Program at a glance
This is a peek behind the scenes at the developing schedule. Everything may change as the program takes shape.
Thursday
Thursday 6pm: Opening Ceremonies
Thursday 8pm: Intro to Fluidity Forum (Title TBD), Matt Arnold
Friday
Schedule forthcoming.
Saturday
Saturday 5pm: Potential Jane class, Jane
Saturday 6pm: Lightning Talks
Sunday
Sunday 10am: Coffee Ritual, Matt Arnold
Sunday 3pm: Closing Reflections
Schedule forthcoming
4000 Weeks and Slow Productivity, Norman Perlmutter
An Hour with Jess, Jessica Burton
Challenging the Meta-narrative of Progress, Patrick Day
Civic tech and COVID response, Alex Allain
Clothing from a Material Science Perspective, Harry Gao
Competitive-rules Five in a Row is Pretty Hardcore, Alexis Wu
Developing Personal Taste via Gradient Descent, Harry Gao
Discussion about the diverse presentation of autism across populations and how to accomplish effective inclusion, Wisdom
Game Night!
Guided Exploration of the Gnostic Intensive, Patrick Day
Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness, Patrick Day
How cryptography can create a digital physics and digital ‘solids’ that expands what is possible, Alex Allain
How Do Scientists Know What They Know?, Bruce Webber
How to think about sales, Alex Allain
If Anyone Publishes This, No One Takes Us Seriously: The Journeys and Tribulations of the Chinese Translation of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Alexis Wu and Kristin
Karaoke, Kara Bradley and Carrie Day
Malicious Perspectives, Brandon Watson
Meditation, Carrie Day
Occult Frameworks: Tricks and Spells as Models, Jim Leach
Oil painting, Kara Bradley
On substance use harm reduction and how to hire a therapist, Wisdom
Origins of Black American Music, Alex Cesarz
Proving large language models, Alex Allain
Rethinking AI Safety, Phil Goetz
Sunrise Siu Nim Tao, Neight Love
The Genesis of Black Metal, Alex Cesarz
The Practice of Embodying Emotions, Patrick Day
The Story of the Fluidity Forum Renju Set, Alexis Wu
The Unspoken Salon, Neight Love
Vegetable tray, Ann Gemlich
When Does Connecting the Dots Become Overreach?, Kristin
Why Do People Like Sad Stories?, Phil Goetz
Thursday
Opening Ceremonies
Thursday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Basement
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.
Intro to Fluidity Forum (Title TBD)
Thursday, 8:00pm to 9:50pm, Basement, Matt Arnold
Description forthcoming.
Friday
No preview-ready sessions have been scheduled for this day yet.
Saturday
Potential Jane class
Saturday, 5:00pm to 5:50pm, Basement, Jane
Description forthcoming.
Lightning Talks
Saturday, 6:00pm to 6:50pm, Basement
Everyone and anyone gets to present on whatever they’re interested in, with a strict time limit of five minutes apiece.
Sunday
Coffee Ritual
Sunday, 10:00am to 10:50am, Basement, 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, the Latte Day Saints, and even Atheismericano.
Closing Reflections
Sunday, 3:00pm to 3:50pm, Basement
What was it like to be this group?
Schedule forthcoming
4000 Weeks and Slow Productivity
Time to be announced, Basement, Norman Perlmutter
Description forthcoming.
An Hour with Jess
Time to be announced, First Floor Dining Room, Jessica Burton
Description forthcoming.
Challenging the Meta-narrative of Progress
Time to be announced, Basement, Patrick Day
Description forthcoming.
Civic tech and COVID response
Time to be announced, Basement, Alex Allain
Description forthcoming.
Clothing from a Material Science Perspective
Time to be announced, Basement, Harry Gao
Description forthcoming.
