Presentations From Fluidity Forum 2024

This is an archived page from the 2024 Fluidity Forum. You may also see our 2023 session list on another page. You can see some videos of 2024 sessions on this playlist on our YouTube channel.

The sessions and exhibits listed on this page are subject to potential change if necessary. Some cancellations will inevitably occur. We have finished assigning rooms and time slots, although they may change.

Please email us at our contact@ email address, or through our Contact Page, if you catch anything that seems mistaken or unlikely!

Throughout: one-on-one West Coast swing dance lessons, Harry Gao

Throughout: Sugar and Salt and Everything, Gestalt!, Jane Flowers

Thursday:

Thursday 6pm: Opening Ceremonies, everyone

Thursday 7pm: Intro to Fluidity Forum, Matt Arnold

Thursday 8pm: Thursday dinner

Thursday 9pm: Science vs. Scientism (and Why Pseudoscience Isn’t Always Bad), Misha Tuesday

Thursday 10pm: Sing-along, Bree Bartholomew

Friday:

Friday 9am: Friday continental breakfast

Friday 10am: March (Literal) Madness: Healing Modalities Edition!, Jane Flowers

Friday 11am: Linguistically-mediated Causal Attribution Errors, Gricemic Index

Friday noon: Personal Space Awareness, Jane Pierce

Friday 1pm: Friday lunch, Jasmine Ren

Friday 2pm: Dark Nights and Sense-making, Jane Pierce and Jane Flowers

Friday 2pm: Intentional Relating games, Matt Arnold

Friday 3pm: Practical Steps toward a Postindustrial Manufacturing Economy, Richard Letts

Friday 3pm (two hours): Intentional Relating circle, Matt Arnold

Friday 4pm: Exploring Boundaries with West Coast Swing Dance, Harry Gao

Friday 5pm: Self-hypnosis and Neurolinguistic Programming, Misha Tuesday

Friday 5pm: Game: Trouble in Terrorist Town, Josh Brulé

Friday 6pm: Evolution, Chesterton’s Fence and Goodhart’s Law, Blake Elias

Friday 7pm: Embodied Peacemaking, Patrick Day

Friday 8pm (80 minutes): Of Salads & Superficiality: A Group Dinner Ritual, Jane Flowers

Friday 9:30pm: Game: Once upon a Time, Phil Goetz

Saturday:

Saturday 9am: Saturday continental breakfast

Saturday 10am: Integrating Desire into Awareness Practices, Srikar Pamidi

Saturday 10am (80 minutes): Art on the Chaos Continua, Phil Goetz

Saturday 11:30am: Saturday lunch, Jasmine Ren

Saturday 12:30pm: carpool to Auditorium

Saturday 1pm: The Tantra of Freestyling, Duncan Horst

Saturday 2pm: 7 Provisional Truths: A Field Guide to Construct Awareness, Brandon Watson

Saturday 3pm: Lenses We See the World With, Lauren Elbaum

Saturday 4pm: “As It’s Told” vs. “As It Is”: Field Research in Abstraction and in Practice, Feast of Assumption

Saturday 5pm: Competing Dimensions to Optimize for in Literary Translation, Alexis Wu

Saturday 6pm: return to Airbnb

Saturday 6:30pm: Saturday dinner, Jasmine Ren

Saturday 7:30pm: Meta-rationality (or Why I’m Not a Bayesian), Richard Ngo

Saturday 8:30pm: Dead Ends in the Technological Evolutionary Tree, Claire Peters

Saturday 9:30pm: Saturday afterparty, everyone

Sunday:

Friday 9am: Sunday continental breakfast

Sunday 10am: Iyengar yoga class, Lauren Elbaum

Sunday 10am: Exotic States of Mind, Srikar Pamidi

Sunday noon: Coffee ritual, Matt Arnold

Sunday 1pm: Guided Somatic Experience, Carrie Day

Sunday 1pm: Game: Trouble in Terrorist Town, Take Two, Josh Brulé

Sunday 2pm: How to Not Start a Cult, Matt Arnold

Sunday 3pm: Closing Reflections, everyone

Canceled:

If You’re So Smart, Why Can’t You Die?, Collin Lysford

Failure Modes of Secular Religions: Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Eneasz Brodski

Goth 101 workshop, Eneasz Brodski

one-on-one West Coast swing dance lessons

throughout forum on request, no set times or location, Harry Gao

Hopeful participants should arrange one-on-one lesson times with Harry.

