Note that this page will be updated through 2025.

This page contains a summary of all events. You can see the statistics for the individual events here:

• Probability of Doom
• Rationality 101 - The Basics (Part 1)
• Rationality 101 - The Basics (Part 2)
• Cognitive Reading Strategies
• Is Wikipedia Wrong? (Closed Meetup)
• Zener Science
• ACX Meetups Everywhere (Spring 2025)
• Applied Rationality (Closed Meetup)
• Introduction to ‘Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality’
• Why we lie to ourselves (and why that is a good thing)
• Rational Dating (Closed Meetup)

Attendees

• 11 events.
• 18.55 people per event on average (σ=4.08).
• 2.00 newcomers per event (σ=1.67).
• Maximum number of attendees was 29 and minimum was 14 people.

Recurring is any person coming for the second, third etc. time whereas New is anyone coming for the first time to a Rationality Freiburg event.

Attendance

Retention per event

Retention means the percentage of participants who attended one or more of the three following events.

• Average retention: 79.16% (106 / 136)

People per events attended

How many people attended how many events.

Referrals

Newcomer retention

Retention means the percentage of newcomers who attended one or more of the three following events (after their first event), grouped by how they originally found RatFr.

• Average newcomer retention: 13.33% (2 / 15)

Feedback

• Responses: 172 people (84.31% of attendees)

1. Practical use: For my life, what we did today will have …

• Responses: 171 people (83.82% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • a lot of practical use (1): 16 people
  • quite a bit of practical use (2): 70 people
  • some practical use (3): 40 people
  • little practical use (4): 32 people
  • very little practical use (5): 13 people
• Average answer: 2.74 (σ=1.10)

2. The atmosphere / vibe was …

• Responses: 172 people (84.31% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • fantastic (1): 78 people
  • good (2): 72 people
  • okay (3): 17 people
  • bad (4): 2 people
  • horrible (5): 3 people
• Average answer: 1.72 (σ=0.83)

3. The amount of content / exercises covered was …

• Responses: 170 people (83.33% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • way too much (1): 1 person
  • too much (2): 26 people
  • just right (3): 118 people
  • too little (4): 25 people
  • way too little (5): 0 people
• Average answer: 2.98 (σ=0.57)

4. The difficulty level of the content / discussion was …

• Responses: 172 people (84.31% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • much too easy (1): 7 people
  • too easy (2): 39 people
  • just right (3): 116 people
  • too difficult (4): 10 people
  • much too difficult (5): 0 people
• Average answer: 2.75 (σ=0.62)

5. Structure: On the whole the event needed …

• Responses: 171 people (83.82% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • much more structure (1): 2 people
  • more structure (2): 24 people
  • (was just right) (3): 139 people
  • less structure (4): 5 people
  • much less structure (5): 1 person
• Average answer: 2.88 (σ=0.48)

6. The moderation should have been …

• Responses: 172 people (84.31% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • much more relaxed (1): 2 people
  • more relaxed (2): 4 people
  • (was just right) (3): 140 people
  • more assertive (4): 23 people
  • much more assertive (5): 3 people
• Average answer: 3.12 (σ=0.51)

7. Host preparation: The content / exercises were …

• Responses: 172 people (84.31% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • very well prepared (1): 79 people
  • well prepared (2): 61 people
  • okay prepared (3): 22 people
  • not well prepared (4): 10 people
  • not well prepared at all (5): 0 people
• Average answer: 1.78 (σ=0.88)

8. Changing your mind: The event made me …

• Responses: 172 people (84.31% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • question many things (1): 2 people
  • question some things (2): 81 people
  • question few things (3): 47 people
  • question very few things (4): 32 people
  • not question anything (5): 10 people
• Average answer: 2.81 (σ=0.95)

9. Do you think you will come to one (or more) of the next three events?

• Responses: 171 people (83.82% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • probably no: 11 people
  • probably yes: 160 people

10. If you answered “probably no” in the previous question or are very uncertain, why is that?

• Responses: 24 people (11.76% of attendees)
• Answers:
  • Friday evening is a bad timeslot for me.: 7 people
  • I can’t fit another activity into my life.: 4 people
  • I did not like (some of) the people here.: 0 people
  • I did not like today’s venue.: 0 people
  • I live too far away.: 8 people
  • I’m not very interested in your usual topics.: 3 people
  • The level of English is too advanced for me.: 1 person
  • too little kids. no space for kids to play. I know this is a hard ask.: 1 person

