The Bay Area is a terrible place to live in many ways. I think if we were selecting for the happiness of existing rationalists, there’s no doubt we should be somewhere else.
But if the rationalist project is supposed to be about spreading our ideas and achieving things, it has some obvious advantages. If MIRI is trying to lure some top programmer, it’s easier for them to suggest they move to the Bay (and offer them enough money to overcome the house price hurdle) than to suggest they move to Montevideo or Blackpool or even Phoenix. If CEA is trying to get people interested in effective altruism, getting to socialize with Berkeley and Stanford professors is a pretty big plus. And if we’re trying to get the marginal person who isn’t quite a community member yet but occasionally reads Less Wrong to integrate more, that person is more likely to be in the Bay than anywhere else we could move. I think this is still true despite the coronavirus and fires. Maybe it’s becoming less so, but it’s hard to imagine any alternative hub that’s anywhere near as good by these metrics. *Maybe* Austin.
Separating rationalists interested in quality-of-life from rationalists working for organizations and doing important world-changing work seems potentially net negative.
I think if we were going to move the Berkeley hub, it would have to be to another US hub—most people aren’t going to transfer countries, so even if the community as a whole moved, we would need another US hub for Americans who refused to or coudln’t emigrate.
I don’t think Moraga (or other similar places near the Bay) are worth trying. They’re just as expensive as Berkeley, but almost all single-family homes, so it would be harder for poorer people to rent places there. Although there’s a BART station, there’s not much other transit, and most homes aren’t walkable from the BART station, so poorer people without cars would be in trouble. And it really isn’t much less expensive than Berkeley, and it’s got the same level of fire danger, so we would be splitting the community in two (abandoning the poor people, the people tied to MIRI HQ, etc) while not gaining much more than a scenery upgrade. I think they’re a fair alternative option for people who can’t stand the squalor and crime of the Bay proper, but mostly in the context of those people moving there and commuting to Berkeley for community events.
If we made a larger-scale move, I think it would be to avoid the high housing costs, fires, blackouts, taxes, and social decay of the Bay. That rules out anywhere else in California—still the same costs, fires, blackouts, and taxes, although some places are marginally less decayed. It also rules out Cascadian cities like Portland and Seattle—only marginally better housing costs, worse fires, and worse social decay (eg violence in Portland).
If we wanted to stick close enough to California that it was easy to see families/friends/colleagues, there are lots of great cities in or near the Mountain West—Phoenix, Salt Lake, Colorado Springs, Austin. All of those have housing prices well below half that of the Bay (Phoenix’s cost-of-housing index is literally 20% of Berkeley’s!). Austin is a trendy exciting tech hub, Colorado Springs frequently tops most-liveable lists, Salt Lake City seems unusually well-governed and resilient to potential climate or political crisis, and Phoenix is gratifyingly cheap.
The most successful adjacent past attempt at deliberate-hub-creation like this I know of was the Free State Project, where 20,000 libertarians agreed to create a libertarian hub. They did some analyses, voted on where the hub should be, created an assurance contract where every signatory agreed to move once there were 20,000 signatories, got 20,000 signatories, and moved. They ended up choosing New Hampshire, which means we might want to consider it as well. It’s got great housing prices (Manchester is as cheap as Phoenix!), a great economy, beautiful scenery, a vibrant intellectual scene, it’s less than an hour’s drive to Boston, it’s very politically influential (small, swing state, presidential primaries), and (now) has 20,000 libertarians who are interested in moving places and building hubs.
If people are interested in this, I think the first step would be to consult MIRI, CFAR, CEA, etc, and if they say no, decide whether splitting off “the community” from all of them is worth it. If they say yes, or people decide it’s worth it to split, then make an organization and take a vote on location. Once you have a location in mind, start an assurance contract where once X people sign, everyone moves to the location (I’m not sure what X would be—maybe 50?)
I think this is a really interesting project, but probably am too tied to my group house to participate myself :(
MIRI is very seriously considering moving to a different country soon (most likely Canada), or moving to elsewhere in the US. No concrete plans or decisions at this point, and it’s very possible we’ll stay in the Bay; but I don’t think people should make their current location decisions based on a confident prediction that MIRI is going to stay in the Bay.
If we do leave the Bay Area, some of the main places we’re currently thinking about are New Hampshire and some other northeastern US spots, and the area surrounding Toronto in Canada. (Caveat: The top places we’re considering might look pretty different a week or two from now.)