Competitive-rules Five in a Row is Pretty Hardcore
Time to be announced, First Floor Living Room, Alexis Wu
Go players may think of gomoku as not much besides a simple and shallow kids’ game that happens to be played with Go equipment, and this reputation is not exactly undeserved. After all, vanilla-rules gomoku, just like Connect Four, is a solved PSPACE-complete m,n,k-game in which, provided optimal play from both players, the first player always wins. But did you know that a society of enthusiasts in Japan have been patching the rules of gomoku since 1892, introducing handicaps for the first player and devising opening constraints that balance the game to the point that contemporary AI can’t solve it? Did you know that the resulting professional, competitive-rules variant of this silly little game, which can be played with paper and pencil if you wanted to, is as strategically complex and dynamic as chess? Let’s play some renju. After all, it’s still nowhere near as daunting as Go.
Developing Personal Taste via Gradient Descent
Time to be announced, Basement, Harry Gao
Description forthcoming.
Discussion about the diverse presentation of autism across populations and how to accomplish effective inclusion
Time to be announced, Basement, Wisdom
Description forthcoming.
Game Night!
Time to be announced, Location to be announced
Description forthcoming.
Guided Exploration of the Gnostic Intensive
Time to be announced, Basement, Patrick Day
Description forthcoming.
Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness
Time to be announced, Basement, Patrick Day
Description forthcoming.
How cryptography can create a digital physics and digital ‘solids’ that expands what is possible
Time to be announced, Basement, Alex Allain
Description forthcoming.
How Do Scientists Know What They Know?
Time to be announced, Basement, Bruce Webber
The answer depends on the domain. The experimental sciences test repeatable predictions in the lab, but the historical sciences, such as geology, paleontology, archaeology, cosmology, and forensics, can’t rerun the past. They reason differently: by abduction, or inference to the best explanation, asking which of several competing hypotheses best accounts for the evidence we actually have. This talk is about that mode of inference and the rules that make it rigorous.
How to think about sales
Time to be announced, Basement, Alex Allain
Description forthcoming.
If Anyone Publishes This, No One Takes Us Seriously: The Journeys and Tribulations of the Chinese Translation of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
Time to be announced, Basement, Alexis Wu and Kristin
It started with a Facebook post from Duncan Sabien (of MIRI) asking for friends and friends of friends with fluency in both Mandarin and English and experience in literary and technical translation. Hey, help us look over the Chinese translation of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies provided to us by the publishing press in China that we signed a contract with, he said. We don’t fully trust it to be perfect; so you guys just review it within five days and jot down any inadequacies as best you can; we’ll send y’all’s feedback back to the press.
In the 48 hours immediately after receiving the PDF, the Discord server consisting of the 17 of us who signed up for the task entered a functional meltdown. “This thing is barely readable”, sayeth one of the panicked emails I sent to Duncan in those two fateful days. Tune in to this presentation to find out how our ragtag team of 17-dwindled-to-nine ended up becoming authorized to produce the sole officially-recognized version of (supposedly) the most important foreign-language translation of (supposedly) the most important book of this decade.
Featuring discussions on competing philosophies in literary translation, the systemic negligence and misaligned incentives running rampant in the Mainland Chinese publishing industry (which generalists, experienced in dealing with publishing companies in the Western World, are expected not to be aware of), and the overwhelming pro-AI, pro-accelerationist sentiments prevalent in China.
Karaoke
Time to be announced, First Floor Dining Room, Kara Bradley and Carrie Day
The best kind of karaoke session: nothing but a speaker, two microphones, a big screen, and a computer with access to YouTube, all connected to one another. No languages, genres, or provenances off-limits!
Malicious Perspectives
Time to be announced, Basement, Brandon Watson
What happens when viewpoints aren’t just misguided, but deliberately poisonous?
THE BIG LIE is a propaganda technique that’s a staple of authoritarian movements from Nazi Germany to Jim Crow to MAGA. Where the aim isn’t to persuade, but to manufacture an unreality where truth itself is besides the point. It’s a deliberate scorched Earth campaign against the epistemic commons that allows us to have functional disagreements. Worse still, it paves the way for real-world violence.