11. What did you like the most today?

• Responses: 109 people (53.43% of attendees)

Note: Anything contained in square brackets [] is an edit by the organizers.

nice people

It was a great idea to ask people to write down their “when to act” thresholds and estimates beforehand since then the numbers shown during the presentation were suddenly much more meaningful.

listening to the various perceptions of others

Actually changing some minds

Discussion & seeing other’s probabilities

Interesting topic, good discussion

The lively discussion

Die Gruppendiskussion am Ende

people

Pondering about a topic that I usually would not take time to investigate.

In interactive part of the presentation and the small group

I improved my knowledge on rationality and learned a few tools

I’m not new to rationality, but it was still good to go over the basics again

New yorker article

Great presentation! - loved the exercises

People

The discussion of concepts and the practical exercises

Going through the Basics with a group.
Even though I knew most of the basics already, Having a group around me made the repetition fun.

Ich war mal wieder da. Sehr netter Event

small group discussion

The specificity of the subject and the way it was “translated” to the common understanding. I was happy to be able to follow it, even if my background is not education/philosophy…

Backup ev calculation

Good preparation. good questions. Made me think.

Emotional relief about backups

I always enjoy the small group discussion

Learning about the value of time

Interesting topic, high relevance for daily life

The small discussion about the stupidity post. Also the value of your time exercise.

Being able to actually calculate the expected value, not sure if I still understood it correctly but now I will consciously try to calculate it every time.

Super interesting content! I found myself doing it already when reading Text 2 and I’m definitely going to use in the future

The concept and the topic

Learning the basic techniques

As always, I enjoyed the small group discussions

Practical tips

Quizzing and guessing

Die Übungen allgemein

The discussions. The commitment to a particular answer.

Learning fun facts

Seeing everyone

Really well prepared, good learnings, and a lot of fun!

Hearing people’s perspectives regarding telepathy

The educational effect of learning about p hacking

The experimental setup and discussing p hacking

Very fun

I wanted to share feedback for the Wikipedia event. I liked all the selected articles, it was very interesting for me. Thanks to Omar and Ben for the preparation, I learned at least something from all the different topics and enjoyed that a lot.I would like to have that session again.

Fun exercise - even not changing my mind, had a great time!

Learning about P hacking

Hot discussions

Discussing various topics with people

Well chosen articles, overall structure of the event

Die Diskussion in der kleinen Gruppe

The topics were interesting and had good variety

Opposing ideas and animated debating

Various topics

Open discussion, respectful interactions

Conflict theory

The discussion in groups

The hot seat activity

The hot seat exercise made me feel more connected and have better understanding of the other people there.

Anti Self Deception

Die Hot Seat Übung

All activities were great. And also felt they were a good combination of whole group, individual, small group activities.

The hot seat exercise

Topics and hot seat introduction

OODA loops and self deception info and hot seat

hotseat und präsentationen

hot seat - really great idea
the post about self-deception

Focus on practical application

Self deception

Hot Seat

Interesting conversation and insight.

Neue Worte für Dinge finden die ich schon weis

Rationality Taboo

The small group discussion- rationality taboo

Learning about not just HPMOR but adjacent and related works, how the presentation gave an overview of messages to expect from the book as well as style and flavor

Presentation, discussion, hearing about rationality taboo

I’ll actually listen to the audiobook now

Discussion

I became more convinced that HPMOR is interesting

Small talk about science fiction

I was motivated to read HPMOR

Discussion and interceptions

Misch aus Input und Diskussion

People

Great open discussion round.
Great impulses for discussions from both presentations.

The presentation

Dass Omar zwischen normativen und deskriptiven Aussagen unterschieden hat 🙂

The topic was great. Also at the meta level given it’s also related to the core group topic of truthseeking

Gute Vorbereitung

Topic

Rationalist Taboo

Omars short talk

very good nice of discussions/questions during the talk. not too much. not too little

Gruppendiskussion, Neues Thema

Snacks, könnten mehr salzige geben

Vibe

Knowing about the content of the book

Sharing perspectives about relationships

I think the topic was really great overall, something different and also one where rationality has its limits. Also quite liked the topic based groupings.

Feeling the effort that was put into this event by organizers to make it nice and comfortable for everyone.