I’ll say more about this once MIRI has more solid plans (even if those plans are just ‘we decided against moving in the near future’).
A non-exhaustive list of factors people at MIRI are talking about:
General costs of moving, which are obviously much larger when we’re located close to a lot of friends and colleagues.
Costs and benefits of moving now vs. later, given current events and the difficulties of coordinating a move during normal times.
Quality of governance, cost of living, infrastructure construction and maintenance, air quality, reliable access to electricity and Internet.
Tail risk of things suddenly getting much worse (e.g., nuclear attacks, or sudden changes in people’s common-knowledge sense of the acceptability of violence).
Culture, including something like ‘people naturally copy behavior patterns from their peers and community, which can make it easier or harder to feel grounded, patient, ambitious, intellectually experimental, etc.’
Costs and benefits of living in/near high-population-density places, living in/near tech centers, etc.
Ease of immigration, hiring, organizing visits, etc.
Costs and benefits of moving now vs. later, given current events and the difficulties of coordinating a move during normal times.
Speaking about costs and current events, has COVID-19 a visible impact on house prices? That could also be a part of decision whether to move sooner or later.
I have been collecting interest in an unchartered community in Niobrara, Wyoming with plans to gain critical mass for a state charter.
It’s the smallest county in the state with ~2,000 population; the state has the most national voting power per person; generally the law is about as libertarian as any other and they’ve made a specific push to be a replacement Switzerland after Zurich cracked down on the banks, with especially friendliness to cryptocurrency.
There are currently 2200 acres for sale for $1MM, or smaller lots for less. I am personally committed to funding $100k if I can get enough interest.
Eventual plan would be to create Deep Springs College for working professionals, and attempt quick trials of new community governance norms of the kind proposed by RadicalxChange and others.
If I lived in Wyoming and wanted to go to a fetish event, I guess I’m driving to maybe Denver, around 3h40 away? I know this isn’t a consideration for everyone but it’s important to me.
The same is basically true for any niche interest—it will only be fulfilled where there’s adequate population to justify it. In my case, particular jazz music.
Probably a lot of people have different niche interests like that, even if they can’t agree on one.
if we’re trying to get the marginal person who isn’t quite a community member yet but occasionally reads Less Wrong to integrate more
I don’t know who “we” are, but my personal hope for the marginal person who isn’t quite a community member but occasionally reads this website isn’t that they necessarily integrate with the community, but that they benefit from understanding the ideas that we talk about on this website—the stuff about science and Bayesian reasoning, which, being universals, bear no distinguishing evidence of their origin. I wouldn’t want to privilege the hypothesis that integrating with the community is the right thing to do if you understand the material, given the size of the space of competing alternatives. (The rest of the world is a much larger place than “the community”; you need more evidence to justify the plan of reorganizing your life around a community qua community than you do to justify the plan of reading an interesting blog.)
I feel like there’s a very serious risk of turning a ‘broad rationalist movement’ reaction, feeding on PARC adjacent extreme-aspirationals and secreting ‘rationalists’ into a permanently capped out minor regional cult by just deciding to move somewhere all avowed ‘rationalists’ choose. I doubt most ‘rationalists’ or even most of the people who are likely to contribute to the literature of a rationalist movement have yet been converted to a specific sort of tribal self-identification that would lead them to pick up roots and all go to the same place at one time. ”Let’s all leave and pick somewhere obscure” seems a lot more like a way for a movement that has decided to gracefully and deliberately coordinate self-annihilation than a strategy for growth.
I actually feel like East Bay (Oakland and every place north of Oakland) is really pleasant:
Cost of living isn’t terrible except for rent, and it’s still possible to find good deals on rent, e.g. I’ve lived in North Oakland for 6 years and have only paid more than $1,000/month for one of those years (granted for the rest of the time I’ve been living in group houses or with a partner)
East Bay parks are amazing
Minimal social decay except for downtown Berkeley and parts of Oakland
Wonderful weather for ~10 months of the year (every season except for fire season)
Lots of interesting + diverse people, intellectual communities, and social life
I agree with regard to Moraga. Habryka and a few housemates of mine drove down to have a look around, and I think their main updates were that each house had only like 2 bedrooms, were all ~5x the distance from each other relative to Berkeley, there were no sidewalks, and no natural meeting place (the place with the shops had no natural seating), which means people just wouldn’t see each other very much unless everyone had a car and made it a conscious and constant effort. Even though it was nice and clean and so on.
