What is it?

Summary

Food for Though (originally called Fake Meat—Real Talk) is a monthly meet up held in Berlin, for discussion around Effective Altruism topics.

Food for Though is a drop-in event. We advertise it on the EA Forum, the Berlin EA Telegram group and on Meetup.com; and we organize it in a public venue or in the park during summer. Because of this, there is a low barrier of entry for people that are engaging with Effective Altruism for the first time.

Why write this article?

Despite this not being a primary objective of the gathering, we’re proud to contribute to growing the Berlin EA community^[1] and would like to share our experience.
Some people have asked us for the resources of the meet up so they can reuse the format in their cities, and we wanted to provide an overview we can refer them to.

Format

We -the organizers- choose a topic related to EA (admittedly loosely, at times) and choose an article/podcast/video to accompany it.
Check in round:
- 10 minutes after the official starting time, we’ll do a round of names and one short opener question.
- We introduce the Law of Two Feet^[2] and encourage people to take agency in creating more interesting discussions for themselves.
- We split into smaller groups.
We prepare a Conversation Menu beforehand.
- We sprinkle these menus on the tables, but don’t enforce their use.

Conversation Menus

The menus (see examples below, next to each event) help move the conversation forward when it stalls. Someone inevitably picks one up and either uses the questions verbatim or get inspiration to contribute one of their own.

With these, we try to ask thought-provoking questions that would encourage conversation:

The questions shouldn’t be a quiz about the content -it’s not about how well you prepared for the event.
The questions shouldn’t be resolved with a yes/no, unless they are openers for further discussion (perhaps as “starters”).
Starters—Mains—Desserts: We structure the menu in 3 sections:
- Starters are usually light-hearted.
- Mains tend to get to the (fake)meat of the topic.
- Desserts are forward-looking and/or more solution oriented.

Challenges

Preparatory work

Since we choose a resource to base our discussions on, sometimes it’s not easy to find a resource that has the appropriate length -you want something short enough that people would actually engage with, but long enough to generate some interesting thoughts- or a resource that links nicely with the angle we’re interested in discussing.

It takes some time to prepare good questions for the conversation menus. This is usually the harder part, but it consistently pays off when you see people using them.

Venue

The idea originated as a gathering to discuss topics while having a vegan dinner. We look for venues that allow for people to gather and move organically, not too loud or dark, accessible to the public (no coworking spaces or private locations), and with access to vegan food.

We tried vegan restaurants, restaurants with vegan options, potluck picnics at the park, and bars that allow people to bring food from the outside. The potluck picnic at the park is by far the winner for the warmer months, but we haven’t yet found a consistently good option for the rest of the year.

Events in the series

Here’s a log of past and future events:

2023-03-17 Fake Meat and Real Talk 1 - Are We All Gonna Die? Yudkowsky and the Dangers of AI

2023-04-27 Fake Meat—Real Talk 2: (How) can we weigh the suffering of different species? (Please RSVP) - Conversation Menu

2023-05-25 Fake Meat—Real Talk 3: The Capability Approach to Human Welfare—Conversation Menu

2023-06-30 Food for Thought 4: Measuring Good (formerly “Fake Meat—Real Talk”) - Conversation Menu

2023-07-25 Food for Thought 5: The Vulnerable World Hypothesis—Conversation Menu

2023-08-30 Food for Thought 6: Maximisation is perilous—Conversation Menu

2023-09-21 Food for Thought Special: The Trolley Problem

2023-11-02 Food for Thought 7: Do we Have a Clue? - Conversation Menu

2023-12-07 Food for Thought 8: Build Your Own Utopia—Conversation Menu

2024-02-22 Food for Thought 9: The Asymmetry—Conversation Menu

2024-03-21 Food for Thought 10: e/acc—Conversation Menu

2024-04-25 Food for Thought 11: How to give effectively? - Conversation Menu

2024-05-30 Food for Thought 12: Wild Animal Suffering—Conversation Menu

2024-06-27 Food for Thought 13: EA and war

2024-07-25 Food for Thought 14: Trolley Problems pt.2

2024-10-17 Food for Thought 15: Extinction

2024-11-21 Food for Thought 16: Probabilistic Reasoning

We hope you enjoy your meal,

David and Luz

^
By now we have a consistent attendance of 24+ people, a handful of them new to EA or new to the EA community (every month!). After the discussion we welcome them to join the EA Telegram channel if they wish, and some of them go on to attending more specialized events, even EAGx Berlin.
^
If at any time during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet, go someplace else. - Open Space Technology

Food for Thought event series