Episode 3

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Published on:

29th Sep 2023

ACX Everywhere 2023 - Philadelphia/Petrov Day Edition

Hello, and Welcome to ACX Everywhere 2023.

I’m Andrew Willsen, and this episode is a series of candid conversations recorded at an ACX Everywhere Meetup in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in September of 2023. We recorded at the Philadelphia Ethical Society, and we had a great time with ACX organizer Wes Fanza of The Mind Killer podcast along with some great takes on Russian Literature and Science Fiction Fan Culture. Thanks (EA) for the dim sum. We recorded on Petrov Day, and the reading that is discussed in the first part of the podcast can be found here. If you are not familiar with Petrov Day you should immediately click HERE and read about the incident, pretty fucking heroic.

If you're new here, ACX stands for Astral Codex Ten, which is a rationalist blog written by Scott Alexander. Scott is a doctor on the US West Coast, and is currently working on new models for mental health care at Lorien Psychiatry.

I'm doing this podcast because it's hard to know what an ACX meetup is if you've never been to one, mostly because people don't believe you when you tell them about it. My hope is that these recordings will make it easier for people to discover ACX and to hopefully get a sense of whether or not ACX might be for them. And, just to make it more personal, if you want more high quality conversations in your life, ACX might be for you.

If you’re interested in attending an ACX Meetup in Fall of 2023, click here. You will find a list of over 170 meetups happening around the world in September and October of 2023, hopefully there is one near you.

Thanks for checking out these conversations, I hope you find them as interesting as I do. If you are interested in hearing more conversations about ideas associated with Rationalism check out the podcast Rationally Speaking, with Julia Galef, it's great.

Cheers,

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About the Podcast

ACX Everywhere 2023

We have Lore

Hello, and Welcome to ACX Everywhere 2023.

This podcast is a series of candid conversations between meetup attendees recorded at ACX meetups around the country in the fall of 2023. If you're new here, ACX stands for Astral Codex Ten, which is a rationalist blog written by Scott Alexander. Scott is a doctor on the US West Coast, currently working on new models for mental health care at Lorien Psychiatry.

Rationalism is...hard to define, so the following definition is taken from Astral Codex Ten (https://www.astralcodexten.com/about): “the rationalist community” is a mostly-online subculture of people trying to work together to figure out how to distinguish truth from falsehood using insights from probability theory, cognitive science, and AI.

If you are interested finding out more about rationality in general, and you like podcasts, check out 'Rationally Speaking' with Julia Galef. (http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/)

What is ACX and what is it about? Again, paraphrasing the ACX 'about' page, ACX started as (Scott's) personal blog, Slate Star Codex, and it grew out of "the rationalist community" mentioned above. In practice the articles on ACX tend to focus on reasoning, science, psychiatry, medicine, ethics, genetics, AI, economics, and politics, with some history and philosophy sprinkled over the top.

The amazing thing about ACX Meetups you get a chance to have amazing conversations, IRL, about those topics, with a great community of people. I have personally attended more than fifty ACX Meetups, and I have had phenomenal conversations at each.

I'm doing this podcast because it's hard to know what an ACX meetup is if you've never been to one, mostly because people don't believe you when you tell them about it. My hope is that these recordings make it easier for people to discover ACX, and hopefully get a sense of whether or not ACX might be for them.

A little about me, I'm Andrew Willsen, an ACX fan from Sacramento, CA. I'm a generalist who spent over twenty years working in high end restaurants, and currently I do independent research, systems theory consulting, and I make art. I see the facilitation of this podcast as both research and art rolled into one, and that's why I'm doing it.

If you’re interested in attending an ACX Meetup a list of Fall 2023 Meetups can be found here: (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/meetups-everywhere-2023-times-and)

Thanks for checking out these conversations, I hope you find them as interesting as I do.

Cheers

About your host

Andrew Willsen