I also agree wrt CFAR/MIRI. I would be interested in talking with them more, to see if they‘re open to moving generally, and what their preferences are, I’d massively prefer (both personally and as the LW team) to move with them than away from.
On the side of small-scale moving, I’m curious how you feel about the South Bay? It’s been an idea that a few friends of mine have raised, that after the pandemic we could recongregate there. It’s cleaner, a bit cheaper, larger houses, doesn’t have as much protests and conflict as Berkeley, has far fewer homeless people, and the same distance from SF, and would still work for group houses. It does have less good public transport, which matters if a sizeable number of us don’t primarily Uber for such things, although I think perhaps most of us do.
It also rules out Cascadian cities like Portland and Seattle—only marginally better housing costs, worse fires, and worse social decay (eg violence in Portland).
I’m not sure this is so conclusive, regarding Seattle. A few notes --
The rent is 40% less than San Francisco, and 20% less than Berkeley. (And the difference seems likely to continue or increase, because Seattle is willing to build housing.)
There is no state income tax.
While the CHAZ happened in Seattle, my impression is that day-to-day it’s much more livable than SF. (I haven’t lived there in a few years, but from 2007-2014 I thought it was wonderful.)
If MIRI (or others) want to hire programmers, Seattle is probably the 2nd best market in the US for it. (Think of where the big tech cos all have their first secondary offices. It’s all Seattle or NYC.)
Agree with these points, though Seattle doesn’t seem very dynamic compared to the Bay, LA, NYC, or even Salt Lake. (It seems very normie, to use a pejorative.)
this is pretty damn strong for intellectual hub considerations. I had been thinking Denver or Santa Cruz were the only real choices due to decriminalization (leading indicator) but given NH’s politics they might follow along in the next few years.
The Bay Area is a terrible place to live in many ways. I think if we were selecting for the happiness of existing rationalists, there’s no doubt we should be somewhere else.
But if the rationalist project is supposed to be about spreading our ideas and achieving things, it has some obvious advantages. If MIRI is trying to lure some top programmer, it’s easier for them to suggest they move to the Bay (and offer them enough money to overcome the house price hurdle) than to suggest they move to Montevideo or Blackpool or even Phoenix. If CEA is trying to get people interested in effective altruism, getting to socialize with Berkeley and Stanford professors is a pretty big plus. And if we’re trying to get the marginal person who isn’t quite a community member yet but occasionally reads Less Wrong to integrate more, that person is more likely to be in the Bay than anywhere else we could move. I think this is still true despite the coronavirus and fires. Maybe it’s becoming less so, but it’s hard to imagine any alternative hub that’s anywhere near as good by these metrics. *Maybe* Austin.
Separating rationalists interested in quality-of-life from rationalists working for organizations and doing important world-changing work seems potentially net negative.
I think if we were going to move the Berkeley hub, it would have to be to another US hub—most people aren’t going to transfer countries, so even if the community as a whole moved, we would need another US hub for Americans who refused to or coudln’t emigrate.
I don’t think Moraga (or other similar places near the Bay) are worth trying. They’re just as expensive as Berkeley, but almost all single-family homes, so it would be harder for poorer people to rent places there. Although there’s a BART station, there’s not much other transit, and most homes aren’t walkable from the BART station, so poorer people without cars would be in trouble. And it really isn’t much less expensive than Berkeley, and it’s got the same level of fire danger, so we would be splitting the community in two (abandoning the poor people, the people tied to MIRI HQ, etc) while not gaining much more than a scenery upgrade. I think they’re a fair alternative option for people who can’t stand the squalor and crime of the Bay proper, but mostly in the context of those people moving there and commuting to Berkeley for community events.
If we made a larger-scale move, I think it would be to avoid the high housing costs, fires, blackouts, taxes, and social decay of the Bay. That rules out anywhere else in California—still the same costs, fires, blackouts, and taxes, although some places are marginally less decayed. It also rules out Cascadian cities like Portland and Seattle—only marginally better housing costs, worse fires, and worse social decay (eg violence in Portland).
If we wanted to stick close enough to California that it was easy to see families/friends/colleagues, there are lots of great cities in or near the Mountain West—Phoenix, Salt Lake, Colorado Springs, Austin. All of those have housing prices well below half that of the Bay (Phoenix’s cost-of-housing index is literally 20% of Berkeley’s!). Austin is a trendy exciting tech hub, Colorado Springs frequently tops most-liveable lists, Salt Lake City seems unusually well-governed and resilient to potential climate or political crisis, and Phoenix is gratifyingly cheap.