This is separate from the scheduled swing dance event at 4pm on Friday.

Sugar and Salt and Everything, Gestalt!

throughout the weekend, Second-floor Dining Room, Jane Flowers

You just call on umami,
When you’re tasting bland!
We all need! U-ma-mi,
To ta-a-aste strong!

Thank you, Dill Withers, for that lovely segue, and welcome, all you Fluidity Forum foodies! All throughout the weekend, we’ll be sampling age-old Aryeuvedic concoctions, irresistibly Instagrammable confections (BYO zeitgeisty tin coupé glass), and everything in-between!

Daily menus to be hastily scrawled on a dainty lil’ chalkboard, like we’re some insufferable Napa Valley farm-to-table establishment with a pitiful lone Michelin Star.

Opening Ceremonies

Thursday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Game Room, everyone

The intention is to cohere as a group, and set the norms of the weekend. We will gather in the enclosed parking lot in the back, and process together to be seated. Bring an object to present to the group and place on the table for the weekend; there are more instructions in the email you received. Once again, Duncan Horst will improvise a song!

Intro to Fluidity Forum

Thursday, 7:00pm to 8:00pm, Game Room, Matt Arnold

A survey of ideas that combined to inform the design of Fluidity Forum, including but not limited to:

We welcome all three vibes listed on our vibes page. We’ll explore how such an event can remain multi-perspectival, but also have enough in common to be interested in each other’s sessions.

Thursday dinner

Thursday, 8:00pm to 8:50pm, First-floor Dining Room

Grilled seasonal vegetables (cauliflower, zucchini, onions, bell peppers, beets) with tofu

Italian sausages for those who want meat

Baked potatoes for those who want carbs

Science vs. Scientism (and Why Pseudoscience Isn’t Always Bad)

Thursday, 9:00pm to 9:50pm, Game Room, Misha Tuesday

Although “science” (a.k.a. the scientific method) is a process or methodology, many people consciously or unconsciously consider science to be a body of knowledge. We will explore this distinction with an inquiry into whether the scientific method is good for everything. You will also be invited to consider some ways in which pseudoscientific ideas (a.k.a. non-evidence-based beliefs) can be innocuous or even beneficial in certain cases.

Sing-along

Thursday, 10:00pm, First-floor Living Room, Bree Bartholomew

Last year’s popular improvisational musical jam returns!

Friday continental breakfast

Friday, 9am, First- and Second-floor Kitchens

Serve yourself from the fridge. We will have a continental breakfast of yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, cereal with milk and non-dairy milk, fruit, bagels with cream cheese, and coffee.

March (Literal) Madness: Healing Modalities Edition!

Friday, 10:00am to 10:50am, Game Room, Jane Flowers

Do you roll your eyes whenever someone mentions EMDR? Are you an acupuncturist, keen on bursting Western medicine’s legibility bubble? Is hypnotherapy your hobby-horse? Is ketamine your hobby-horse tranquilizer?

Well, then, throw on your Freudian Slippers, ease yourself in to your well-worn armchair, and come one, come all, to what may well be a not-inconsequential mental health showdown, given the weirdly portentous role of TPoT in these matters.

Starting off with a full tournament bracket of modalities and methods, we’ll live-vote on each matchup, allowing time prior to each matchup to debate, or sing the praises of, or relate horror stories involving, each of the modalities in question.

Soon enough, we’ll have slowly whittled our way down to the ONLY thing that TOTALLY WORKS for EVERYONE, for ALL OF TIME. Yay, blanket statements! Also if enough people bring their emotional support animals, we can host a cage match.

Linguistically-mediated Causal Attribution Errors

Friday, 11:00am to 11:50am, First-floor Living Room, Gricemic Index

This presentation discusses some recent work on the linguistics of “causal attribution errors”: a listener’s tendency to infer a causal relationship from a statement that conveys only a correlation. In a linguistically-mediated causal attribution error, a listener infers a causal relationship from a statement which literally conveys only a correlation (e.g. upon hearing “Opera is associated with better health”, a listener might erroneously infer that attending the opera causes better health).

Linguistically-mediated CAEs are relatively common, despite a general awareness of the error and the perceived common knowledge that “correlation does not imply causation”. This talk identifies the contextual conditions and linguistic properties of statements where CAEs are most or least likely to arise, motivated under a theory of listeners as rational agents.

