Here are my notes for “Why (and why not) Montreal”: https://bit.ly/AISMontreal Note that my notes are not directly about comparing to other cities. ex.: I’m not saying Montreal > Boston; I don’t know
This is in terms of AI safety, I also have a more general one about best city for personal survival, but it’s pretty drafty
I liked the notes, but they’re hard to interpret (for me).
One example being me not appreciating how cheap 400-600 CAD “per person” (in what I’m assuming is shared housing) is for different plausible incomes by profession. If NYC housing costs are 150% of Montreal, but so too are salaries, then Montreal isn’t really very much “cheap for a big city”.
There does seem to be a good bit of AI work tho, and research too; that’s interesting!
I see what you are saying. But either MIRI won’t decrease salary, in which case rent will be really cheap, or it will, in which case they’ll have more AI safety progress per dollar (or so would the simple surface level analysis say)
Ahhh – I didn’t know MIRI (or similar groups) were allowing people to work remotely.
I think Robin Hanson might be on to something with respect to the looming importance and significance of remote work (e.g. it will effectively create a much larger, more global, labor market) so I’d expect MIRI-like organizations to have to be willing to pay those still-high labor costs regardless of where people live, i.e. rent would be pretty cheap in Montreal (compared to SV or NYC or even Boston).
I’m confused then. “Personal survival” seems like a ‘avoid early death’ metric whereas ‘personal flourishing’ (or something similar) would include typical ‘quality of life’ measures.
Disaster is a recurring part of “the real world” too and some places are more or less dangerous than others in that respect. That seemed to be what you were getting at.
‘early death’ seems redundant, but yes the other analysis I was referring to focuses on avoiding death, not personal flourishment. this includes: proximity to state of the art biostasis services, lifelogging-friendly laws, high paying opportunities / low cost of living & low taxes, good healthcare system, survivalist community, low murder rate, online grocery shopping, good air quality, etc.
This really depends on many factors such as social connectedness (where your connectedness may be higher where most of your friends are, or where it’s easiest to make new friends). The highest longevities in the US are the “ski resort” counties [high altitude may play a role in this] in Colorado, but they’re too expensive for most.
Boston is significantly more disaster-proof than the Bay Area—one of the most disaster-proof of the major hubs outside of Europe.
Here are my notes for “Why (and why not) Montreal”: https://bit.ly/AISMontreal Note that my notes are not directly about comparing to other cities. ex.: I’m not saying Montreal > Boston; I don’t know
This is in terms of AI safety, I also have a more general one about best city for personal survival, but it’s pretty drafty
I liked the notes, but they’re hard to interpret (for me).
One example being me not appreciating how cheap 400-600 CAD “per person” (in what I’m assuming is shared housing) is for different plausible incomes by profession. If NYC housing costs are 150% of Montreal, but so too are salaries, then Montreal isn’t really very much “cheap for a big city”.
There does seem to be a good bit of AI work tho, and research too; that’s interesting!
I see what you are saying. But either MIRI won’t decrease salary, in which case rent will be really cheap, or it will, in which case they’ll have more AI safety progress per dollar (or so would the simple surface level analysis say)
Ahhh – I didn’t know MIRI (or similar groups) were allowing people to work remotely.
I think Robin Hanson might be on to something with respect to the looming importance and significance of remote work (e.g. it will effectively create a much larger, more global, labor market) so I’d expect MIRI-like organizations to have to be willing to pay those still-high labor costs regardless of where people live, i.e. rent would be pretty cheap in Montreal (compared to SV or NYC or even Boston).
I was talking about MIRI moving to Montreal with all employees, not about remote work
Ohhh – what’s the context of that? A past possibility? Or just a hypothetical?
The context of my comment is this LessWrong post.
The context of writing the Google Doc is just me that wanted to pitch Montreal to EAs in general.
Thanks – that makes sense!
Like for a ‘zombie apocalypse’?
nnnooo, for the real world
I’m confused then. “Personal survival” seems like a ‘avoid early death’ metric whereas ‘personal flourishing’ (or something similar) would include typical ‘quality of life’ measures.
Disaster is a recurring part of “the real world” too and some places are more or less dangerous than others in that respect. That seemed to be what you were getting at.
‘early death’ seems redundant, but yes the other analysis I was referring to focuses on avoiding death, not personal flourishment. this includes: proximity to state of the art biostasis services, lifelogging-friendly laws, high paying opportunities / low cost of living & low taxes, good healthcare system, survivalist community, low murder rate, online grocery shopping, good air quality, etc.
This really depends on many factors such as social connectedness (where your connectedness may be higher where most of your friends are, or where it’s easiest to make new friends). The highest longevities in the US are the “ski resort” counties [high altitude may play a role in this] in Colorado, but they’re too expensive for most.
Boston is significantly more disaster-proof than the Bay Area—one of the most disaster-proof of the major hubs outside of Europe.