The most successful adjacent past attempt at deliberate-hub-creation like this I know of was the Free State Project, where 20,000 libertarians agreed to create a libertarian hub. They did some analyses, voted on where the hub should be, created an assurance contract where every signatory agreed to move once there were 20,000 signatories, got 20,000 signatories, and moved. They ended up choosing New Hampshire, which means we might want to consider it as well. It’s got great housing prices (Manchester is as cheap as Phoenix!), a great economy, beautiful scenery, a vibrant intellectual scene, it’s less than an hour’s drive to Boston, it’s very politically influential (small, swing state, presidential primaries), and (now) has 20,000 libertarians who are interested in moving places and building hubs.
If people are interested in this, I think the first step would be to consult MIRI, CFAR, CEA, etc, and if they say no, decide whether splitting off “the community” from all of them is worth it. If they say yes, or people decide it’s worth it to split, then make an organization and take a vote on location. Once you have a location in mind, start an assurance contract where once X people sign, everyone moves to the location (I’m not sure what X would be—maybe 50?)
I think this is a really interesting project, but probably am too tied to my group house to participate myself :(
(Source: I work at MIRI.)
MIRI is very seriously considering moving to a different country soon (most likely Canada), or moving to elsewhere in the US. No concrete plans or decisions at this point, and it’s very possible we’ll stay in the Bay; but I don’t think people should make their current location decisions based on a confident prediction that MIRI is going to stay in the Bay.
If we do leave the Bay Area, some of the main places we’re currently thinking about are New Hampshire and some other northeastern US spots, and the area surrounding Toronto in Canada. (Caveat: The top places we’re considering might look pretty different a week or two from now.)
I’ll say more about this once MIRI has more solid plans (even if those plans are just ‘we decided against moving in the near future’).
A non-exhaustive list of factors people at MIRI are talking about:
General costs of moving, which are obviously much larger when we’re located close to a lot of friends and colleagues.
Costs and benefits of moving now vs. later, given current events and the difficulties of coordinating a move during normal times.
Quality of governance, cost of living, infrastructure construction and maintenance, air quality, reliable access to electricity and Internet.
Tail risk of things suddenly getting much worse (e.g., nuclear attacks, or sudden changes in people’s common-knowledge sense of the acceptability of violence).
Culture, including something like ‘people naturally copy behavior patterns from their peers and community, which can make it easier or harder to feel grounded, patient, ambitious, intellectually experimental, etc.’
Costs and benefits of living in/near high-population-density places, living in/near tech centers, etc.
Ease of immigration, hiring, organizing visits, etc.
Weather, climate, and daylight hours.
Speaking about costs and current events, has COVID-19 a visible impact on house prices? That could also be a part of decision whether to move sooner or later.
Update: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SgszmZwrDHwG3qurr/miri-location-optimization-and-related-topics-discussion
I have been collecting interest in an unchartered community in Niobrara, Wyoming with plans to gain critical mass for a state charter.
It’s the smallest county in the state with ~2,000 population; the state has the most national voting power per person; generally the law is about as libertarian as any other and they’ve made a specific push to be a replacement Switzerland after Zurich cracked down on the banks, with especially friendliness to cryptocurrency.
There are currently 2200 acres for sale for $1MM, or smaller lots for less. I am personally committed to funding $100k if I can get enough interest.
Eventual plan would be to create Deep Springs College for working professionals, and attempt quick trials of new community governance norms of the kind proposed by RadicalxChange and others.
If you’re interested, please fill out the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19cK7t4WNzUd1oi0Q1jw0vkqHsUxXqzCvNbuRD5G02LE/edit?usp=drivesdk
If I lived in Wyoming and wanted to go to a fetish event, I guess I’m driving to maybe Denver, around 3h40 away? I know this isn’t a consideration for everyone but it’s important to me.
The same is basically true for any niche interest—it will only be fulfilled where there’s adequate population to justify it. In my case, particular jazz music.
Probably a lot of people have different niche interests like that, even if they can’t agree on one.
True; in addition, places vary a lot in their freak-tolerance.
Huh, interesting. I’d like to hear more about your plans & vision, but I’ve put my interest in the spreadsheet.
