Quick thought: since the Berkeley community currently has about Dunbar’s number of people, shouldn’t we want this number to remain stable? Of course new rationalists want in on all the fun and all the impact, and currently it looks like Berkeley is their only option. Should we be focusing on a second hub that aims to rival Berkeley in it’s size and awesomeness?
What places should we be recommending? I’m thinking London or Berlin. Any other options?
I think London has a lot of potential that I sometimes worry is going untapped because I’m not a great organiser. But our assets include:
Meetups that currently draw 15+ people more often than not
A group house that sometimes hosts those meetups (and has also hosted two secular solstices)
An EA community that seems to be fairly vibrant
In terms of serious organisations, I’m not sure if Deep Mind counts but it feels at least adjacent? And for people who want to do politics-related things, it surely doesn’t hurt that we’re the seat of the UK government.
As far as I understand the Berkeley community has more than Dunbar’s number of members and I don’t think that’s a real problem. Not everybody has to know each other.
Even in a city like Berlin not everybody in the LW/EA sphere knows each other.
With 263 people our LW Berlin mailing list is also over Dunbar’s number and our meetup group has also has 339. Not everybody who subscribes to either lives in Berlin but it shows how you always have many people who are somehow connected even if they don’t come to the regular meetup.
Villages and cities has synergy that gets created even with much more than Dunbar’s number of people.
That said, I think Berlin is great and I would be happy if you and other people move here (I’m currently organizing our main monthly meetup).
I think Berkeley can afford to have up to 3 Dunbar worth of Rationalists without spiraling out of control.
Ideally, there would be three separate social “domains” that people could compete within, with some crossover spaces to facilitate cross-pollination.
And right now we have that. If we actually directly split the community into X-Risk, EA, and Community / Self Improvement, I think most people wouldn’t feel too much of a shakeup in their tribal configurations.
Maybe that’s the Berkeley optimum, but is it the optimum from an international perspective? My intuition is that 3 dunbar size communities in different cities is still better
From within the Bay’s vantage point (and I think also for basically every city that’s stuck at the “small meetup stage”), a related thing I’m worried about is what to do about the smaller group structure. i.e. meetup-esque things tend to scale to around 12-20 people before they get awkward.
I have more thoughts on this, still mulling it over. Some of it is relevant to the REACH post and I may write the rest of the thoughts there.
The last meetup that I ran that had that people before they get awkward.
Running a meetup with 15 people is different than running a meetup with 30 people but I see no reason why 30 is awkward.
The last meetup that I ran that had that attendance of around 30 people went well. I see no reason why that format wouldn’t scale to 40 people as well.
Sure, but if people ever want the intimacy effects of a 15 person meetup, you either can’t do it, or weird social dynamics come into play about who gets to be in those 15 people.
I also often haven’t had access to spaces that fit more than 20 people, or getting them is at least more work.
I think creating a hub requires there to be a critical mass of Serious Organizations™ that give an outlet for people who have ramped up the agency-ladder to “community leader”, who are then looking to move into “do something that seems more directly impactful than community leadership”.
NYC used to have MetaMed, Givewell and Leverage. Boston has FLI, although I’m not sure what the current state of that is. The problem is networking effects compound (i.e. network effects dragged Givewell and Leverage over to the Bay)
I tentatively think Boston makes most sense as East Coast Hub because the existence of Harvard and MIT creates an intellectual locus that’s easier to build around. (This necessarily means that the sort of organizations you can expect to stick around in Boston, or wherever you’re building, needs to be oriented in such a way that the local network is more useful/relevant than other city’s networks)
To be a little cynical, Berkeley has the community-hub advantage of imposing a strong selection effect: it’s far from everything that isn’t the West Coast, it’s hideously expensive, and as a city it isn’t all that great—I know New Yorkers who tried to move out there and came back with a litany of horror stories to rival those of my friends in Baltimore. So only the hardcore (or people competent enough to land a SF tech industry job) move out there.
The East Coast, on the other hand, has a lot of nice cities and, for most Americans, isn’t so far away. I moved to Boston from a location that’s pretty far away in east-of-the-Appalachian-range terms, but I could still take a day trip (by plane) to visit my parents, which I couldn’t do if I lived in Berkeley.
As much as I like Boston, I think there’s an important advantage DC has over it: where Boston has students, DC has people who opted to take safe, cushy government jobs and now have a lot of intellectual energy and no channel for it. (It also has the advantage of being Where The Government Is, which might be important at some point, for some purposes or other.) And, while it’s a worse city than Boston in many respects, there’s more to do—if I lived in DC, I’d try to put together a group for going to free concerts (of which there are many in DC) and so on, but I don’t know of anything like that here.