Personal Space Awareness

Friday, noon to 12:50pm, Game Room, Jane Pierce

Join a light hearted session to discover your innate ability to sense other people’s personal space and develop intentional control over your own. Explore your kinetic responses and help them become conscious knowledge.

Jane Pierce is an intuitive coach who has been teaching for over 30 years. Her career as an educator began in the Detroit Public Schools as a math and science teacher. Jane earned her Healer/Counselor certificate from the Church of Tzaddi in 1994 and has facilitated practical spiritual development for thousands of adults in venues ranging from large conventions to intimate classrooms.

Friday lunch

Friday, 1pm to 1:50pm, First-floor Dining Room, Jasmine Ren

Lentil soup (lentils, celery, onion, carrot, kalamata olives, bay leaves, red wine vinegar, olive oil)

Salad (salad greens, balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil, Dijon mustard, Italian seasoning)

Bread

Dark Nights and Sense-making

Friday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, Game Room, Jane Pierce, Jane Flowers

Join us for a discussion on the meaning crisis through the lens of evolutionary psychology. What can we learn from spiritual approaches to the Dark Night of the Soul that helps us navigate these experiences?

Intentional Relating games

Friday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, First-floor Living Room, Matt Arnold

A simplified intro to Authentic Relating Games, which is better named Intentional Relating. We’ll pair off for Curiosity and Listening games, and split into twos or threes for Noticing. To see the 5 agreements, here’s the instruction handout our local group uses.

Practical Steps toward a Postindustrial Manufacturing Economy

Friday, 3:00pm to 3:50pm, Game Room, Richard Letts

This presentation is like strapping in for a rollercoaster into the Postindustrial Manufacturing Economy 2.0, where we wave goodbye to rusty old factories and say hello to a future where your neighbor’s 3D printer is the hero of the day. Think less “corporate giants” and more “local legends” using AI and drones to save the world—one custom couch at a time. It’s a cheeky guide for anyone who’s tired of the same old and ready to shake things up, making manufacturing as cool and community-focused as your favorite neighborhood coffee shop.

Intentional Relating circle

Friday, 3:00pm to 4:50pm (two hours), First-floor Living Room, Matt Arnold

A modified version of what’s known as Circling. We sit in a circle and commit to do only four things: (1) expose a curiosity or assumption, (2) notice something arising in the here-and-now about what it’s like to be with each other, (3) ask if we can say what’s on our mind for a minute and have someone repeat it back, or (3) let a silence linger until one of the first three happens. To see the 5 agreements, here’s the instruction handout our local group uses.

Exploring Boundaries with West Coast Swing Dance

Friday, 4:00pm to 4:50pm, Game Room, Harry Gao

Healthy boundary pushing and boundary holding—in partner dance, flirting, or social interactions in general—is all about the dynamic between leader and follower. But good leading isn’t only being confident and good following isn’t only being receptive! In this short one-on-one lesson, I’ll demonstrate the importance of leading with a follower’s receptiveness and following with a leader’s intentionality. This is key to creating a collaborative back-and-forth dynamic that’s fun for both parties! As someone who understands the fluidity of both roles, I’m happy to teach leaders and followers.

This is a beginner West Coast swing dance lesson that focuses on the connection between leader and follower and not as much about specific dance footwork; in other words, you don’t have to have any experience or desire to dance to gain something from this!

Self-Hypnosis and Neurolinguistic Programming

Friday, 5:00pm to 5:50pm, Game Room, Misha Tuesday

A workshop to learn about cultivating trance and engaging with the unconscious mind for personal growth and transformation, as well as an exploration of semantic reframes and mindset cultivation.

Game: Trouble in Terrorist Town

Friday, 5:00pm to 5:50pm, Backlot, Josh Brulé

Trouble in Terrorist Town is a social deduction game with an informed minority (“traitors”) and an uninformed majority (“innocent”). The traitors’ goal is to eliminate everyone who is not a traitor. The innocents’ goal is to prevent themselves from being killed. However, the innocents do not know who is a traitor and who is innocent.

Basically, it’s Mafia, with Nerf guns.

In addition to the core game, we will experiment with adding additional roles, to see how this affects gameplay and the players’ actions.

I’ll provide a number of Nerf guns, but please feel free to bring your own Nerf guns and/or swords.

