I moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas three months ago. Some relevant notes...
First, not all the factors in the OP are equally important—visas/citizenship considerations and cost of living were more important considerations than everything else on this list combined. Living in the US is a hard constraint for my girlfriend; moving outside would have been a deal-breaker.
On the cost of living front, the cost-of-living differential between (Bay Area/NYC) and (basically anywhere else) is much bigger than the differential between most other places within the US. We got an apartment with 50% more space at roughly half the rent, and it has more amenities and (IMO) a better location too. I’m an independent researcher at the moment, so my financial runway is a major consideration; my runway went from “I have to think about money within the next year” to “I don’t have to think about money within the next year”. That’s a major qualitative shift, which allows me to explore very different research directions.
Within roughly those constraints, we satisficed: Las Vegas was the closest city to the Bay Area with roughly “normal” (for the US) housing prices. (It was close enough that moving costs were ridiculously low—it was on the order of $300 for everything. Tip: a transit van which would cost $800 to rent from Uhaul for a cross-state move cost me $150 to rent from Hertz.)
I expect I’m not the only one facing roughly-similar incentives, especially with tech people all working remotely. The fact that we basically satisficed on two constraints means that there’s enough degrees of freedom here for “location of other rationalists” to actually determine the decision—i.e. if there’d been a rationalist cluster in Pheonix or Salt Lake City or … then there’s a decent chance we’d have ended up there instead.
I’ve lived in Vegas for the past four years or so and have a lot of thoughts about it as a place to live. I wrote some of themup on the Mr. Money Mustache forum and can elaborate if anyone is interested.
My main thought is that for 3-4 months out of the year it’s hot enough where you really can’t be outside (100+ degrees during the day with a brutal sun), and that to me is a pretty big issue. I expect that too many people would be put off by it for it to work as rationalist hub.
I also tried starting a LessWrong meetup here and never had anyone show up.
I moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas three months ago. Some relevant notes...
First, not all the factors in the OP are equally important—visas/citizenship considerations and cost of living were more important considerations than everything else on this list combined. Living in the US is a hard constraint for my girlfriend; moving outside would have been a deal-breaker.
On the cost of living front, the cost-of-living differential between (Bay Area/NYC) and (basically anywhere else) is much bigger than the differential between most other places within the US. We got an apartment with 50% more space at roughly half the rent, and it has more amenities and (IMO) a better location too. I’m an independent researcher at the moment, so my financial runway is a major consideration; my runway went from “I have to think about money within the next year” to “I don’t have to think about money within the next year”. That’s a major qualitative shift, which allows me to explore very different research directions.
Within roughly those constraints, we satisficed: Las Vegas was the closest city to the Bay Area with roughly “normal” (for the US) housing prices. (It was close enough that moving costs were ridiculously low—it was on the order of $300 for everything. Tip: a transit van which would cost $800 to rent from Uhaul for a cross-state move cost me $150 to rent from Hertz.)
I expect I’m not the only one facing roughly-similar incentives, especially with tech people all working remotely. The fact that we basically satisficed on two constraints means that there’s enough degrees of freedom here for “location of other rationalists” to actually determine the decision—i.e. if there’d been a rationalist cluster in Pheonix or Salt Lake City or … then there’s a decent chance we’d have ended up there instead.
I’ve lived in Vegas for the past four years or so and have a lot of thoughts about it as a place to live. I wrote some of themup on the Mr. Money Mustache forum and can elaborate if anyone is interested.
My main thought is that for 3-4 months out of the year it’s hot enough where you really can’t be outside (100+ degrees during the day with a brutal sun), and that to me is a pretty big issue. I expect that too many people would be put off by it for it to work as rationalist hub.
I also tried starting a LessWrong meetup here and never had anyone show up.
Reno has tolerable summers! (And is closer to the Bay Area.)
Reno has 90F daily highs during summer. Knocking 10 degrees off is a nonneglible improvement over Las Vegas, though.