The Portal Group

The Portal Group
Information
Topic	The Portal Community The Portal Podcast
Leader	Brooke (pyrope#5830) Brandon (Beefsandwich27#0143)
Start Date	6 February 2020
The Portal Discords	List
Google Drive	Drive
Office Hours	Notes
Discord Stats	Dashboard
Links
Website	Homepage
Users	Interactive Database
Discord	Invite
All Projects

The Portal Group exists to facilitate community projects in service to the ideas expressed by Eric Weinstein on The Portal Podcast and elsewhere. We use Discord to organize and communicate, and we track projects on the wiki. We have also developed a user database to keep track of the community's skills and interests, and we use Google Drive to store files.

Getting Involved

FAQ

How do I access the other Discord channels?

New members are limited to posting in the #lobby-and-introductions channel. If you demonstrate an interest in making or contributing, or show something you've previously made, you may receive access to the rest of the server.

What it looks like to not have a role.

If you don't have much to show, consider contributing to the wiki. We aim to aggregate agentic people, who take lead with their work and show instead of tell with minimal outside direction, and can also collaborate with others.

How can I contribute?

The Portal Group is not here to tell you what to do, it is here to remove obstacles and make your work easier. Veteran members of the community, who have contributed to a project or accomplished an ambitious task, are to be sought out for advice. Those who do work are quickly integrated.

The only "hard" requirement for any project is that it should be in line with the goals of the Portal, as best outlined in Episode 2 and Episode 18 or in the telos above.

There is much freedom in selecting your approach these goals, but the ones that tend to last are overall simple. An idea's simplicity does not imply it is unintelligent or incapable, but rather it has a large impact relative to its underlying assumptions and complexity in execution.

How shouldn't I contribute?

Conversation without aim distracts from productivity, so we keep open conversation limited to specific areas on the server. We aim to exclude disruptive behavior, that which distracts or is disrespectful to members.

Additionally, if your ideas cannot be given a strong form or body, then they cannot act on the world. We wish to focus on ideas that provide high leverage relative to the work put in and avoid areas that don't. Areas that are known not to pay off include arbitrary crypto schemes or the purchase of an island.

Who are Brooke, Brandon and Tim?

Tim, Brandon, and Brooke coordinate closely to manage The Portal Group and plan for its future.

Brooke

Brooke works closely with Eric. Through developing The Portal Blog, transcribing all content featuring Eric Weinstein and her frequent conversations with him, she is the best judge for how projects match up to the values of the Portal. If you have a high value project, it is worth showing her.

Brandon

Brandon is a professional web developer and consultant. He runs the Discord server, built the website and projects databases, and set up the wiki. He coordinates day to day management when he isn't deep in dev projects.

Tim

Tim is an Australian mathematics student who spends much of his time studying various topics in Differential Geometry and Algebraic Topology with guidance from Eric.

Information

Members

This is the list of core members who keep the ship running. For a full list of participants in Portal projects, see https://users.theportal.wiki/.

• Brooke (pyrope#5830) - Leader, Proxy for Eric, Blog
• Brandon (Beefsandwich27#0143) - IT, Development and Wiki
• Tim (Tim#7940) - Mathematics
• boqu (boqu#9997) - Art
• Logan (afke.#1514) - Video Production
• Aardvark (Aardvark#5610) - Wiki

Resources

Resources the community has developed are available in the places listed.

• Discord
• Users Database
• Google Drive
• Office Hours Notes

Roles and Commands

Discord Server Roles

Roles on the Discord server identify users' project interests and capabilities, and also restrict or enable permissions.

Moderation Roles

• Newb - Every new user gets this role. It will be removed once you start contributing to the community.
• Announcements - If you'd like to be notified of Announcements or Office Hours sessions, this is a good role to give yourself. (This is one of the few roles that users can add and remove themselves.)
• Welcoming Committee
• Acting Spammy
• A Bit Too Much
• Squeaky Wheel
• Lobby

Project Roles

• Climbing the Cliff
• Convex Hull
• GWT
• Mobile App
• Portal Blog
• Portal Book Club Organizers
• Portal Clips
• Portal Merch
• Portal Visualizations
• Riffs to Animate
• Russell Conjugation
• Transcripts
• Wiki Maintenance

Discord Bot Commands

We've configured a bot with several helpful commands. Also, several less-than-helpful commands.

• !commands - Shows a link to this wiki page listing all the commands.
• !faq - Questions that have been frequently asked, here are.
• !rules - Lists our extensive set of strict and burdensome rules.
• !show - Provides an animated GIF kindly asking you to share your work.
• !chitchat - Gives a reminder that the projects server isn't for idle chitchat. Provides a link to The Portal Discords.
• !reiterate - Gives a re-reminder that the projects server isn't for idle chitchat. Provides another link to The Portal Discords.
• !startup - Oh. You don't want to make a project. You want to make a startup company. Let's dig into ramifications.
• !gu - It's fun to consider how demanding the Theory of Geometric Unity truly is.
• !graph
• !wall
• !tome

Other Commands

Our bot also has several less-than-helpful commands.

• !coffee
• !calm
• !zen
• !numberwang
• !laugh
• !yada
• !bla