LessOnline 2025

Some of my friends went in 2024 and told me it was great. Most of them were going again so I wanted to go too. There was some sticker shock when I bought a complete ticket to LessOnline+Summer Camp+Manifest for $1400 but after the event it was definitely worth it and most of the rationalist social scene is rich enough to afford it. To save money and enjoy myself I joined some friends in splitting an AirBnB. It was less than a mile away from LightHaven where the event took place. The trip lasted about 10 days.

My impression of the attendees, presentations, and amenities are all overwhelmingly positive. The thing that left the biggest impression on me was meeting so many people who I'd previously only known from reading online. I'm not the type to hyperventilate around famous people but LessOnline is probably the closest I'll ever get. It is surreal to know so many people but only be seeing their faces for the first time. It's shocking they are all people with physical bodies and not a ghost of the Internet. Not only are they people, they are shockingly normal people, at least until they open their mouths, but that's what I love about this crowd. The willingness to be weird and take ideas seriously and follow them where they lead.

Besides the famous people, the average attendee was also interesting to talk to. Many of them taught me things I don't think I could talk to anyone else about. There were several hundred such people crammed into a relatively small campus with about five buildings. The biggest problem was being overwhelmed by all the conversations that seemed worth having. It's probably the only time I can remember being willing to talk to other people practically all day, but still I remember often feeling crowded from being surrounded by people and a high level of background noise so I would find quiet places like the gardens to retreat to while I recharged. My favorite moments were late at night when things got late and the crowds thinned. The energy level lowered and you could hang around the fire pits roasting marshmallows and having longer and more intimate moments with others. I made several new friends I plan to keep in touch with.

The amenities and volunteers were far above what I've come to expect from conventions. The catered food for lunch and dinner was exceptional. There wasn't a single meal I disliked. The snacks and drinks were plentiful and varied. I even tried Soylent for the first time. It tasted fine, but as someone who enjoys the act of eating itself beyond being merely fuel for my body, I don't plan to make it a regular part of my diet. My favorites were to GoMacro energy bars and seaweed snacks. Food was also a convenient excuse when I needed a break from socializing. The s'mores supplies around the fire pits at night was also a great addition. The only downside from being around so much good food was my diet suffered, and I've been trying to cut for Summer. The scale was up five pounds the day after I got back. Outside of the food, I noticed the volunteers working constantly to keep the facilities decent and make sure all the events started on time. It was impressive and I thank them for their efforts.

There was a website for the event as well with a schedule and public profiles where people could post about themselves and what they wanted to talk about. I get the impression I used this website to find people more than most. Part of the problem was I did not find out about it until LessOnline began. It also really appeared to have been written at the last minute and there were clear bugs that needed fixes pushed during the event. There was also an LLM interface that had access to all the profiles. It was a neat idea and I asked it to read my bio and come up with the top 5 people I should talk to. My friends didn't think to do that. Probably they didn't see the interface, which was needlessly slow and took up to 30s to respond to a query. But the website was still a good effort and I assume it can be reused next year now that the bugs are fixed.

These are people I knew previously from their online writing but met in person for the first time, except Scott Alexander who I have met before when he's come to the Austin local meetups.

• Met Zvi Mowshowitz

  • Most of his blog posts are his notes to himself about what he reads with little editing
  • He writes 40-50 hours per week as a full time job
  • He appreciates fine dining and food criticism, especially steak and steakhouses. That was someone surprising since ethical vegetarianism is over represented among rationalists.

• Met Eliezer Yudkowsky

  • He was wearing oddly shaped sunglasses and seemed to have a happy disposition and voice in contrast to the tone of his writing online.
  • He recommends reading what bestselling authors have to say to get good at writing fiction. How To Write Science Fiction And Fantasy by Orson Scott Card was mentioned. I asked because I want to write a fantasy novel some day.
  • He is enjoying life through hedonism and sex as a result of his beliefs AI will doom the human race.

• Attended Scott Sumner Q&A

  • He was older than I expected.
  • He talked a lot about and answered several of my questions about The Great Depression, FDR, 2008, and Central Banking.
  • I decided FDR and Central Banking caused less harm than I previously thought.
  • He seemed humble despite having lots of knowledge about everything I asked about.

• Met Gwern

  • Since he refuses to post his picture online, this was the biggest delta between how I had pictured him in my head and what he actually looks like.
  • Of everyone I met at LessOnline, he seemed to have the most intense focus on what was in front of him.
  • We were gathered around a table with a few others and the conversation was about the use of prediction markets and how to train LLMs to be good predictors.
  • Gwern talked about the difficulty of training LLM predictors on past events without training data being contaminated by information from after the event occurs.
  • Alex Caswen joined this conversation and talked about the possibilities of using fictional economies of sufficient complexity using Eve Online as an example.

• Attended Glowfic writing session led by Alicorn

  • I was not previously familiar with Glowfic. It's collaborative fan fiction writing where people take turns through forum posts. I may indulge more in the future.
  • The presentation split into groups of two with one person handling the main character and one person the setting. Me and my partner started a story of Jessica Atreides in Equestria.

• Met and attended two sessions by Tracing Woodgrains

  • Since a lot of his writing reads as a sincere sensible centrist, he was one of the only people who seemed more cartoon-y in person than online.
  • I think this is in large part because he is a furry like me and chose to give a talk about the insane obscure Internet drama around Marco The Furry Slayer, someone who spent years simultaneously running popular Furry and Anti-furry personalities online with no one the wiser. This was also the obvious meeting point for all the furries at LessOnline, which was about ten.
  • The second presentation was about his newly formed Center for Educational Progress. I knew public education was bad in terms of what pedagogical methods work, but in fact there is even more easy wins available than I thought.
  • Trace also seemed more prepared for his presentations than most presenters who went for a more improvisational approach and relied more on audience questions to guide them.q

• Attended a talk by Scott Alexander

  • He applied the Book of Revelation to AI companies and was able to find enough coincidences to make the case that Anthropic was The Beast.
  • I find it unusual that Scott is the lowest energy of any big rationalist bloggers in person but seems to have one of the best senses of humor.
  • He also went to a cuddle puddle I attended, but we were on opposite sides of the room.

• Met Steve Hsu

  • I asked him his opinions on the feasibility of Group Selection, something that is often denied by mainstream biology based on mathematical models. He stated he is suspicious of the models and thinks the mainstream is overconfident in their dismissal.
  • I asked him why he thought China didn't beat Europe to an Age of Exploration and Industrial Revolution despite being the most advanced civilization for many years. He wasn't confident in any explanation.

I spent considerable time exploring the area, especially the local cuisine. Going to a restaurant myself was an excellent way to relax and calm myself away from so many people. Below are some highlights.

• Coffee and Turkish sweets at Damask Rose
• Coffee and empanadas at Cafe Buenos Aires
• Burrito at Tacubaya
• Walking across the Golden Gate Bridge
• Sushi in San Francisco Japantown

I especially treasured the more personal connections I made at LessOnline. Because I know many rationalists value privacy and are not public figures, I may not have mentioned you because I was not sure what information you were comfortable with me posting publicly. If we met at LessOnline and you want to be included in this post or just want to talk, email me.