EA Meetup: Hamming Circles
Come figure out a life problem with friendly EAs!
Location update: Southern Pacific Brewing
Dolores Park looks a tad cold and rainy for picnicking, so lets meet indoors. Southern Pacific Brewing has drinks and bar snacks for purchase, so don't bring outside food.
Schedule
1:00: Casual socializing and forming groups.
1:30-3:00: Hamming circles! (see description below)
3:00 onward: Casual socializing (or trudging home to finish filing your taxes)
Hamming Circles?
A Hamming Circle is an exercise for unblocking people on difficult problems. It takes its name from Richard Hamming, who had a penchant for asking ~“What’s the most important problem in your field? … so why aren’t you working on that?”
In a group of 3-4 people, each person explains their problem, then the group focuses on coming up with solutions. Each round focuses on just one individual and takes about 20 minutes.
Problems can be professional or personal, hopeful or hopeless. Stuck in an argument with a sibling? Trouble with work motivation? Trouble managing your migraine symptoms?
You might be surprised how tractable your scary conundrum becomes once you have several people thinking about it for you!
See here (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xAqRkrnjJTMZ6YmZA/appendix-how-to-run-a-successful-hamming-circle) for a longer explanation.