 2012
  • difficulties of social interactions
• the 19th of May 2012
  • exercises, including the game "werewolves", to practice lessons learned on social behavior and group dynamics
    • "werewolves" skipped as we were not enough players
      • recommendation to play equivalents online
  • creative thinking puzzle a la Google interview
  • http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/c9u/logical_fallacies_poster_a_lesswrong_adaptation/
  • agenda
    • later that day Serons-nous la dernière génération à mourir de vieillesse ?
    • June 8th Who needs a worldview at VUB
• the 16th of June 2012
  • proposition by Fabien to discuss about his list of scenarii of personnal catastrophic events and his MemoryLoss as an example to recover from one such scenario
  • answering http://www.quora.com/Does-embodiment-prevent-unbiased-moral-decisions
  • discussing meta-externalities and order them by risk
    • ponder why has not been used in research via Future of Humanity Institute or Long Now Foundation
• the 14th of July 2012
  • Axel's Bayes game
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      Axel's, game picture 1
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      Axel's, game picture 2
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      Axel's, game picture 3
  • Just world theory
  • Technocracy vs. Democracy
• the 11th of August 2012
  • iterated version of Axels' Bayes game
    • now actually had to use the formula few times
  • actuarial science
    • http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/a3c/pooling_resources_for_valuable_actuarial/
  • some ranting against religion
  • some discussions on physics
• September 15th Rue des Alexiens 55 1000 Bruxelles at 12:00
  • learning tennis, update on probabilities, system 1&2, venn diagram explanation
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      brief game
  • monthly iteration of Axel's game
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      Bayes' formula
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      clarification by the game master
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      focus and decisions
• the 13th of October 2012
  • Hunters in nature preserves
  • The biology of hard substances in animals
  • Dangerous substances
  • The seemingly (?) pervasive stereotype of notherners being more industrious and southerners more lazy within many European countries
• the 24th of November 2012
  • Unusually invigorating discussion on hindsight bias and Kahneman's "thinking fast and slow".
• The 15th of December 2012
  • Visit from a real cryonicist.
  • Life in lake Vostok?
• The 5th of January 2013
  • The mating behaviour of butterflies
  • Spoil tips (mijnterril / steenberg)
  • Kenia
  • charity
  • A vastly improved version of Axel's Bayes game
• The 16th of February 2013
  • Planning for a recruitment campaign at the local university
  • Trying out Hugo's arguing game. It proves very effective at getting interesting conversations going, if nothing else.
  • Topics discussed in the game include the value of space exploration, whether voting should be mandatory, and the most likely pathway to rogue drones destroying humanity (still pretty unlikely).
• The 16t of March 2013
  • Welcoming newcomers.
  • Playing the arguing game some more. Topics discussed: intellectual property on artistic works, whether anyone should lose their right to vote, positive discrimination, school uniforms, the legalization of drugs and prostitution.
  • Transhumanism and immortality.
• The 20th of April 2013
  • Hyperbolic space
  • Gut bacteria
  • If a "base universe" runs on many-worlds QM, and inside this universe other QM universes are being simulated. To save on computational resources, only one "many-worlds-branch" of every simulated universe is actually calculated. Does this influence the anthropic probability of being in the base universe vs. a simulated universe?
  • The Drake equation and its disturbing implications.