EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)9 Okt

“Why you should run a rationality group at your university” by Carolanne Jiang, Noah Birnbaum

This post was cross posted from LessWrong

TL;DR:

If you enjoy LessWrong (and/or do EA/AI safety field building), you should consider starting a rationality reading group at your university. It's fun, cheap, and a good way to meet like-minded friends, and it can reach rationalist-ish people who’ve never encountered EA or AI safety.
Starting one can be as easy as grabbing a couple friends, picking a time, place, and reading, sending an email blast, and bringing food. The ACX Meetups Everywhere call (organizer form due October 9th) can be a good way to find an initial group.

Context: this post was loosely based on a memo originally written by Noah Birnbaum, and I (Carolanne Jiang) most of the current version. “I” in this post refers to Carolanne, and “we” refers to Carolanne and Noah.

Also, UChicago Rationality is still going! If you are a student at UChicago interested in joining, meetings this quarter are on Wednesdays from 6 :00 – 7:00 PM in the Reg. Noah and I are both no longer at UChicago–for more information, please reach out to Will Kyle at wkyle@uchicago.edu

UChicago Rationality was a huge success: it was very fun, a great place to make [...]

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Outline:

(01:59) The backstory of UChicago Rationality

(02:58) More reasons on why you should consider running a rationality group

(04:46) Q: I am sold. How do I go about starting one?

(06:08) Appendix

(06:11) Counters arguments to why a rationality group might not contribute to field building for AI safety and/or EA

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 8th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WQsokJTWFep5coqim/why-you-should-run-a-rationality-group-at-your-university

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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