On an individual basis, I definitely agree. Acting alone, it would be easier for me to personally move to NZ or SK than to found a new city. However, from a collective perspective (and if the LW community isn’t able to cordinate collective action, then it has failed), if a group of 50 − 1000 people all wanted to live in a place with sane precautions, and were willing to put in effort, creating a new town in the states will scale better (moving countries has effort scaling linearly with magnitude of population flux, while founding a town scales less than linearly)
I think you’re omitting constant factors from your analysis; founding a town is so, so much work. How would you even run out utilities to the town before the pandemic ended?
I acknowledge that I don’t know how the effort needed to found a livable settlement compares to the effort needed to move people from the US to a Covid-good country. If I knew how many person-hours each of these would take, it would be easier for me to know whether or not my idea doesn’t make sense.
if the LW community isn’t able to cordinate collective action, then it has failed
Oh, we’re talking about different things. I don’t know much about any “LW community”, I just use LW for sharing information, models, and opinions with a bunch of individuals. Even if you call that a “community”, as some do, it doesn’t coordinate any significant collective action. I guess it’s failed?
Sorry, I don’t think I suceeded at speaking with clarity there. The way you use LW is perfectly fine and good.
My view of LW is that it’s a site dedicated to rationality, both epistemic and instrumental. Instrumental rationality is, as Eliezer likes to call it, “the art of winning”. The art of winning often calls for collective action to achieve the best outcomes, so if collective action never comes about, then that would indicate a failure of instrumental rationality, and thereby a failure of the purpose of LW.
LW hasn’t failed. While I have observed some failures of the collective userbase to properly engage in collective action to the fullest extent, I find it does often succeed in creating collective action, often thanks to the deliberate efforts of the LW team.
Fair enough, and I was a bit snarky in my response. I still have to wonder, if it’s not worth the hassle for a representative individual to move somewhere safer, why we’d expect it’s worth a greater hassle (both individually and the coordination cost) to create a new town. Is this the case where rabbits are negative value so stags are the only option (reference: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zp5AEENssb8ZDnoZR/the-schelling-choice-is-rabbit-not-stag)? I’d love to see some cost/benefit estimates to show that it’s even close to reasonable, compared to just isolating as much as possible individually.
That was my point. Doesn’t the hassle of CREATING a town seem incomparably larger than the hassle of getting to one of these places.
On an individual basis, I definitely agree. Acting alone, it would be easier for me to personally move to NZ or SK than to found a new city. However, from a collective perspective (and if the LW community isn’t able to cordinate collective action, then it has failed), if a group of 50 − 1000 people all wanted to live in a place with sane precautions, and were willing to put in effort, creating a new town in the states will scale better (moving countries has effort scaling linearly with magnitude of population flux, while founding a town scales less than linearly)
I think you’re omitting constant factors from your analysis; founding a town is so, so much work. How would you even run out utilities to the town before the pandemic ended?
I acknowledge that I don’t know how the effort needed to found a livable settlement compares to the effort needed to move people from the US to a Covid-good country. If I knew how many person-hours each of these would take, it would be easier for me to know whether or not my idea doesn’t make sense.
FYI, folk at MIRI seem to be actively look into this, but, it is indeed pretty expensive and not an obviously good idea.
Oh, we’re talking about different things. I don’t know much about any “LW community”, I just use LW for sharing information, models, and opinions with a bunch of individuals. Even if you call that a “community”, as some do, it doesn’t coordinate any significant collective action. I guess it’s failed?
Sorry, I don’t think I suceeded at speaking with clarity there. The way you use LW is perfectly fine and good.
My view of LW is that it’s a site dedicated to rationality, both epistemic and instrumental. Instrumental rationality is, as Eliezer likes to call it, “the art of winning”. The art of winning often calls for collective action to achieve the best outcomes, so if collective action never comes about, then that would indicate a failure of instrumental rationality, and thereby a failure of the purpose of LW.
LW hasn’t failed. While I have observed some failures of the collective userbase to properly engage in collective action to the fullest extent, I find it does often succeed in creating collective action, often thanks to the deliberate efforts of the LW team.
Fair enough, and I was a bit snarky in my response. I still have to wonder, if it’s not worth the hassle for a representative individual to move somewhere safer, why we’d expect it’s worth a greater hassle (both individually and the coordination cost) to create a new town. Is this the case where rabbits are negative value so stags are the only option (reference: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zp5AEENssb8ZDnoZR/the-schelling-choice-is-rabbit-not-stag)? I’d love to see some cost/benefit estimates to show that it’s even close to reasonable, compared to just isolating as much as possible individually.