Wild Wild Country 2: Electric Boogaloo!
Thanks for phrasing this as a conditional! To fill in another branch of the if/else-if/else-if … conditional statement: if the rationalist project is supposed to be about systematically correct reasoning—having the right ideas because they’re right, rather than spreading our ideas because they’re ours—then things that are advantageous to the movement could be disadvantageous to the ideology, if the needs of growing the coalition’s resources conflict with the needs of constructing shared maps that reflect the territory.
I don’t know who “we” are, but my personal hope for the marginal person who isn’t quite a community member but occasionally reads this website isn’t that they necessarily integrate with the community, but that they benefit from understanding the ideas that we talk about on this website—the stuff about science and Bayesian reasoning, which, being universals, bear no distinguishing evidence of their origin. I wouldn’t want to privilege the hypothesis that integrating with the community is the right thing to do if you understand the material, given the size of the space of competing alternatives. (The rest of the world is a much larger place than “the community”; you need more evidence to justify the plan of reorganizing your life around a community qua community than you do to justify the plan of reading an interesting blog.)
Living in a social bubble can easily be a negative for actual truth-seeking.
I feel like there’s a very serious risk of turning a ‘broad rationalist movement’ reaction, feeding on PARC adjacent extreme-aspirationals and secreting ‘rationalists’ into a permanently capped out minor regional cult by just deciding to move somewhere all avowed ‘rationalists’ choose.
I doubt most ‘rationalists’ or even most of the people who are likely to contribute to the literature of a rationalist movement have yet been converted to a specific sort of tribal self-identification that would lead them to pick up roots and all go to the same place at one time.
”Let’s all leave and pick somewhere obscure” seems a lot more like a way for a movement that has decided to gracefully and deliberately coordinate self-annihilation than a strategy for growth.
I actually feel like East Bay (Oakland and every place north of Oakland) is really pleasant:
Cost of living isn’t terrible except for rent, and it’s still possible to find good deals on rent, e.g. I’ve lived in North Oakland for 6 years and have only paid more than $1,000/month for one of those years (granted for the rest of the time I’ve been living in group houses or with a partner)
East Bay parks are amazing
Minimal social decay except for downtown Berkeley and parts of Oakland
Wonderful weather for ~10 months of the year (every season except for fire season)
Lots of interesting + diverse people, intellectual communities, and social life
What am I missing?
I agree with regard to Moraga. Habryka and a few housemates of mine drove down to have a look around, and I think their main updates were that each house had only like 2 bedrooms, were all ~5x the distance from each other relative to Berkeley, there were no sidewalks, and no natural meeting place (the place with the shops had no natural seating), which means people just wouldn’t see each other very much unless everyone had a car and made it a conscious and constant effort. Even though it was nice and clean and so on.
I also agree wrt CFAR/MIRI. I would be interested in talking with them more, to see if they‘re open to moving generally, and what their preferences are, I’d massively prefer (both personally and as the LW team) to move with them than away from.
On the side of small-scale moving, I’m curious how you feel about the South Bay? It’s been an idea that a few friends of mine have raised, that after the pandemic we could recongregate there. It’s cleaner, a bit cheaper, larger houses, doesn’t have as much protests and conflict as Berkeley, has far fewer homeless people, and the same distance from SF, and would still work for group houses. It does have less good public transport, which matters if a sizeable number of us don’t primarily Uber for such things, although I think perhaps most of us do.
I’m not sure this is so conclusive, regarding Seattle. A few notes --
The rent is 40% less than San Francisco, and 20% less than Berkeley. (And the difference seems likely to continue or increase, because Seattle is willing to build housing.)
There is no state income tax.
While the CHAZ happened in Seattle, my impression is that day-to-day it’s much more livable than SF. (I haven’t lived there in a few years, but from 2007-2014 I thought it was wonderful.)
If MIRI (or others) want to hire programmers, Seattle is probably the 2nd best market in the US for it. (Think of where the big tech cos all have their first secondary offices. It’s all Seattle or NYC.)
Agree with these points, though Seattle doesn’t seem very dynamic compared to the Bay, LA, NYC, or even Salt Lake. (It seems very normie, to use a pejorative.)
>it’s less than an hour’s drive to Boston
this is pretty damn strong for intellectual hub considerations. I had been thinking Denver or Santa Cruz were the only real choices due to decriminalization (leading indicator) but given NH’s politics they might follow along in the next few years.