The decoupling blog post and the discussion about it

Groups. Thank you Matthias!

discussion

Struktur, Gespräche

Thank you to Matthias for writing the algorithm

Great tool to create the discussion groups! Also the discussion rounds

The decoupler coupling post

Very good vibes, I felt very comfortable with the other people in my groups.

readings

12. What did you like the least?

• Responses: 75 people (36.76% of attendees)

Note: Anything contained in square brackets [] is an edit by the organizers.

a little more time for group discussion would have been nice (also at least one swapping of people in the smaller group)

Micro-optimization: Instead of suggesting updating the estimates for every slide it might have been better to have 4 checkpoints during the presentation where participants were explicitly asked “now revise your estimates, if you want to, you have 2 minutes”. It would also have given more space on the page to write.

I would’ve liked a bit more time to discuss in small groups

Forgot some things

Snacks

The Room was too cold!

The lack of deep explanation /arguments for each prediction

location is far lol

I was expecting fact based probability calculations. Just trying to come up with numbers without any facts didn’t make much sense

How irrational I am 🤣

too many snacks

Looking at my phone in a room full of people

Ideas about the article were not discussed together

nothing comes to mind

Long text

Repeat some content from part 1

Not enough time for discussion

The intro was a bit boring for me, but still good to have this for newcomers and also as a repetition.

Nothing, it was a great session!

Large texts

Would have wanted more deliberation on how to do the things mentioned

Too much reading content for me for a friday evening. Reading stategies were not that new, learnings were moderate.

Time moderation, during questions.
And moderation attention on female participants that are usually left with less attention (do we have a gender issue at the group?)

was boring

The title of Text 2 was a bit misleading. I didn’t expect I would read only about authoritarian leader

Teilweise waren die Diskussionen etwas ausschweifend

The length of the text

Detecting subtle mistakes eg. Numbers

Nothing

I was hoping for more information about Zener in the end

Intro round took too long.

Entering the data in the form

too much statistics ;)

Taste of Water

Our discussion group was too big, I did not feel able to split it then

Die Diskussion am Ende über AI war etwas off-topic und unstrukturiert

Sometimes the discussion became unstructured but maybe that’s a feature

More focus on AI

non-inclusive discussion

The article about IQ - I thought it was too superficial

Hot Seat (didn’t think it had much use. Maybe better as a prepared Event so everyone can prepare good questions. Or with pre-printented questions and the option to go away from them any time)

Die Einleitung zur Hostile Telepathy war etwas zu lang, aber trotzdem nützlich

The explanation for the last two activities took maybe longer than it could have.

Explanation for hostile telepathy was too long.

Self deception exercises

median fragerunde

The ice breaker exercises did not seem relevant for the later methods (since those were individual not group exercises)

Ooda-too simple

Hostile Telepath

The topics discussed did not have much impact for me. I don’t feel closer to enlightenment. (sorry! Not meant as an offense! They were well presented.)

Could have been a bit faster paced for me. Yet overall really lovely.

Nich genug Zeit um meine Gedanken zwischendrin zu sortieren

Today we were lacking a bit of interactivity

Hearing negative/debatable Things about harry Potter and the author

Some activity to complement the presentation, maybe as half of the session could have been good. Though the impromptu discussion session was also nice.

One chapter to read beforehand might have been interesting

spoilers

The topic felt like a cult favourite

The presentation was good albeit a bit slow at times. It would also have been better to prepare something additional e.g. an exercise or something interactive related to HPMOR.

Beginning and waiting

Duration

Lower amount of regulars, than I expected

Zu viele Diskussionen zwischendrin

Die Diskussion in der großen Gruppe ist für meinen Geschmack etwas ausgeartet

A final whole group debrief at the end could have been great. To at least hear of what was discussed in the other groups.

Zuviele Zwischenrufe, Nebendiskussion

Ventilation. [Edit: Removed a slightly personal criticism about one participant since publishing this seems to add no value.]

group discussion could have used some structure. Like a couple of prompting questions related to the talk(s) could have made the discussion a lot more fun/valuable

Lautstärke am Ende / nach der Veranstaltung

Long interruptions during the presentations

The nice guy essay felt unnecessarily long and drawn out.

If anything, mayby that the topics to choose, could have been outlined more precisely, e.g. by introducing them and creating more of a common sense!?

topic

Niceness article

unstructured discussion