I personally like Austin, and selfishly I would want MIRI to be either near there or near NYC. I’m not really sure how good a fit it is for MIRI, but here are my thoughts on it.
Sanity/culture:
I think the overall epistemic climate in Austin is probably better than the Bay Area, but it still seems to be absorbing a lot of the illiberal, mostly left thing that’s going around lately. Still, I’ve always found it easy to meet people there who are reasonably sane and not easily blown around by the political winds of the day. There is plenty of grey tribe culture around, and people there are more familiar with red tribe culture than in CA, but it is still mostly pretty progressive.
Weather:
A very common concern about Austin is the hot weather. While I do think it’s something that needs to be dealt with, I do not think it is all that bad, as weather goes. Most people who visit find it terrible, even after a week or two, but during the 10-ish years I lived there, I can only remember meeting maybe five people who, having lived there for more than a year, would strongly avoid going outside due to the heat all summer, two of which seemed to be substantially unhappy for it. Of everyone else, my estimate of the breakdown is:
25% dislike the hot weather, maybe at the level of planning vacations to get away from it, but otherwise didn’t seem strongly affected by it
60% would prefer cooler weather, and avoid things like running or cycling during the hot part of the day, but otherwise seem perfectly fine with it
15% actually enjoy the hot weather, at least on the not-super-hot days, would go for 80 mile bike rides in it, etc
The sample here is maybe 50% UT students, plus some cyclists, effective altruists, rationalists, and others, mostly between roughly 20 and 40 years old, and mostly from out of state. At least half of the people who really like hot weather are competitive cyclists.
An important thing to keep in mind about Austin is that, unlike the Bay Area, almost every building that holds humans has air conditioning, so it really is only an outside thing. The evenings are great and you never have carry a jacket between May-ish and October-ish. Overall, I don’t get the impression that people find the hot Austin summers more bothersome than a typical winter in a place that gets snow.
Here are things that I personally like about Austin:
The LessWrong and EA community is strong. There are reliable meetups multiple times per week with interesting and fun people. Personally, I found them to result in, on average, more interesting conversations than meetups in the Bay Area.
It has a great live music scene, most of which is cheap (<$10) or free, and which is a mix small shows in crowded bars and huge concerts in the park in the summer.
SXSW is is neat. There are lots of music shows, talks, film screenings, and exhibits, a substantial portion of which do not require registration or a badge or anything. It is very crowded and makes it hard to get around the city for a couple weeks. For me this was fine because I like meeting strangers and transportation via bike isn’t all that strongly impacted, but for many people who live in the city it is very, very annoying.
The food is good in general, and there are lots of good vegan/vegetarian options. Better grocery stores than other places I’ve lived
It has a great cycling scene, for everything from casual recreational riding to serious competitive cycling.
You can get in a tube to float down the river and get so engrossed in conversation that you don’t notice you’ve just been circling around an eddy for the last 40 minutes.
Here are things I do not like about Austin:
Sometimes getting around is hard. You can reliably get an Uber at more-or-less any time, but traffic gets quite bad during rush hour, on game days, during SXSW, etc. It’s decent, but not great for getting around on a bike, but traffic is getting worse, driving culture is getting more aggressive, and the city engineers or whoever designs infrastructure do not seem very competent to me
There’s enough of the illiberal-left culture to be a problem sometimes. The protests/riots there were kind of bad, though very contained. The university and many of its students have very little tolerance for divergent views on many political topics. It’s not too hard to avoid unpleasant encounters, but I don’t feel entirely at ease discussing certain things in public or with people I do not know well
It is not that great for most of my preferred kind of outdoor activities. There are no proper mountains nearby and none of the parks is big enough for a solid 3+ night backpacking trip. Big Bend is great, but it’s 7hrs away.
Other thoughts:
I do not think Austin feels all that calm, quiet, or close to nature. It will become more crowded, traffic will get worse, and rent will go up, but that’s partly (mostly?) because smart/interesting people are moving there. The quietest neighborhoods are not bad, and depending on what you’re willing to pay, there are some beautiful places to live there. If you’re looking for places near Austin, but out of the city, I think Dripping Springs, Georgetown, New Braunfels/Gruene, Waco, and Wimberley seem nice. The Texas Hill Country has some great places to rent a cabin and actually get away from all the people/noise for a while.
I highly appreciate the level of detail here. Breakdowns of the distribution of long-term impressions of Austin weather are great—a lot more of an update than a single person’s take.
I do have to worry that there’s a selection effect! People aren’t randomly assigned to Austin and aren’t forced to stay, so the people who stay (or who are even willing to consider Austin as an option) will skew toward being heat-tolerant.
“Better grocery stores than other places I’ve lived”—Where have you lived, if you don’t mind my asking?
“If you’re looking for places near Austin, but out of the city”—If we moved to Austin, I predict the optimal set-up will have some of MIRI in the city and some outside the city, with one of those groups commuting. But it may be hard to achieve that mostly-optimal-for-us set-up.
