Q: Who are the "rationalists"?

A: The rationalists are a community of people that have its originations in the comment sections of LessWrong, Slate Star Codex (SSC)/Astral Codex Ten (ACX), and other related blogs.

It's since become its own social community, attracting people who generally tend to enjoy truthseeking, secular humanism, and interesting conversations. The community is mostly online, but there are also meetups in most major cities. Here is a quick history of the community.

Q: Isnt it kind of cringe to call yourself a "rationalist"?

A: The name "rationalist" is bad in some ways, but the more accurate and modest term "aspiring rationalist" is a bit too unwieldy for everyday use, and for some reason no one was super enthusiastic about taking on the identity of "aspie". So rationalists we are!

In this group we mostly shorten the collective description to "rats", which leads to people saying stuff like "how many rats are going to be at the movie?", which is a great consolation prize.

Q: Who can come to your meetups?

A: Anyone who's enjoyed any article from LessWrong, Astral Codex Ten, or ACX's predecessor blog Slate Star Codex. If you haven't yet, just read one of these: here's one on science, one on politics, and one on cactus people.

Q: What do you guys do?

A: We meet up weekly to chat about interesting topics or run experimental workshops, hang out, and eat snacks (healthy and vegetarian). At any given meetup, expect ~6-12 people.

To get a sense of what the meetups are like, you can check out the backlog of all of our previous meetups here.

The default hangout space is the organizer's apartment amenity room, in Uptown Waterloo. Topics are posted usually 3-4 days before the meetup, but you'll also have access to the spreadsheet of upcoming meetups once you come to an in-person event and unlock the discord invite.

Please come check us out even if you think you wouldn't fit in, don't consider yourself a "meetup" person, or think it's weird to follow a strange group of people to a secondary location.

We welcome people of all ages, genders, and orientations. And rest assured that everyone who has come so far definitely still have all of their kidneys though we are working on this.

Q: Who organizes these things?

A: I'm Jenn! I've been in the rationality community ever since I followed an HPMOR update to LessWrong sometime in the early 2010s. I'm also an effective altruist interested in maximizing the amount of good that I can do in the world, so a decent proportion of meetups will have an EA slant.

I happen to have a nice job that leaves me with time to spare for planning social stuff, and this is what you end up with if you're an extrovert that's terminally online and allergic to normal parties.

For questions, hit me up on LessWrong, or email me at jenn [at] kwrationality.ca.

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