Overall I found this post difficult to digest, since the structure of the central argument isn’t very explicit. I had to read it several times through to properly figure out what it was about. In the future, I strongly suggest splitting up posts like this into a few more compact posts focusing on comparatively homogenous subsets of the content.
I agree with a fair number of your criticisms, and think that trying things based on models is generally good. The basic critique that the SF Bay Area is made of cultural forces that are predictably going to divert large amounts of attention and other resources away from the Rationalist project, is a fair one. But my sense is that proposing solutions is slightly premature, for a couple of reasons.
First, we really don’t have a common understanding the problem, until we understand from the inside why this all seemed like a good idea at the time. In my posts on EA and Quakerism I’ve been trying to articulate how simple trust in the basic liberal framework we live in can lead to falling into these sorts of cultural traps and having your efforts turned against you. While I can easily imagine being wrong on the details, I think this level of radical critique is going to be necessary if we’re not simply going to fall into another version of the same trap again. I think this has implications not just for where and how we should be living, but our model of what rationality is and whether the “rationality training” paradigm is feasible at all.
For this reason, I think some of the criticisms in this post, and arguments for Kernel, while prima facie valid, are a bit too far downstream. For instance, it makes sense that we might want to live somewhere that doesn’t require so many of us to work long hours for The Man, but we should be confused about why we didn’t already notice this, pick up, and move. I don’t think it’s because the information about cost-of-living differences was simply unavailable.
Second, I think a lot of critiques like this presuppose the existence of a coherent “we”. The problem, as I see it, is that the Rationality community is trying to do something sufficiently against the grain that it requires structured coordination, and hasn’t invested much effort into being able to do that on the community level, because of the sorts of individualist assumptions I mentioned above. So, critiques are going to be most useful when structured in a way that catalyze the formation of the right kind of “we”. I’ve been trying to do this on a comparatively small scale, with a discourse-first approach. Physical relocation seems like a thing that may eventually need to happen, but my sense is that it’s premature, except where motivated by short-term needs.
Fundamentally, I think the Rationalist project as originally envisioned turns out not to work and we need to figure out, given that we live in that world, how to get what we want by other means. Defining that project seems really, really important, and it seems to me that it ought to be the core of any subsequent efforts.
Of course, it’s fine to pursue multiple strategies towards this! And it’s fine to invite people to move to your city before the sort of work I’m asking for is done; the Bay community surely does, and turnabout is fair play. People will self-select into the strategies they think are good.
Coordinating around object-level improvements is a really good idea, but the costs of relocation are quite high, and the costs of talking a bit more are quite low. For this reason I think your actual call to action—asking people to get in touch etc—is correct. But I’d like to see a more compact version of this post, focusing on the core beliefs or actions that you think are likely to separate the sort of people who should be in your project, from the ones who shouldn’t. You don’t have to make all the critiques in the same place.
I strongly suggest splitting up posts like this into a few more compact posts focusing on comparatively homogenous subsets of the content.
This was intentional, had I done this the first half would spread like wildfire and maybe 10% would read the second half, when really if you want to do something about this, even while staying in Berkeley, the second half is where the useful stuff is.
The thing about turnover could have been made into a standalone post, but it’s near-useless when taken out of context
But my sense is that proposing solutions is slightly premature
fully laying the groundwork was and still is beyond my capabilities, I also have the strong intuition that there is little marginal utility in yet another meta-post. I mean, you can get something from them, but when most people are reading it for fun, those people will get little.
I’ve seen how little the previous discourse around the subject moved the needle, I felt the need to try something a little different.
There’s also the issue that I’d have to try to explain the mistakes made that I wouldn’t have made (because different intuitions lead to different errors) to people who were prone to said mistakes. And get enough attention towards my blogging that there was widespread common knowledge of the failure mechanisms. These are things I’m pretty confident I could not have done.
we should be confused about why we didn’t already notice this, pick up, and move. I don’t think it’s because the information about cost-of-living differences was simply unavailable.