“Better grocery stores than other places I’ve lived”—Where have you lived, if you don’t mind my asking?
Austin is the home of Whole Foods, and the typical mainstream grocery store is HEB, which was prepping for COVID in January 2020; Central Market is also pretty good?
I think people who really like Berkeley Bowl might not find something exactly similar, but I think they will find things that are adequate replacements.
Yeah, I mostly had HEB + Central Market in mind. I’ve always found HEB to be more likely to have things I want, and I think they have generally responded well to storms and the pandemic.
I do have to worry that there’s a selection effect!
I imagine there is! I’m not sure how strong it is. A lot of people I know were students, so they had some choice about where to live, but only so much and leaving wasn’t as easy as it could be. Others were there for tech jobs and were very much there by choice.
Where have you lived, if you don’t mind my asking?
I’m mostly comparing to Los Alamos, NM and SF/Berkeley. I also lived in some other towns for college, and they seemed similarly mediocre to Los Alamos. I’m kind of meh about Whole Foods, and I think Berkeley Bowl is good, but not worth getting excited about, if that helps.
If we moved to Austin, I predict the optimal set-up will have some of MIRI in the city and some outside the city, with one of those groups commuting. But it may be hard to achieve that mostly-optimal-for-us set-up.
My guess is that living in the city and commuting out of it is less of a bummer than the other way around, but either way, commuting in Austin isn’t great. It would, of course, depend on where you are in the city, and you can probably avoid the worst of it by not trying to get to downtown at 9am or whatever. As I recall, driving out of the city in the morning usually wasn’t too bad.
I’ll have to hit you up about LW meet-ups in the area. I didn’t like the ones I attended in Seattle and as a result I became very adjacent to the community. I also have kids, which consume a lot of time. It would be nice to have some grown up friends.
Cool! The meetup does have some parents and soon-to-be parents. I’m not totally up to speed on how the meetups are going these days, since I haven’t lived there in over six months, but send me a PM, or you should be able to find it on the LW meetup database :)
I would avoid Waco, mostly because I-35 is so central to the North/South traffic flow there and is so terribly always in a state of disrepair and repair and demolition and re...molition… Waco is also a college town, but it’s a very conservative college town. You’ll get the college town downsides, but not many of the upsides. The only thing in my mind that is a merit to Waco is that it isn’t far from West and in West you’ve got Kolaches. (I went to Baylor, briefly, in my younger days and soon fled.)
You’re probably right. I only ever went there for bike races, and it seemed generally pleasant. I also knew a couple that owned a coffee shop there and they seemed cool. I can definitely believe that it would be awkwardly conservative for MIRI.
I personally like Austin, and selfishly I would want MIRI to be either near there or near NYC. I’m not really sure how good a fit it is for MIRI, but here are my thoughts on it.
Sanity/culture:
I think the overall epistemic climate in Austin is probably better than the Bay Area, but it still seems to be absorbing a lot of the illiberal, mostly left thing that’s going around lately. Still, I’ve always found it easy to meet people there who are reasonably sane and not easily blown around by the political winds of the day. There is plenty of grey tribe culture around, and people there are more familiar with red tribe culture than in CA, but it is still mostly pretty progressive.
Weather:
A very common concern about Austin is the hot weather. While I do think it’s something that needs to be dealt with, I do not think it is all that bad, as weather goes. Most people who visit find it terrible, even after a week or two, but during the 10-ish years I lived there, I can only remember meeting maybe five people who, having lived there for more than a year, would strongly avoid going outside due to the heat all summer, two of which seemed to be substantially unhappy for it. Of everyone else, my estimate of the breakdown is:
25% dislike the hot weather, maybe at the level of planning vacations to get away from it, but otherwise didn’t seem strongly affected by it
60% would prefer cooler weather, and avoid things like running or cycling during the hot part of the day, but otherwise seem perfectly fine with it
15% actually enjoy the hot weather, at least on the not-super-hot days, would go for 80 mile bike rides in it, etc
The sample here is maybe 50% UT students, plus some cyclists, effective altruists, rationalists, and others, mostly between roughly 20 and 40 years old, and mostly from out of state. At least half of the people who really like hot weather are competitive cyclists.
An important thing to keep in mind about Austin is that, unlike the Bay Area, almost every building that holds humans has air conditioning, so it really is only an outside thing. The evenings are great and you never have carry a jacket between May-ish and October-ish. Overall, I don’t get the impression that people find the hot Austin summers more bothersome than a typical winter in a place that gets snow.
Here are things that I personally like about Austin:
The LessWrong and EA community is strong. There are reliable meetups multiple times per week with interesting and fun people. Personally, I found them to result in, on average, more interesting conversations than meetups in the Bay Area.
It has a great live music scene, most of which is cheap (<$10) or free, and which is a mix small shows in crowded bars and huge concerts in the park in the summer.
SXSW is is neat. There are lots of music shows, talks, film screenings, and exhibits, a substantial portion of which do not require registration or a badge or anything. It is very crowded and makes it hard to get around the city for a couple weeks. For me this was fine because I like meeting strangers and transportation via bike isn’t all that strongly impacted, but for many people who live in the city it is very, very annoying.