Evolution, Chesterton’s Fence and Goodhart’s Law

Friday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Game Room, Blake Elias

This interactive discussion group will explore techno-optimism, techno-pessimism, and techno-realism, and examine evolutionary maps and Chesterton’s Fence as frameworks for analyzing the impact of technology on human evolution.

Slides

Embodied Peacemaking

Friday, 7:00pm to 7:50pm, Game Room, Patrick Day

When we are challenged or threatened, our natural tendency is to constrict or collapse our breathing, posture, movement, and attention—which is experienced as fear, anger, strain, shock, weakness, resignation, numbness, or dissociation.

In anything we may do, these physical responses interfere with planning and physical coordination. In situations of stress or conflict, these powerful physical patterns undermine people’s ability to think rationally, interact empathically, and act peacefully.

Embodied Peacemaking is the practice of learning how to open and balance your body and attention so that you can develop a physical and mental state of relaxation, expansiveness, calm alertness, and compassionate power. This state of mind/body integrity is the foundation for overcoming the distress response and for handling any of life’s challenges effectively.

Embodied Peacemaking Notes (PDF)

Of Salads & Superficiality: A Group Dinner Ritual

Friday, 8:00pm to 9:20pm (80 minutes), First-floor Dining Room, Jane Flowers

I’m one of those bicoastal elites you always hear right-wingers bitching about. Though it sounds less sexy when I 'fess up that one of my coasts is the Gulf. Oh well!

In New York, I live next door to one of the city’s most notoriously TikTokifiable clubstraunts, where the Instagramfaceification of gastronomy is happening right before our eyes-growing-ever-bigger-than-our-stomachs. Talk about simulacrum levels!

And in Houston, Texas, I’m assaulted almost daily by the slam-culinary musings of the renegade-feminist-savant chef that is my neighbor. She has a dry-raged beef with every male chef in town, and espouses the very Forrestgumpian philosophy that “everything’s a salad!” (Like all good non-Newtonian ontologies, it gets deeper the more you think about it.)

Join me for a very special, family-style edition of Sugar and Salt and Everything, Gestalt!, where we’ll stew for a few hours in these gastropsychic crosscurrents, and top off our daily caloric intake in the process.

Recommended Readings

  • Ezra Marcus, Cheesier, Saucier, and Drowning in Caviar: How TikTok Took Over The Menu.
  • Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (Either the original book or the later Netflix miniseries)
  • James C. Scott, Against The Grain and The Art Of Not Being Governed

Game: Once upon a Time

Friday, 9:30pm, First- and Second-floor Dining Rooms, Phil Goetz

Once upon a Time is a storytelling card game. Players create a story together, using cards that show typical elements from fairy tales. One player is the Storyteller and creates a story using the ingredients on their cards. They try to guide the plot towards their own ending. The other players try to use cards to interrupt the Storyteller and become the new Storyteller. The winner is the first player to play out all their cards and end with their Happy Ever After card.

Two parallel sessions of this will be played in the dining rooms of the first and second floors.

Saturday continental breakfast

Saturday, 9am, First- and Second-floor Kitchens

Serve yourself from the fridge. We will have a continental breakfast of yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, cereal with milk and non-dairy milk, fruit, bagels with cream cheese, and coffee.

Integrating Desire into Awareness Practices

Saturday, 10:00am to 10:50am, Game Room, Srikar Pamidi

Most eastern influence speaks a lot about relinquishing desires, which can be helpful, but there are some desires that are so difficult to let go of that a more skillful approach may be required. Clarifying fundamental desires (which desires are yours and which have been inherited) and finding satisfaction through achievement of those clarified desires is often more enjoyable, promotes peace and acceptance, and prevents the condition of “spiritual constipation” or “stagnation” that may arise.

Art on the Chaos Continua

Saturday, 10:00am to 11:20am (80 minutes), First-floor Living Room, Phil Goetz

When we organize art along dimensions corresponding to the 3 meanings of the Greek word xaos, we find that

  • complexity and beauty are maximized in the center;
  • any system capable of producing life generates artifacts in the center;
  • empirically, the center contains naturalistic, representational art; and
  • historically, such art correlates with peace, while symbolic art correlates with war.

Therefore, naturalistic art is the most complex, beautiful, peaceful, and lifelike.
Historically, the public prefers representational art to be from the center, while elites, priests, and rulers want it to come from one of the corners, where simplified, symbolic artistic styles exist, which are useful for propaganda and mind control.