I don’t think we did either, as if that was the limiting factor, spreadsheets would have already been created for this purpose. I think it’s because there was little awareness of the non-financial impacts constrained finances have on people and an inability to do anything within the system as a lone individual, plus the crickets you get whenver you try to bring up these sort of object-level topics.*
*Excluding the past few days, which is the only time I’ve ever seen much attention being given to people talking about personal finance details in the many years I’ve been around. Finance talk is temporarily shiny, so people are engaging in discourse about it, it will not remain that way.
Coordinating around object-level improvements is a really good idea, but the costs of relocation are quite high, and the costs of talking a bit more are quite low.
Not necessarily, when you factor in oppertunity costs. Talking about things takes time, which depletes the momentum generated by a post like this, and once it is depleted you will have to push it from a new angle in order to overcome social frictions, regardless of if the new angle is actually better.
But I’d like to see a more compact version of this post, focusing on the core beliefs or actions that you think are likely to separate the sort of people who should be in your project, from the ones who shouldn’t.
Given that writing costs about an order of magnitude more per word for me than it does for you, it’s not in my resource budget. I can however provide a rough answer to the question
Positive traits I’d reccomend to join the project:
scientific curiosity, of the extent where you will stop group conversations to research the answer to a question asked that nobody present knows the answers for
desire for knowledge overwhelms emotional reaction to negative information
direct, no-bullshit communication preferences
having priorities that are more important than earning the most money
desire to build/make things that aren’t presently rewarded by economic incentives
highly values deep personal connections
low time preference
object-level focus
“Negative” trats that I’d advise against moving here with: (but not necessarily avoiding collaboration)
Intolerance of Chan/shitpost culture (you don’t have to like it, just not hate it)
Overly concerned with status/material wealth
Strong dislike of me despite agreeing that the project is valuable
A preference for believing anything that is untrue
Teetotaler (Alcohol and the rituals around it has been a vital bonding tool for a millenia)
Lives day to day and felt “this project had a fair bit of buzz so why not?”
“Fundamentally, I think the Rationalist project as originally envisioned turns out not to work and we need to figure out, given that we live in that world, how to get what we want by other means. Defining that project seems really, really important, and it seems to me that it ought to be the core of any subsequent efforts.”—Why not?
Overall I found this post difficult to digest, since the structure of the central argument isn’t very explicit. I had to read it several times through to properly figure out what it was about. In the future, I strongly suggest splitting up posts like this into a few more compact posts focusing on comparatively homogenous subsets of the content.
I agree with a fair number of your criticisms, and think that trying things based on models is generally good. The basic critique that the SF Bay Area is made of cultural forces that are predictably going to divert large amounts of attention and other resources away from the Rationalist project, is a fair one. But my sense is that proposing solutions is slightly premature, for a couple of reasons.
First, we really don’t have a common understanding the problem, until we understand from the inside why this all seemed like a good idea at the time. In my posts on EA and Quakerism I’ve been trying to articulate how simple trust in the basic liberal framework we live in can lead to falling into these sorts of cultural traps and having your efforts turned against you. While I can easily imagine being wrong on the details, I think this level of radical critique is going to be necessary if we’re not simply going to fall into another version of the same trap again. I think this has implications not just for where and how we should be living, but our model of what rationality is and whether the “rationality training” paradigm is feasible at all.
For this reason, I think some of the criticisms in this post, and arguments for Kernel, while prima facie valid, are a bit too far downstream. For instance, it makes sense that we might want to live somewhere that doesn’t require so many of us to work long hours for The Man, but we should be confused about why we didn’t already notice this, pick up, and move. I don’t think it’s because the information about cost-of-living differences was simply unavailable.