The food is good in general, and there are lots of good vegan/vegetarian options. Better grocery stores than other places I’ve lived
It has a great cycling scene, for everything from casual recreational riding to serious competitive cycling.
You can get in a tube to float down the river and get so engrossed in conversation that you don’t notice you’ve just been circling around an eddy for the last 40 minutes.
Here are things I do not like about Austin:
Sometimes getting around is hard. You can reliably get an Uber at more-or-less any time, but traffic gets quite bad during rush hour, on game days, during SXSW, etc. It’s decent, but not great for getting around on a bike, but traffic is getting worse, driving culture is getting more aggressive, and the city engineers or whoever designs infrastructure do not seem very competent to me
There’s enough of the illiberal-left culture to be a problem sometimes. The protests/riots there were kind of bad, though very contained. The university and many of its students have very little tolerance for divergent views on many political topics. It’s not too hard to avoid unpleasant encounters, but I don’t feel entirely at ease discussing certain things in public or with people I do not know well
It is not that great for most of my preferred kind of outdoor activities. There are no proper mountains nearby and none of the parks is big enough for a solid 3+ night backpacking trip. Big Bend is great, but it’s 7hrs away.
Other thoughts:
I do not think Austin feels all that calm, quiet, or close to nature. It will become more crowded, traffic will get worse, and rent will go up, but that’s partly (mostly?) because smart/interesting people are moving there. The quietest neighborhoods are not bad, and depending on what you’re willing to pay, there are some beautiful places to live there. If you’re looking for places near Austin, but out of the city, I think Dripping Springs, Georgetown, New Braunfels/Gruene, Waco, and Wimberley seem nice. The Texas Hill Country has some great places to rent a cabin and actually get away from all the people/noise for a while.
I highly appreciate the level of detail here. Breakdowns of the distribution of long-term impressions of Austin weather are great—a lot more of an update than a single person’s take.
I do have to worry that there’s a selection effect! People aren’t randomly assigned to Austin and aren’t forced to stay, so the people who stay (or who are even willing to consider Austin as an option) will skew toward being heat-tolerant.
“Better grocery stores than other places I’ve lived”—Where have you lived, if you don’t mind my asking?
“If you’re looking for places near Austin, but out of the city”—If we moved to Austin, I predict the optimal set-up will have some of MIRI in the city and some outside the city, with one of those groups commuting. But it may be hard to achieve that mostly-optimal-for-us set-up.
Austin is the home of Whole Foods, and the typical mainstream grocery store is HEB, which was prepping for COVID in January 2020; Central Market is also pretty good?
I think people who really like Berkeley Bowl might not find something exactly similar, but I think they will find things that are adequate replacements.
Yeah, I mostly had HEB + Central Market in mind. I’ve always found HEB to be more likely to have things I want, and I think they have generally responded well to storms and the pandemic.
I imagine there is! I’m not sure how strong it is. A lot of people I know were students, so they had some choice about where to live, but only so much and leaving wasn’t as easy as it could be. Others were there for tech jobs and were very much there by choice.
I’m mostly comparing to Los Alamos, NM and SF/Berkeley. I also lived in some other towns for college, and they seemed similarly mediocre to Los Alamos. I’m kind of meh about Whole Foods, and I think Berkeley Bowl is good, but not worth getting excited about, if that helps.
My guess is that living in the city and commuting out of it is less of a bummer than the other way around, but either way, commuting in Austin isn’t great. It would, of course, depend on where you are in the city, and you can probably avoid the worst of it by not trying to get to downtown at 9am or whatever. As I recall, driving out of the city in the morning usually wasn’t too bad.
I’ll have to hit you up about LW meet-ups in the area. I didn’t like the ones I attended in Seattle and as a result I became very adjacent to the community. I also have kids, which consume a lot of time. It would be nice to have some grown up friends.
Cool! The meetup does have some parents and soon-to-be parents. I’m not totally up to speed on how the meetups are going these days, since I haven’t lived there in over six months, but send me a PM, or you should be able to find it on the LW meetup database :)
This is a great comment, thanks. (Other people doing comments in this style would also be pretty great.)
I would avoid Waco, mostly because I-35 is so central to the North/South traffic flow there and is so terribly always in a state of disrepair and repair and demolition and re...molition… Waco is also a college town, but it’s a very conservative college town. You’ll get the college town downsides, but not many of the upsides. The only thing in my mind that is a merit to Waco is that it isn’t far from West and in West you’ve got Kolaches. (I went to Baylor, briefly, in my younger days and soon fled.)
Super-tangential, I know, but there are at least two Austin bakeries that bake a range of fresh kolaches every day, https://www.batchatx.com/menus and https://www.quacksbakery.com/
You’re probably right. I only ever went there for bike races, and it seemed generally pleasant. I also knew a couple that owned a coffee shop there and they seemed cool. I can definitely believe that it would be awkwardly conservative for MIRI.