The most-common cycle of artistic development is

  1. formal art develops,
  2. formal art is gradually elaborated into naturalistic art,
  3. civilizational elites replace naturalistic art with symbolic art,
  4. civilization collapses, and culture begins again with formal art.

Saturday lunch

Saturday, 11:30am to 12:20pm, First-floor Dining Room, Jasmine Ren

Chana Masala (chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, garlic, ginger, garam masala, cumin, olive oil

Rice (basmati rice)

carpool to Auditorium

Saturday, 12:30pm, Front Curb

The carpool van will make a few trips from the front curb of the house to the auditorium one mile away.

The Tantra of Freestyling

Saturday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, Auditorium At WSU Industry Innovation Center, Duncan Horst

Duncan Horst will be departing from his one man shows and improvisatory festival circuit musicals to deliver an exposition and demonstration of freestyle improvisation through the lens of Classical Tantra. The two are more closely linked than a casual scholar would imagine! He will combine theory and practice, including performance, metaphysics, and Eastern and Western philosophies to create art, alchemy, and philosophy to fuse them into a functional theory of consciousness which doubles as a living song, never before heard and never performed in the same way twice. This is the metaphorical overstuffed burrito of the fluid mode of consciousness in all her awesome power and terrible glory! A true experience.

7 Provisional Truths: A Field Guide To Construct Awareness

Saturday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, Auditorium At WSU IIC, Brandon Watson

Take a tour of the embodied mind and its consequences for how knowledge is constructed. Our journey pulls epistemology—a domain of philosophy that concerns itself with theories of knowledge—out of the cloistered halls of academia and into the messy realities of daily life. We’ll show how our concernful involvement with the everyday world is the ground for all knowledge, illustrating why knowledge involves far more than “justified, true beliefs”, and how a more sophisticated epistemology opens us to more constructive ways of framing our beliefs about Reality.

Lenses We See the World With

Saturday, 3:00pm to 3:50pm, Auditorium At WSU IIC, Lauren Elbaum

Lauren makes a living off of her curiosity as a product researcher. This character trait has spilled over into noticing patterns in the way people behave and see the world day to day. She has followed up on some of those observations and created a talk about the lenses people see the world with.

“As It’s Told” vs. “As It Is”: Field Research in Abstraction and in Practice

Saturday, 4:00pm to 4:50pm, Auditorium At WSU IIC, Feast of Assumption

A farmer and researcher connects the popular abstractions of farming and research with the practical applications of farming and research.

Competing Dimensions to Optimize for in Literary Translation

Saturday, 5:00pm to 5:50pm, Auditorium At WSU IIC, Alexis Wu

Some thoughts, musings, and perspectives that have been formulated through my decade-long personal experiences as a 1) producer of literary translation, 2) avid consumer of translated literature and scripted media, and 3) academically-trained linguist. I’ll be delving into some clashes of philosophy that I’ve been embroiled in as I navigated the translation and publishing industries, as well as making a case for some of my own stances, a lot of which can, I would in fact argue, be tied to a certain dreaded but relevant word of our current age—alignment.

Owing to the nature of the examples I have on hand and the languages I work in, this presentation will inevitably be more friendly to those proficient in Mandarin Chinese than to others, but I will try my best to make it as universally friendly as I can by contextualizing as needed. Thanks for understanding.

return to Airbnb

Saturday, 6:00pm, Front of Auditorium

The carpool van will make a few trips from the street in front of the auditorium, to the front curb of the house one mile away.

Saturday dinner

Saturday, 6:30pm to 7:20pm, First-floor Dining Room, Jasmine Ren

Tacos (beef topping: beef birria; vegetarian topping: extra firm tofu, chipotle peppers, onions, garlic, vegetable fajitas, bell peppers, red onions, paprika, black beans; guacamole, tortillas, cilantro, lime, tomato, red onion)

Meta-rationality (or Why I’m Not a Bayesian)

Saturday, 7:30pm to 8:20pm, Game Room, Richard Ngo

In this talk Richard argues that many of the mistakes of the rationalist movement ultimately stemmed from its flawed epistemology. He outlines meta-rationality as a less reductionist epistemology with implications for how we should reason both as individuals and as communities.

Dead Ends in the Technological Evolutionary Tree

Saturday, 8:30pm to 9:20pm, Game Room, Claire Peters

Saturday afterparty

Saturday, 9:30pm, all over the Airbnb, everyone

Hang out, mill about, play games, socialize, have fun!