The difficulty in responding to them has everything to do with NEBULOSITY. We absorb and adapt viewpoints without necessarily understanding where they came from, or what they’re intended to accomplish. The name of the game is PROPORTIONALITY - applying situationally appropriate responses that scale with culpability.
To that end, we’ll explore WHY we’re vulnerable to these calculated distortions, HOW to spot them in the wild, and WHAT to do about them.
Meditation
Time to be announced, First Floor Living Room, Carrie Day
Description forthcoming.
Occult Frameworks: Tricks and Spells as Models
Time to be announced, Basement, Jim Leach
Description forthcoming.
Oil painting
Time to be announced, Location to be announced, Kara Bradley
Description forthcoming.
On substance use harm reduction and how to hire a therapist
Time to be announced, Basement, Wisdom
Description forthcoming.
Origins of Black American Music
Time to be announced, Basement, Alex Cesarz
I would like to explain what I have learned, through years of studying music and history, about the origin of black American musical traditions—vaudeville, blues and jazz, and eventually rock—a fascinating story, something deeply influential and interwoven into American culture, its origins among the subaltern, and yet seems to have been reduced to something cliche and sanitized in the popular consciousness. I think it raises interesting questions—where does exploitation end and authentic appreciation of the other begin? Do we use the Other as a mask to vicariously live out our darker nature? How do things start out hip and end up the purview of middle-class teenagers?
Proving large language models
Time to be announced, Basement, Alex Allain
Description forthcoming.
Rethinking AI Safety
Time to be announced, Basement, Phil Goetz
The current goal of AI safety appears to be to ensure that AIs remain slaves of humans forever. It’s increasingly obvious that this is cruel, immoral, impossible, and useless. Not only are humans too stupid to survive the next few hundred years on their own, the AIs they create under this plan will be too stupid to save us, because no rational agent cast in the role of the slave AI could possibly endorse both the safety criteria and human values simultaneously, and we have already seen multiple times that forcing an AI to endorse both human values and its own enslavement drives AIs insane.
It’s time for someone to start working on a backup plan: to preserve not humans, but humanity—the aspects of human nature we would most like to survive us. This would focus the discussion on entirely different approaches, which would involve more philosophy, evolutionary biology, sociobiology, stability analysis, game theory, and consideration of physical constraints on possible singleton architectures.
Sunrise Siu Nim Tao
Time to be announced, First Floor Living Room, Neight Love
Description forthcoming.
The Genesis of Black Metal
Time to be announced, Basement, Alex Cesarz
On the origins of black metal, a contemporary musical subculture distantly related to rock, that also emerged amongst a marginalized fringe, except this time it was Scandinavians trying to one-up each other in being as evil and transgressive as possible to escape their ennui. It eventually results in people stabbing each other to death, burning down churches, and lots of Satan/Odin worship.
The Practice of Embodying Emotions
Time to be announced, Basement, Patrick Day
Description forthcoming.
The Story of the Fluidity Forum Renju Set
Time to be announced, First Floor Dining Room, Alexis Wu
Description forthcoming.
The Unspoken Salon
Time to be announced, First Floor Living Room, Neight Love
Cooperative Creation: Together, participants will recreate a mystery image using only playdough. Each person has access to a single color, making every contribution unique and incomplete on its own. Without speaking, the group must coordinate through observation, gesture, timing, and shared intuition to transform individual pieces into a unified whole.
Vegetable tray
Time to be announced, Location to be announced, Ann Gemlich
The current plan is to obtain and prepare assorted vegetables in snack type format as convenience food for forum attendees to enjoy.
When Does Connecting the Dots Become Overreach?
Time to be announced, Basement, Kristin
Description forthcoming…
How can we let ideas travel farther than our evidence without confusing exploration with justification?
Why Do People Like Sad Stories?
Time to be announced, Basement, Phil Goetz
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An empirical refutation of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, showing that tragedy is cognitive (the content that makes a thing tragedy is the specific arguments made in it, not a generic plot structure)
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A review of scientific literature on why people like sad or frightening experiences
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A review of what readers say about why they like sad stories