By the second meetup, a had volunteered his office to be the venue. After hours, it was a comfortable, private place to meet that was air conditioned. Great!
5 of us were present this time, and I had an agenda too. Approxmate demographics was 3 college kids, interstiong in CS and AI, 1 entrepreneur mid career and doing well, and 1 me, your friendly neighbourhood generalist.
I had printed copies of “What do we mean by rationality” from lesswrong as a primer to rationality, and we went through the article together, reading aloud. Many interesting conversations flowed from that organically, and all the natural qestions led towards the same thing, ai safety, world is ending, philosophical stuff. The point and raison-d-etre of “rationality” as a tool was discussed, and also brought up was typical mind fallacy.
All in all, time flew by(we weren’t able to finish the article after all, but that wasn;t the point anyway)
I think having an agenda was definitely the way to do, since things proceeded a lot smoother this time.
I also came across the how to host a rationality meetup guide on lesswrong.com, which included some games to try, which is what I think will be the goal for the third meetup, which I will sechdule some time after Diwali.