I'm an admin of this site; I work full-time on trying to help people on LessWrong refine the art of human rationality. (Longer bio.)
I generally feel more hopeful about a situation when I understand it better.
Non-disclosure agreements I have signed: Around 2017 I signed an NDA when visiting the London DeepMind offices for lunch, one covering sharing any research secrets, that was required by all guests before we were allowed me access to the building. I do not believe I have ever signed another NDA.
We are currently at 270 attendees for LessOnline! It's gonna be a busy weekend.
Also (if you haven't seen) lots of new great writers confirmed attending including Scott Sumner, Agnes Callard, and Patrick McKenzie.
Seems to me like there'll be a lot of options for how much stuff you want to do. I'm expecting someone to run a really fun and educational trading class for a cohort of people, I expect there'll be a few meetups, there's over 100 people with tickets for Summer Camp to hang out with, and I think there'll be like 20-30 people living on-site.
I think if you wanted to work like 2 or 3 days that week you could, and if you wanted to keep socializing and doing activities then you could do that too.
It might be a good on the current margin to have a norm of publicly listing any non-disclosure agreements you have signed (e.g. on one's LW profile), and the rough scope of them, so that other people can model what information you're committed to not sharing, and highlight if it is related to anything beyond the details of technical research being done (e.g. if it is about social relationships or conflicts or criticism).
I have added the one NDA that I have signed to my profile.
Welcome!
Thanks for the questions, and I hope you make it! Here's are my answers, happy to answer more/follow-ups.
I miswrote a bit when I said "relationships". Yes, names and faces both trigger social recognition, but I meant to make the point that they operate in significantly different ways in the brain, and facial recognition is tuned to processing a lot of emotional and social cues that we aren't tuned to from text. I have tons of social associations with people's physical forms that are beyond simply their character.
(A language model helped me write this comment.)
I did find it and we sent him an email, hope he reads it and joins :)
I am fairly strongly against having faces, which I think boot up a lot of social instincts that I disprefer on LessWrong. LessWrong is a space where what matters is which argument is true, not who you like / have relationships with. I think some other sort of unique icon could be good.
Strong evaporative cooling of group beliefs vibes.