Finding Friends in Boston

Someone asked me (paraphrased):

I’m moving to Boston soon. How should I go about kick-starting a social network?

My response:

Some suggestions:

• go to meetups & events hosted by EA & rationality groups. A few particulars: Julia Wise & Jeff Kaufman hold an EA dinner ~monthly; Harvard EA hosts a great interuniversity Boston EA social; I’ve heard good things about the ACX Boston & ACX Cambridge meetups. There’s a meetups tab on LessWrong.com, and
• there are a truly ridiculous number of university… things in Boston. Consider finding cool classes, professors, clubs, etc and cold joining/reaching-out/etc. Some ideas here.
• Neel Nanda wrote a post on a related topic, with one subsection containing a relevant list (CMD+F for “Another key part of hits-based befriending is meeting lots of people”).
• honestly, I think sports are an underrated way to make friends as an adult. Consider joining a casual adult league for a sport that you know how to play — soccer, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, whatever. It selects for a different sort of person from the other things on this list, but does some good selection that the other items don’t (e.g. cares about health/fitness). Also, it’s a great way to accidentally get a workout in :)
• ask people who know you well to introduce you to friends of theirs in Boston.

Would be keen to know what ends up working well & what doesn’t. Let me know!