Story
I have been interested in this whole sphere for a relatively long portion of my life. I first came across it through HPMOR, totally organically through fanfiction.net(it was one of the longest fanfics there at the time), which I guess changed my worldview in enough points that I eventually came across Scott alexanders writings a few years later, and that really spoke to me in ways. It was as if he was articulating deep insights that I myself insighted too, but putting them in ways I never could. His writing and articulation is something that really spoke to me, and a standard I still aspire to.
First, be kind,
is an ideal especially that I aim to never violate.
It seems like fate then, that when I first visited bangalore, I was heavily motivated to check out the meetups that I had seen listed there. (during the covid lockdown the subreddit for slatestarcodex listed meetups, i was sorta dumbfounded that there were meetups for this thing in the first place, but i made it my mission to get there.
I quite enjoyed the meetup, hosted by Sachit and Faiz and others, and I met some great people there. I didn’t know it until then, but it was like a small part of my soul musculature that had never had reason to be flexed suddenly flexed, and it grew in size and was seen. Awesome stuff. I also met a brother that day, who remains my friend to this day(Hi Aditya if you’re reading this)
I want to create the same thing in Ahmedabad, so I did just that.
There have been two meetups so far, and both have been pretty amazing. To my surprise, 4 people showed up at the first meeting, and 5 people shwoed up at the next one. I am optimistic that this will grow some more, and I look forward to making that happen.
This is a log of those meetup, and my experiences from the beginning of buildgint that community.