I picked Boston because there was at least one existing rationalist org there (although I don’t know if there’s actually much opportunity for new community members getting involved)
so far from everything that isn’t the East Coast.
This seems transparently… failing to notice the entire west coast exists?
This seems transparently… failing to notice the entire west coast exists?
It exists, but it’s less populous.
The Northeast and South together (by Census Bureau definitions) contain 55% of the population of the US. The West contains 24%, and the Midwest contains 21%.
But the West extends as far east as Colorado, and also contains Alaska and Hawaii, which should be excluded here; and the Midwest contains states like Ohio and Michigan, which aren’t all that far out.
Unfortunately, Wolfram Alpha can’t tell me how many people live within whatever distance of Berkeley or DC, so I have to ballpark. A thousand miles seems like a reasonable number—it’s about a thousand miles from Boston to Atlanta, and that’s about a three-hour flight. While you’d have to sleep on your parents’ couch overnight, it wouldn’t be a _huge_ excursion the way a cross-country flight is.
For Berkeley: the total population of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona is about 65 million people. (I can’t even use Census _divisions_ here—Alaska and Hawaii are in the same division as the West Coast.)
And for DC: the total population of the Northeast Census region, the South Atlantic and East South Central divisions of the South Census region, and the East North Central division of the Midwest census region is about 186 million people.
The list of states could be quibbled with—maybe Colorado should count for the West, maybe Missouri should for the East—but I doubt it’d make much difference. The underlying factor here is that population density drops off sharply a few meridians before 100° west and doesn’t pick up again until you hit the Pacific.
Fair, I suppose. But… doesn’t really feel that compelling to me as a reason. I rarely left NYC when I live there. (Also, my overall experience living in the Bay so far has been comparably expensive and nice to NYC). Distance between cities just doesn’t feel like a major motivation to me.
Maybe my experience is unique, but I think the much more obvious explanation is network effects, first from Silicon Valley existing (I think this is the main reason that Givewell and Leverage moved), and then from the community growing up around it.
Quick thought: since the Berkeley community currently has about Dunbar’s number of people, shouldn’t we want this number to remain stable? Of course new rationalists want in on all the fun and all the impact, and currently it looks like Berkeley is their only option. Should we be focusing on a second hub that aims to rival Berkeley in it’s size and awesomeness?
What places should we be recommending? I’m thinking London or Berlin. Any other options?
I think London has a lot of potential that I sometimes worry is going untapped because I’m not a great organiser. But our assets include:
Meetups that currently draw 15+ people more often than not
A group house that sometimes hosts those meetups (and has also hosted two secular solstices)
An EA community that seems to be fairly vibrant
In terms of serious organisations, I’m not sure if Deep Mind counts but it feels at least adjacent? And for people who want to do politics-related things, it surely doesn’t hurt that we’re the seat of the UK government.
I feel the same about Sydney. I have been meaning to strategise for more attendance and a bigger meetup.
Sydney
As far as I understand the Berkeley community has more than Dunbar’s number of members and I don’t think that’s a real problem. Not everybody has to know each other.
Even in a city like Berlin not everybody in the LW/EA sphere knows each other.
With 263 people our LW Berlin mailing list is also over Dunbar’s number and our meetup group has also has 339. Not everybody who subscribes to either lives in Berlin but it shows how you always have many people who are somehow connected even if they don’t come to the regular meetup.
Villages and cities has synergy that gets created even with much more than Dunbar’s number of people.
That said, I think Berlin is great and I would be happy if you and other people move here (I’m currently organizing our main monthly meetup).
I think Berkeley can afford to have up to 3 Dunbar worth of Rationalists without spiraling out of control.
Ideally, there would be three separate social “domains” that people could compete within, with some crossover spaces to facilitate cross-pollination.
And right now we have that. If we actually directly split the community into X-Risk, EA, and Community / Self Improvement, I think most people wouldn’t feel too much of a shakeup in their tribal configurations.
Maybe that’s the Berkeley optimum, but is it the optimum from an international perspective? My intuition is that 3 dunbar size communities in different cities is still better
From within the Bay’s vantage point (and I think also for basically every city that’s stuck at the “small meetup stage”), a related thing I’m worried about is what to do about the smaller group structure. i.e. meetup-esque things tend to scale to around 12-20 people before they get awkward.