Richard Letts will also be teaching darts and/or rummy. Approach him if you’re interested to learn!

Sunday continental breakfast

Sunday, 9am, First- and Second-floor Kitchens

Serve yourself from the fridge. We will have a continental breakfast of yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, cereal with milk and non-dairy milk, fruit, bagels with cream cheese, and coffee.

Iyengar yoga class

Sunday, 10:00am to 10:50am, Game Room, Lauren Elbaum

How to move your body in healthy ways that feel good. Iyengar yoga focuses on balance, building strength, and flexibility. Poses are demonstrated first and then emulated with coaching. All body types and abilities are welcome.

Please note: it’s best to avoid a heavy meal before yoga, most people will be more comfortable stretching and holding poses that way.

Lauren is not a certified Iyengar teacher, but has been doing Iyengar-style yoga for 11 years.

Exotic States of Mind

Sunday, 10:00am to 10:50am, First-floor Living Room, Srikar Pamidi

A view of Demons, Deities, Ghosts, Magic, Trance, etc. as memetic complexes and their interactions with desire and awareness practices.

This will be a roundtable where people are able to share their more exotic experiences. I will try to introduce some secular language, which has been helpful for me to frame a lot of different phenomena.

Sunday lunch

Sunday, 11:00am, First-floor Dining Room, Jasmine Ren

Baked Salmon (wild-caught salmon, fresh parsley, fresh dill, garlic, lemon)

Store-bought potato salad

Salad (arugula, campari tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, basil, olive oil)

Coffee ritual

Sunday, noon to 12:50pm, Game Room, Matt Arnold

A Monty Python-esque high church parody ritual. The Pope of Coffee shall blesspresso The Holy Of Holies: the most theatrical brewing method ever devised. The acolytes will serve the Holy Liquid unto the congregation, who shall raise the sacrament to the east, and in unison, recite the litany “God, I needed that!” A blend of cafe’ths such as Press-byterian, Buzzentine, Sipiscopal, and even Atheismericano.

Guided Somatic Experience

Sunday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, Game Room, Carrie Day

Let me be your guide as I take you on a meditative somatic journey. Tune in… experience your body and allow sensations to lead you. Feel the fullness of unexpressed energy and emotion. Give yourself permission to release, forgive, and feel a sense of peace/lightness.

Game: Trouble in Terrorist Town, Take Two

Sunday, 1:00pm to 1:50pm, Backlot, Josh Brulé

See the first session of this for the description!

How to Not Start a Cult

Sunday, 2:00pm to 2:50pm, Game Room, Matt Arnold

It all started with good intentions. A group had heightened emotional and psychological experiences, and years later, some of the participants wrote regretful blog posts saying they gained a sense of purpose but lost their sense of self; their sense of proportion; and their sense. We’ve heard the story many times. Mostly what we hear is advice about how to prevent joining one, but what about how to prevent starting one? Sometimes a group takes hold of each other negatively without anyone having ever planned for that. Can it be better designed from the outset? I’ll suggest practical ways to short-circuit several kinds of self-reinforcing spirals of group norms, and share perspectives from multiple sources, plus my own experiences.

Closing Reflections

Sunday, 3:00pm to 3:50pm, Game Room, everyone

What was it like to be this group?

[CANCELED] If You’re So Smart, Why Can’t You Die?

by Collin Lysford

Collin Lysford is no longer able to attend, and so will not be able to give this talk.

Exploring the nature of intelligence through two lenses: adversarial asymmetry (how different is it to think when someone is trying to fool you?) and surviving in an environment (what kind of strategies work when you need to continuously survive?) to talk about how the recent breakthroughs in AI show not that computers are becoming superintelligent but that our conception of “intelligence” is too overloaded and needs to be parceled out more discretely.

[CANCELED] Failure Modes of Secular Religions: Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

by Eneasz Brodski

Eneasz Brodski is no longer able to attend, and so will not be able to give this talk.

There’ve been many attempts to start secular “religions” since atheism became publicly acceptable in the late 90s, and none have truly taken root. Based on his early explorations and conversations with those active in these attempts, Eneasz presents some reasons why this is the case, how the closest alternatives currently available work, and speculates on what’s to be done. Audience input is welcomed!

[CANCELED] Goth 101 workshop

by Eneasz Brodski

Eneasz Brodski is no longer able to attend, and so will not be able to lead this workshop.

Addressing why to seek out goth dance events, and how to attend/vibe/dance at one.