Secular Solstice on 12/18

The PEAR Solstice is 12/18. Here’s the deets:  When: 5pm doors open, 10pm doors closeWhere: 1548 NE 15th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97225 What: The Secular Solstice was created around 2011 in the New York rationality community as a way to celebrate the light of humanity’s progress throughout the ages on the darkest day of the year. Since then it has spread to

Monthly Mailer for January

December Recap This past month we had book clubs on Julia Galef’s The Scout Mindset. This book’s central argument is that cultivating an attitude that desires accurate beliefs (aka the Scout Mindset) has many psychological, instrumental, and ethical benefits, which makes it a perfect companion to last month’s Superforecasting. Some of our deepest discussions in

Monthly Mailer for December

November Recap Ok so this past month we had the book clubs on Superforecasting, Bi-weekly on Liberal Outreach, Nuclear Reactor Tour and Energy Discussion, and 2 Socials. That is 8 very cool times people got together to make the world a little more rational and effectively altruistic! The Nuclear reactor tour and follow-up discussion about

Monthly Mailer for November

September Recap This month was a little more relaxed with around 4 events, with Dinners and Bi-Weeklies populating the schedule mostly. There were discussions about circling, woo, more prediction markets, teaching calculus, the Evolution of Art from Abstract to Concrete, and the Repugnant Conclusion. Also our conversation about “The Precipice” by Toby Ord led directly

Monthly Mailer for October 2021

PEAR 10/06/2021 September Recap This month we had around 6 events, including the PEAR dinners, Discussions about the “Most Important Century”, the ACX Meet-up, and Petrov Day.  The ACX meet-up had around 20 people, the presentation from Dr Sebesta, and then we talked about metacognition in various respects. The conversations were great, and we plan

Monthly Mailer for September 2021

PEAR 09/01/21 August Recap This month we had around 5 events ranging from socials to topical deep dives.  People from diverse backgrounds such as interior design, web app development, and business entrepreneurship got together and discussed Post-Quantum Cryptography, Predictive Processing, Polygenic Testing, Obesity, and Emoji Languages.   We also consolidated Portland’s EA and Rationalist/ACX communities into