May 31st thru June 9th I had the delightful experience of attending LessOnline, Summer Camp and Manifest 2. These events took place on the beautiful Lighthaven campus. This article collects some of my thoughts and experiences while there. Don’t expect anything super organized or fancy. I’ll have links to other write ups at the end.
I was on the fence about going, LessOnline and Summer Camp had never been done before. Manifest seemed like it would be fun. I ultimately decided to go for two main reasons:
- FOMO. I would probably be kicking myself for not going when I see people posting about the experience (like I did with Vibecamp 2 last year). If it turned out to be a bad experience, I’d be annoyed but content that I gave it a go and would know year that I did not want to go.
- It was a good excuse to take over a week off work. I am bad at taking time off work, and typically the time off I do take does not take me outside of NYC.
I am very glad I went. I had more fun than I expected. I felt like I was home. Being among people with so much shared context is a truly wonderful experience and unlike anything I had experienced before. So many inside jokes to be shared in an environment like that.
I would describe myself as having moderate social anxiety. I am very happy I experienced much less anxiety than other conferences I have been to (Cppcon) and much lower anxiety than I usually experience in crowded spaces (e.g. house parties). Overall I just felt great. That was probably a combination of eating at consistent times 3 times a day, eating better than I normally do, lots of social opportunity, and lots of time in the sun (yay for amazing weather). I also got some exercise in at the Lighthaven gym, 10/10. Even had some great conversation with some people who wandered into the gym during my workout.
An aside about excercise: I continue to be amazed at the truth of this tweet. My elbow and wrist pain are usually better within 30 minutes post workout and the day after.
”I messed up my thumb from carrying the toddler.” “Try those grip strength exercises.” “Noooo you don’t get it it’s my JOINT that hurts, it has nothing to do with my forearm” “try them anyway.” I do. it relieves pain a bit instantly, and dramatically within days.
I found most of the sessions to be interesting or entertaining. There were a couple that were rehashing of a post the presenter had written, which is fine but if I had known that in advance I might not have gone to the talk. This does create a fun mini game of “can I find the blog post behind this talk”.
It was a lot of fun seeing
Should you go to these events next year?
Probably! If you are a rationalist, rationalist adjacent, interested in prediction markets or otherwise enjoy the type of writing and activity in this millieu you will probably enjoy it. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, I am happy to chat about my experience.
Lighthaven
The Lighthaven campus is absolutely beautiful and cozy. There are tons of nooks and fireplaces to hang out. Lots of greenery. The ground is turf, which is great because it holds up well to all the foot traffic and I don’t get grass stains on my clothes when lying or sitting down on it. You can see photos of the venue if you scroll down on https://www.lighthaven.space/
The venue is small enough to feel intimate and facilitate lots of socializing but still has space if you need quiet time away from everything. I went to the garden several times for a break from the hustle and bustle.
Staying on campus was very convenient. I was able to leave my laptop and tablet in my room for long periods when I didn’t need them and quickly grab them when I did. I had a health issue flare up while there and being able to access my room quickly was very convenient when I needed to grab medicine. Also very convenient when I wanted to nap. During Manifest I was often up until 3am (on Saturday night attendees were up until 5am singing around a campfire).
The rooms on campus did seem to be on the more expensive side. I stayed in a dorm room which was the cheapest option available when I booked. Next year I will probably try to get an actual room so I have some more space for my things and split a room with someone to lower the cost.
They have a gym with a bar and a bunch of machines! During LessOnline someone coached me on deadlifting which was a lot of fun and I feel a lot better about deadlifting after that.
Wifi coverage is great, you can sit in the far end of the garden and still get wifi, great for taking some time away from the excitement.
Things did feel a bit tight at LessOnline in some parts of campus where lots of people were walking through. For example in Bayes Attic where half the sessions felt very cramped (there was at least one I skipped out on entirely because there wasn’t room to sit or stand). I think the campus might be better served turning Bayes Attic into hotel rooms and converting some of the rooms on the second floor of Bayes into a meeting area instead. An altnerative approach to how rooms are picked would help too, either relocating events when they get too large or collecting RSVPs before choosing a space.
