LW - Reflections on Less Online by Error

The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Reflections on Less Online, published by Error on July 7, 2024 on LessWrong. Meta: This post turned out longer, slower, and less well-written than I hoped. I don't see any similar posts in a quick search, though, so I'm posting it anyway. I've tried to front-load feedback that might be useful to the organizers, and put more personal stuff towards the end. For context, I attended LessOnline and the Manifest-branded Summer Camp, but not Manifest itself, and my main prior experience with events like this is fandom conventions such as (local to me) Dragoncon. As I left the Lighthaven dorm to find breakfast, five people at a table in the courtyard invited me to join a game of Zendo. This was the first notable thing to happen to me at LessOnline. It was also the thing that convinced me that yes, the trip across the country to attend would be Worth It. I have never played Zendo before, and don't expect to play it again anytime soon. That the game was specifically Zendo is not important. The important part is that five people in the same place knew what Zendo is and found that kind of game worth playing. There's an attitude that I associate with normies, aptly summarized by Tycho Brahe (the writer, not the astronomer) as: "Many people respond to new information, especially densely coded information, as something between an insult and a chop to the trachea." There's a different attitude, one that I associate with security mindset, aptly summarized by John Gordon as: "Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn't trust, whom she cannot hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns and to organise a coup d'etat, while at the same time minimising the cost of the phone call. A coding theorist is someone who doesn't think Alice is crazy." A lot of things happened over the course of my trip, but what made it worth it wasn't any particular event. It was spending a week around the sort of people that play Zendo, take dense coding in stride, and think Alice is a necessary kind of crazy. Lighthaven First and most critical to minimizing P(doom), look at the adorable doggie! His name is Leo. As best I could tell from asking others, he's not attached to the site, he hails from one of the adjacent properties and just likes the people. I was going to nominate him as the LessOnline mascot, but must admit that Agendra might be more appropriate. Ahem. So. Lighthaven (the venue) names all its buildings after mathematicians, and the space looks exactly like you would expect a mathematician to want it to look. Every wall was a whiteboard; every not-otherwise-used flat surface held books along the lines of GEB. The public spaces were organized in such a way as to encourage 4-8 person conversations, usually near a whiteboard. The semiprivate dorms supplied more Stuff than the average hotel (e.g. I brought things like earplugs and sleep masks, only to find that was taken care of). The presentation room seating was surprisingly comfortable. The outdoor turf was easy on the feet (I went almost all week shoeless, which feels nicer than you'd think). Food was catered, snacks were available 24/7, supply cabinets held a wide array of random necessities. Power plugs were everywhere. In short, someone put considerable thought into eliminating the stupid fiddly bits of life in general and conventions in particular. That last part seems more important than is obvious. An obnoxiously large proportion of life goes towards 1. doing the stupid fiddly bits, 2. procrastinating about doing the stupid fiddly bits, and 3. worrying about procrastinating too much about doing the stupid fiddly bits. Even at conventions, that's usually an issue, because I have to pack and fly and unpack and make sure I know where food and water is and that all my stuff is charged and that there's a backu...