Monthly Archives: January 2020

The January SSC Atlanta Meetup – Science Fiction and Insider Trading

We had out January meetup at the usual spot – topics included

  • Jeffrey Epstein (again)
  • Science Fiction – always good
  • Our general “meh” to The Lessons of History by Will and Arial Durant
  • Virginia Gun laws
  • My theory that Epstein – and maybe a lot of hedge funds in general are just covers for insider trading. Also – I think a lot of machine learning is a cover for unethically obtained information – I did not elaborate enough on that theory
  • Ant society as an aspirational goal – and Game B

I think next time we will try to have a short (1-3), pre-defined list of topics hashed out to better use time (I think we spent a lot of time defining a topic before we actually discussed it).

Reference links:

  • The Gig Economy – the excellent short story that spawned our HP Lovecraft/Sci – Fi Discussion
  • Kettlebells (me) and deadlifts (BJ)- side note – why is so little of the rationalist community devoted to physical self-improvement? It’s not zero by any means, but physhical health (and it’s related effects on the mind) seem to be a solvable optimization problem – that we are not working on in relation to it’s importance. In the words of Jack Lalanne (lived to a healthy 96) – Life is an athletic event.

The main reason to be against Elizabeth Warren

I had the realization that she has a lot in common with Trump – namely in that she’s picked a group of resentful people to champion and marketed herself to that group – much like Trump did in 2015-2016. Both she and Trump are walking enemies lists – and America can do better.

Or maybe it can’t – on the whole Trump has impressed me with the wonderful lack of activity (government governs best that governs least). Maybe not on purpose, but you take what you can get.

Undercover cop from the seventies uncovers a confusing conspiracy – The 14th SSC Atlanta Meetup roared on

Mid December saw the 14th meetup of SSC Atlanta – I’ve let it go too long to present a detailed summary, but this one was centered around books and conspiracy theories. We also decided to start a book club perhaps as a secondary meetup – the first book will be The Lessons of History by Will and Arial Durant.

I’ve decided to put random links and timeless classics on the main SSC Atlanta page,as they get referenced quite a bit meeting to meeting.