I have more thoughts on this, still mulling it over. Some of it is relevant to the REACH post and I may write the rest of the thoughts there.
Running a meetup with 15 people is different than running a meetup with 30 people but I see no reason why 30 is awkward.
The last meetup that I ran that had that attendance of around 30 people went well. I see no reason why that format wouldn’t scale to 40 people as well.
Sure, but if people ever want the intimacy effects of a 15 person meetup, you either can’t do it, or weird social dynamics come into play about who gets to be in those 15 people.
I also often haven’t had access to spaces that fit more than 20 people, or getting them is at least more work.
I take Amazon’s HQ2 as evidence that this general class of structure is workable.
I’d like to see one on the East Coast, but people here tend to end up in Berkeley.
I think creating a hub requires there to be a critical mass of Serious Organizations™ that give an outlet for people who have ramped up the agency-ladder to “community leader”, who are then looking to move into “do something that seems more directly impactful than community leadership”.
NYC used to have MetaMed, Givewell and Leverage. Boston has FLI, although I’m not sure what the current state of that is. The problem is networking effects compound (i.e. network effects dragged Givewell and Leverage over to the Bay)
I tentatively think Boston makes most sense as East Coast Hub because the existence of Harvard and MIT creates an intellectual locus that’s easier to build around. (This necessarily means that the sort of organizations you can expect to stick around in Boston, or wherever you’re building, needs to be oriented in such a way that the local network is more useful/relevant than other city’s networks)
To be a little cynical, Berkeley has the community-hub advantage of imposing a strong selection effect: it’s far from everything that isn’t the West Coast, it’s hideously expensive, and as a city it isn’t all that great—I know New Yorkers who tried to move out there and came back with a litany of horror stories to rival those of my friends in Baltimore. So only the hardcore (or people competent enough to land a SF tech industry job) move out there.
The East Coast, on the other hand, has a lot of nice cities and, for most Americans, isn’t so far away. I moved to Boston from a location that’s pretty far away in east-of-the-Appalachian-range terms, but I could still take a day trip (by plane) to visit my parents, which I couldn’t do if I lived in Berkeley.
As much as I like Boston, I think there’s an important advantage DC has over it: where Boston has students, DC has people who opted to take safe, cushy government jobs and now have a lot of intellectual energy and no channel for it. (It also has the advantage of being Where The Government Is, which might be important at some point, for some purposes or other.) And, while it’s a worse city than Boston in many respects, there’s more to do—if I lived in DC, I’d try to put together a group for going to free concerts (of which there are many in DC) and so on, but I don’t know of anything like that here.
I picked Boston because there was at least one existing rationalist org there (although I don’t know if there’s actually much opportunity for new community members getting involved)
This seems transparently… failing to notice the entire west coast exists?
It exists, but it’s less populous.
The Northeast and South together (by Census Bureau definitions) contain 55% of the population of the US. The West contains 24%, and the Midwest contains 21%.
But the West extends as far east as Colorado, and also contains Alaska and Hawaii, which should be excluded here; and the Midwest contains states like Ohio and Michigan, which aren’t all that far out.
Unfortunately, Wolfram Alpha can’t tell me how many people live within whatever distance of Berkeley or DC, so I have to ballpark. A thousand miles seems like a reasonable number—it’s about a thousand miles from Boston to Atlanta, and that’s about a three-hour flight. While you’d have to sleep on your parents’ couch overnight, it wouldn’t be a _huge_ excursion the way a cross-country flight is.
For Berkeley: the total population of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona is about 65 million people. (I can’t even use Census _divisions_ here—Alaska and Hawaii are in the same division as the West Coast.)
And for DC: the total population of the Northeast Census region, the South Atlantic and East South Central divisions of the South Census region, and the East North Central division of the Midwest census region is about 186 million people.
The list of states could be quibbled with—maybe Colorado should count for the West, maybe Missouri should for the East—but I doubt it’d make much difference. The underlying factor here is that population density drops off sharply a few meridians before 100° west and doesn’t pick up again until you hit the Pacific.
Fair, I suppose. But… doesn’t really feel that compelling to me as a reason. I rarely left NYC when I live there. (Also, my overall experience living in the Bay so far has been comparably expensive and nice to NYC). Distance between cities just doesn’t feel like a major motivation to me.
Maybe my experience is unique, but I think the much more obvious explanation is network effects, first from Silicon Valley existing (I think this is the main reason that Givewell and Leverage moved), and then from the community growing up around it.
Does DC currently have a LW community? If so, how large is it?