Second, I think a lot of critiques like this presuppose the existence of a coherent “we”. The problem, as I see it, is that the Rationality community is trying to do something sufficiently against the grain that it requires structured coordination, and hasn’t invested much effort into being able to do that on the community level, because of the sorts of individualist assumptions I mentioned above. So, critiques are going to be most useful when structured in a way that catalyze the formation of the right kind of “we”. I’ve been trying to do this on a comparatively small scale, with a discourse-first approach. Physical relocation seems like a thing that may eventually need to happen, but my sense is that it’s premature, except where motivated by short-term needs.
Fundamentally, I think the Rationalist project as originally envisioned turns out not to work and we need to figure out, given that we live in that world, how to get what we want by other means. Defining that project seems really, really important, and it seems to me that it ought to be the core of any subsequent efforts.
Of course, it’s fine to pursue multiple strategies towards this! And it’s fine to invite people to move to your city before the sort of work I’m asking for is done; the Bay community surely does, and turnabout is fair play. People will self-select into the strategies they think are good.
Coordinating around object-level improvements is a really good idea, but the costs of relocation are quite high, and the costs of talking a bit more are quite low. For this reason I think your actual call to action—asking people to get in touch etc—is correct. But I’d like to see a more compact version of this post, focusing on the core beliefs or actions that you think are likely to separate the sort of people who should be in your project, from the ones who shouldn’t. You don’t have to make all the critiques in the same place.
This was intentional, had I done this the first half would spread like wildfire and maybe 10% would read the second half, when really if you want to do something about this, even while staying in Berkeley, the second half is where the useful stuff is.
The thing about turnover could have been made into a standalone post, but it’s near-useless when taken out of context
fully laying the groundwork was and still is beyond my capabilities, I also have the strong intuition that there is little marginal utility in yet another meta-post. I mean, you can get something from them, but when most people are reading it for fun, those people will get little.
I’ve seen how little the previous discourse around the subject moved the needle, I felt the need to try something a little different.
There’s also the issue that I’d have to try to explain the mistakes made that I wouldn’t have made (because different intuitions lead to different errors) to people who were prone to said mistakes. And get enough attention towards my blogging that there was widespread common knowledge of the failure mechanisms. These are things I’m pretty confident I could not have done.
I don’t think we did either, as if that was the limiting factor, spreadsheets would have already been created for this purpose. I think it’s because there was little awareness of the non-financial impacts constrained finances have on people and an inability to do anything within the system as a lone individual, plus the crickets you get whenver you try to bring up these sort of object-level topics.*
*Excluding the past few days, which is the only time I’ve ever seen much attention being given to people talking about personal finance details in the many years I’ve been around. Finance talk is temporarily shiny, so people are engaging in discourse about it, it will not remain that way.
Not necessarily, when you factor in oppertunity costs. Talking about things takes time, which depletes the momentum generated by a post like this, and once it is depleted you will have to push it from a new angle in order to overcome social frictions, regardless of if the new angle is actually better.
Given that writing costs about an order of magnitude more per word for me than it does for you, it’s not in my resource budget. I can however provide a rough answer to the question
Positive traits I’d reccomend to join the project:
scientific curiosity, of the extent where you will stop group conversations to research the answer to a question asked that nobody present knows the answers for
desire for knowledge overwhelms emotional reaction to negative information
direct, no-bullshit communication preferences
having priorities that are more important than earning the most money
desire to build/make things that aren’t presently rewarded by economic incentives
highly values deep personal connections
low time preference
object-level focus
“Negative” trats that I’d advise against moving here with: (but not necessarily avoiding collaboration)
Intolerance of Chan/shitpost culture (you don’t have to like it, just not hate it)
Overly concerned with status/material wealth
Strong dislike of me despite agreeing that the project is valuable
A preference for believing anything that is untrue
Teetotaler (Alcohol and the rituals around it has been a vital bonding tool for a millenia)
Lives day to day and felt “this project had a fair bit of buzz so why not?”
“Fundamentally, I think the Rationalist project as originally envisioned turns out not to work and we need to figure out, given that we live in that world, how to get what we want by other means. Defining that project seems really, really important, and it seems to me that it ought to be the core of any subsequent efforts.”—Why not?