Appearances

How To Not Start A Cult (2025)

A talk I delivered at LessOnline in Berkeley, CA, May 30, 2025.

Slide deck

It all started with good intentions. A group had heightened emotional and psychological experiences, and years later, some of the participants wrote regretful blog posts saying they gained a sense of purpose but lost their sense of self; their sense of proportion; and their sense. We’ve heard the story many times. Mostly what we hear is advice about how to prevent joining one, but what about how to prevent starting one? Sometimes a group takes hold of each other negatively without anyone having ever planned for that. Can it be better designed from the outset? I’ll suggest practical ways to short-circuit several kinds of self-reinforcing spirals of group norms, and share perspectives from multiple sources, plus my own experiences.

How To Create A Local Event Like This One

Want to build a gathering in your city for people who read each other's blogs? Whether it be a salon, a retreat, or a full weekend forum, you'll leave with practical patterns and common pitfalls.

A panel discussion at LessOnline in Berkeley, California, May 31, 2025, by me, Eileen Martz, Alexis Wu, and Harry Gao.

Unofficially Resurrecting Zombo The Clown

For decades, in the city of Detroit, a huge Halloween costume party named Theatre Bizarre annually resurrected Zombo The Clown in a resurrection ritual. Theatre Bizarre was discontinued in 2023 and no one hailed Zombo. In 2024, there was still no Theatre Bizarre. So, some of those who annually hail Zombo decided to take matters into their own hands, at a completely unrelated Halloween party.

No one was charged money to attend the ritual you are about to see. Do not try this at home, as the use of stilts can lead to injury.

Why would they do this? No one can speak for those who created Theatre Bizarre, who had their own reasons. But adventurous people want to come together in creative revelry to confront their fears and take charge of their own desires. That spirit is what Zombo represents to many of the denizens of this city. They call that spirit in themselves by the name "Zombo The Clown". By resurrecting Zombo, they resurrect the spirit of coming together to hold fast to each other in creativity and revelry. Facing their fears and desires, they will not be spectators in their own lives.

How To Not Start A Cult (2024)

The first time I gave this talk was at my conference, Fluidity Forum, on Sunday, September 8, 2024.

It all started with good intentions. A group had heightened emotional and psychological experiences, and years later, some of the participants wrote regretful blog posts saying they gained a sense of purpose but lost their sense of self; their sense of proportion; and their sense. We’ve heard the story many times. Mostly what we hear is advice about how to prevent joining one, but what about how to prevent starting one? Sometimes a group takes hold of each other negatively without anyone having ever planned for that. Can it be better designed from the outset? I’ll suggest practical ways to short-circuit several kinds of self-reinforcing spirals of group norms, and share perspectives from multiple sources, plus my own experiences.

Intro To Fluidity Forum

I presented this after opening ceremonies on Thursday September 5, 2024, at the second Fluidity Forum, in Detroit Michigan. Here I try to explain the influences which inspired Fluidity Forum in only 50 minutes.

The Coffee Ritual (2024)

I presented the Coffee Ritual at Fluidity Forum on Sunday September 8, 2024.

A Monty Python-esque high church parody ritual. The Pope of Coffee shall blesspresso The Holy Of Holies: the most theatrical brewing method ever devised. The acolytes will serve the Holy Liquid unto the congregation, who shall raise the sacrament to the east, and in unison, recite the litany “God, I needed that!” A blend of cafe’ths such as Press-byterian, Buzzentine, Sipiscopal, and even Atheismericano.

The Coffee Pope costume was made by Heather Hall.

The 6 People You Meet In Volunteer Organizations

A talk at Penguicon, in Ypsilanti Michigan, April 27, 2024.

Whether it be a hacker space, convention, gaming group, a local Burning Man regional, certain patterns repeat themselves. The Dreamer, the Systematizer, the Helper. You will encounter these characters and many more at stages of the life cycle of a volunteer organization, from its inception to its maturity. And you yourself may be several of them in your own life cycle. Identifying them will help you recruit, and head off some problems with savvy planning.

A.I. Is Here, Now What?

A talk at Penguicon 2023, inspired by "Better Without AI" by David Chapman.

Slide deck with notes

In 2023, LLMs (Large Language Models) are passing the Turing Test. Even the developers don't know how they work. We're setting up a world that relies on AI, so no one running them is willing to shut them down, but they're poorly-understood & fail often, such as when they falsely accused thousands of Michiganders of welfare fraud. We can, & should, reverse-engineer backprop systems (misleadingly named "neural networks") without backprop so they can be fixed. This talk will discuss why backprop is a bad approach by every measure other than glitzy PR stunts, & what you can do about it.

Cognitive Development And Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

My presentation at Penguicon 2022 about a framework of 5 stages of cognitive development, 3 of which occur in adults. This presentation of the material draws on examples from humorist Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Oh Deep Thought! What is The Answer to group dynamics, relationships, ethics, conflict resolution, and personal development? 42!

Stages Of Adult Cognitive Development

A talk about the stages of adult cognitive development, a framework by psychologist Robert Kegan.

I gave this talk at Philadelphia Critical Rationalism Weekend, December 4, 2021.

David Chapman wrote a great summary of Kegan's psychological framework which I recommend.

I edited this video to add more slides than I had when I delivered the talk in person!

Participants contributing questions and comments in the audience include Lulie Tanett, Jake Orthwein, and Damon Sasi.

Sci-Fi On The Radio

Penguicon · Sci-Fi on the Radio at Penguicon 2013

Sci-Fi on the Radio is a performance of two classic Science Fiction radioplays - "Slurp Goes the Amoeba", in which I played the main character, Dr Paul Baumeister, and a section of "HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in which I played a Vogon Guard and Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Performers were Nuri Gocay, Scott Kennedy, Nick Farr, Matt Arnold and Heather Smith, with special foley effects from Karen Corbeill.

Puppet Production Of A Shoggoth On The Roof

I approached the Dreamland Puppet Troupe of Dreamland Theater in Ypsilanti, to come to Penguicon 2008 and stage a performance of "A Shoggoth On The Roof", a H.P. Lovecraft-themed version of "A Fiddler On The Roof". It included such numbers as "To Life, To Life, I've Brought Him, I've Brought My Creation To Life".

There was a curse on this musical, so that it always ended in disaster. But I reasoned that if we staged it at marionnette scale, no one would be seriously maimed this time. It ended in disaster anyway, as you can see in the final video.

I'm going to try to describe how this went down. The puppeteers were all seated cross-legged above the stage on a scaffold so that we could project a scene onto the backdrop. Someone missed his cue for when he was supposed to come on stage dressed in a full Cthulhu costume. (Someone else had sewn it based on a clown costume for some reason. But I digress.) The person dressed as Cthulhu came through the backdrop, scattered the set, and fell forward off the stage, sustaining minor injuries. This swayed the scaffolding, and one of the puppeteers fell backward, so that his silhouette could be seen through the projection, spraining his wrist. The projection was running off my laptop, and somehow the projectionist, in a panic, switched to displaying a series of my EPCOT vacation photos. I stood up and abruptly cried "IT'S OVER, SHOW'S OVER, GOOD NIGHT, THANK YOU FOR COMING!"

All segments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 - what passes for The End

Coffee Ritual Processional (2006)

This was one of the first times I did the Coffee Ritual, and was before I had the coffee pope costume.