LessOnline
LessOnline is a festival celebrating truth-seeking, optimization, and blogging. It’s an opportunity to meet people you’ve only ever known by their LessWrong username or Substack handle.
The goal is to bring together a “mostly-online subculture of people trying to work together to figure out how to distinguish truth from falsehood using insights from probability theory, cognitive science, and AI.” [1|1]
The weekend will be filled with talks, workshops, puzzle-hunts, dance parties, and late-night conversations around the fireside.
There were about 400 people at LessOnline!
It felt like there were 4 categories of things to do at LessOnline:
- Go to sessions (mix of talks, workshops, and other activities)
- Socialize
- Play board games (overlaps with sessions, but feels distinct enough to mention explicitly)
- The puzzle hunt
I only did the first two, but it was great the amount of variety at the event.
The LessOnline faces and questions doc was awesome. I only got halfway through it on my flight to California (more thoughts on this doc later). I do plan to go through this document again and reach out to people who I think would be interesting to talk to.
I went to sessions for nearly every single time block. I ended up wishing I spent more time socializing instead. I was able to do this for Manifest where I went to way fewer sessions. It also helps that Manifest had many recorded sessions (but not all!, so I had less FOMO skipping them.
I ran a session on websim.ai which was a lot of fun. I did it on a whim, it was very much a “well if no one else is going to do this, I might as well even if I feel underqualified”. The only preperation I did was an hour before this. It was relatively unstructured, taking questions from the audience and taking suggestions for what to browse together. There was some giggling and laughter from the audience as they browsed on their own, that was quite delightful.
After the websim session I felt inspired to write a twitter thread about one of the more impressive websim generations I’ve seen, which launches Windows 2000 in the browser.
I also worked with Claude 3 Opus to create a “meltfic” (fan fiction inspired by Nick Land’s Meltdown) at the Open Mic event: Zara’s story goes like this
Summer Camp
Come hang out at Lighthaven with other Manifest attendees the week leading up to Manifest! Cowork and share meals during the day, attend workshops and talks in the evening, and enjoy conversations by the fire late into the night.
Summer Camp was a lot of fun. I spent a good portion of it at Ricki’s quant bootcamp where we got to trade with play money called clips (e-clips in electronic form and paperclips in paper form), learn about contracts (basically the same deal as futures afaict), adverse selection (check out Ricki’s writing on adverse selection), learned how to play Figgie, and capped it all off with an electronic trading competition on some clips markets with bots and other members of the bootcamp.
There were less people around for Summer Camp which made things cozier and more intimate. I highly recommend the whole experience. Some people did opt to attend Summer Camp while working remotely but I think to get the most of it you should try to take the week off. If you do end up working during the day, there are so many spots on campus to work from and there were some dedicated areas for being on calls.
I had initially planned to work on a personal project during most of Summer Camp and I did make some progress on it but I took an evening to go see a friend in SF and spent most of the days doing quant bootcamp stuff. I am bummed about not making more progress, but I made the right decision going to the bootcamp.
Manifest 2 highlights
A festival for forecasting and prediction markets, hosted by Manifold and Manifund.
There were over 600 sign ups for Manifest!
You don’t need to use Manifold to attend, this is a great opportunity to hang out with more rationalist and rationalist-adjacent folks!
Manifest kicked off for me with Manifold Theater, a new installment in the Manifold Bet On Love cinematic universe. This was a ton of fun and I don’t have the words to describe it. Duncan and Tim put on a great show. This was recorded so you should get to see it if you weren’t there. Oh and there was a Bet On Love karaoke event later on Friday evening, that was a blast. The growing amount of live performance art we have in this millieu fills me with joy.
There was wrestling at Manifest on Saturday and Sunday. I did not partake, but this was fun to watch. On Saturday it took place on Bayes Attic with live music! I was only able to stick my head in briefly during this, but wow did it look like everyone had a blast. And then on Sunday there was wrestling in the park, which of course had prop bets for who would win each match up.
