GP Dinner #187 | Versions of Ourselves with Damon Horowitz

WHAT: GP Dinner #187 | Versions of Ourselves with Damon Horowitz

WHERE: Jeremy's Loft, 54 Washburn Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

WHEN: 6:00 to 10:00pm on March 12th, 2025

PLEASE NOTE: ATTENDANCE LIMITED TO FIRST 40 PEOPLE WHO SECURE A TICKET HERE. YOU'RE WELCOME TO GIFT OR TRANSFER YOUR SPOT TO A FRIEND IF YOUR PLANS CHANGE. JUST LET US KNOW IN ADVANCE.

Please join us for our 187th dinner on March 12th at Jeremy's Loft in San Francisco.

Expect cocktails at 6:00 and our speaker around 6:45 with a family style feast introduced around 7:00, prepared by our professional chef. Wines will be thoughtfully paired with the menu.

ATTIRE: Attire is relaxed and informal.

About Good People Dinners: GP Dinners is a community built around meaningful ​conversations and delicious feasts, a moveable social club for those who value authenticity, a better way to connect with each other. We are also an event production business and regularly create tailored dinner series for a wide range of companies and organizations.

Our dinners are hosted at a variety of venues in the Bay Area, at Camp Earnest near Yosemite NP and around the country and the world. Every dinner includes a speaker on a wide range of topics and a chef prepared feast.

Please email us at least 72 hours in advance if you have any dietary restrictions and we'll do our best to accommodate them.

OUR SPEAKER:

Our friend Damon Horowitz has now become a fascinating hermit wandering the forests of Marin, ecstatically philosophizing about the precarity of our world. Our dialogues often revolve around absurdity, humor and civilization's cycles of thriving and failing, and how these tend to be mirrored in powerful individuals who beckon us away from or lead us over the cliff.

Tonight he'll share a story about how we can presence adaptive versions of ourselves through radical changes in our environment.

What causes an organism to become alienated from its nature? How do our expectations for individual wellness shape our reality? What private needs unconsciously guide our behavior? And how can making art restore our humanity?

Damon Horowitz is a philosophy professor and serial entrepreneur, working at the intersection of technology and the humanities.
As a professor, he has taught courses in philosophy, literature, AI, and cognitive science at Columbia, NYU, Stanford, U Penn, and San Quentin State Pr*son; and he has served on the Board of several arts and humanities non-profits, including California Humanities.
In industry, he built several startup companies based on his natural language processing research, including Aardvark (acquired by Google), Perspecta (acquired by Excite), Novation Biosciences (acquired by Agilent), and NewsDB (Daylife); and he was the first "In-House Philosopher" at Google, leading a company-wide personalization initiative with a focus on data privacy issues.
He is a popular public speaker at venues ranging from TED to AAAI to O'Reilly conferences, and his work has been featured in media ranging from The New York Times to The Chronicle of Higher Education to NPR to TechCrunch. He earned his BA from Columbia, his MS in Artificial Intelligence from the MIT Media Lab, and his PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University.

Along the way, Damon founded the non-profit Shakespeare theater company "The Oracular Theatre", and directed their production of Julius Caesar. Following that, he designed a camper van with a proper upright piano installed in the back, and traveled the country during the pandemic offering impromptu concerts at public parks and the like.

We promise not to allow Damon any espresso before this dinner.

OUR CHEF:

Hanif Sadr was born in Paris, France and raised in Tehran, Iran. He studied material science at Azad University and moved to the US at the age 30, landing in Washington, DC, then eventually settling in the Bay Area.

In 2013, he started cooking at Golestan Kids Persian Language Immersion School in Berkeley CA. He is head chef and co-founder of Komaaj, a Northern Iranian restaurant and catering company based in San Francisco. Komaaj was founded in the spring 2015, focusing on Iran’s three northern provinces of Gilan, Mazandran and Golestan.

OUR MENU:

TO START

Khiar Dalar - Persian Cucumbers, Barberries, Fermented Herb Paste Dressing (ve, gf)

Kuku Maahi Doudi - Smoked Sardines, Scallion, Parsley, Eggs, Sour Cream, Pickled Carrots (gf)

Maast Labou - Roasted Beets, Basil, Mint, Labneh, Sumac, Lavash Bread (vg)

MAINS

Laveh Kabob - Slow Cooked Brisket, Dried Plums and Onion, Pizza Bianca Bread

Zeytoun Parvardeh - Castelvetrano Olives, Walnut, Pomegranate Paste, Garlic, Herbs (ve, gf)

Kaei Pella - Butternut Squash, Turmeric Rice, Mint, Saffron (gf)

Cheghertme - Roasted Organic Chicken Drumsticks, Sumac, Cilantro, Yogurt & Whey Sauce, Sunflower Seeds (gf)

TO FINISH

Aguacate a la Chocolate

Bastani Baklava - Saffron Ice Cream, Baklava Crumbles, Rose Petal

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Please email us at least 72 hours in advance if you have any dietary restrictions and we'll do our best to accommodate them.

Drinks at 6:00, dinner at 7:00. Though a cocktail and some wine will be provided, guests are welcome to bring a bottle of wine to share.

Menu update will come soon to help you choose your bottles. We always make sure vegetarian friends will have plenty to eat. Please contact Raman or Karin in advance if you have any other dietary restrictions.

If you are wondering how you were included in this invitation, or would like to be removed, please contact [email protected]

To sign up for future events, please register at

www.gpdinners.com

To learn more about the former summer camp we've purchased and refurbished near Yosemite, please visit us here. Camp Earnest is available for a campus buyout for groups from 15 to 75 guests at a time.

www.campearnest.com

Host or Publisher Raman Frey