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.