During the Night Market I bought a purse that had a P100 GPU affixed to it. I really like the aesthetic of this and it inspired me to have a go at making my own, in addition to revisiting my drawer of jewlery supplies.
Sarah Constatin recognized me from twitter which was very flattering. I was caught a bit off guard by it but pleasantly so!
Of course there was lots of Mana to be made via prop bets and other markets, but I mainly focused on the prop bets. I did appreciate that the mods on Manifold N/A’d markets which had perverse/anti-social incentives.
What to do differently next year
- Bring a costume next year. Even if there isn’t a costume contest you will have fun with it.
- Bring checked bag for larger wardrobe. Or bring less clothes and do laundry halfway through. Due to carry on bag size I opted not to bring any dresses which I really regret, I don’t get many chances to wear a dress.
- Schedule (more) time to go through all the bios beforehand (and take notes). The LessOnline conversation and faces doc was huge and I barely took any time to go through the Manifest bio. But I was delighted to have a couple people reach out to me because of the bios I made.
- Someone pointed out you could give the entire LessOnline doc to Gemini and ask it questions, but I think I prefer the manual review because it will catch things an LLM probably wouldn’t. I had an interesting conversation with someone about hypnosis and there were some people who I didn’t have any shared items listed, but whose bio just had the vibe of someone I’d want to talk to. There were a lot of great questions and bios from people that inspired me to tweak or add things to my own bio.
- More intentional preparation for socializing, what to ask people about, conversation starters beyond “hows your day going” and “what sessions are you looking forward to/did you enjoy today”. Some ideas:
- What’s something you’d like to write about but haven’t?
- Better use of I’d love to learn more questions
- I am drawing a blank on other questions, but shoot me a message on twitter (@manic_pixie_agi) if you have any other suggestions. I’ll try to add stuff here as I think of it.
Other Thoughts & Conclusion
- I left Manifest holding the first spot in silver (within my cohort) on Manifold. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep it for the rest of the month, but I had a lot of fun betting on Manifold during this trip. There were lots of opportunities to make clearly good trades thanks to prop bets for every single event, and individual markets for the event. I think it will be harder to maintain a good ranking going forward because I don’t expect the other markets during the year to be as easy for me. Many other markets require actual forecasting skills. If I did want to do this I expect I’d end up spending more time doing research and learning more about forecasting.
- Got some good apparel out of the event. I also made some shirts for the event, but didn’t get to wear all of them. A friend complimented my Kalshi shirt after the event (he has no idea what prediction markets are).
- I came back weary of talking to some friends again where interactions involve sarcasm or self depreciation. I experienced none of that over the past week. Everything was very earnest. A couple days back I no longer feel that weariness, but I think about it.
- It was great to be in a physically different and intellectually stimulating environment. Great to have time for personal projects/co-working during the week.
- On the day after (June 10th) I do not feel the usual post conference depression I am used to. Maybe that depression is the Sunday scaries in disguise, which I didn’t have because I had the following week off for Vibecamp 3.
- This week was a demonstration of how great conferences can be, I am so greateful it happened and I got to be there.
I absolutely plan to go next year if the events happen again (if you know any)
Other write ups
If you want to read some other write ups check these out (this list is courtesy of the Manifest staff):
- Byrne Hobart (paywalled): “Put enough introverts with shared interests into a confined space, and a phase transition occurs in which they all turn into social butterflies (albeit social butterflies who may need to periodically cocoon themselves somewhere). It was basically impossible to walk more than about twenty feet in any direction at the conference venue without overhearing an interesting conversation and probably getting roped in.”
- Bentham’s Bulldog: “I’ve always found tribalism mysterious, but perhaps that was just because I hadn’t yet found my tribe.”
- Theo Jaffee: “The secret behind Manifest’s unparalleled social atmosphere is the people it attracted… I could walk up to people I had never met before and instantly insert myself into a conversation on ancient Greek military history, prediction markets applied to romance, or whether AI will end the world.”
- Here’s a collection of other reviews and tweets on Manifest