I assume you meant to say something like “the rationalist’s Schelling point”? Or maybe “the Effective Altruism Schelling point?”. Since presumably it is very hard to change “San Fancisco’s Schelling point” to anything else but somewhere in San Francisco.
It’s probably not a coincidence that those two you mentioned and many other Schelling points are currently in San Francisco, is it? Though I’m not there, I don’t know what other specific groups this applies to.
I was actually thinking of Patrick Collinson’s advice to travel to SF. He called it the “Global Weird HQ”. And of one of the Samo Burja’s short videos that I unfortunately can’t find right now.
I don’t think this is nearly enough to move it. The inertia behind these hubs is astounding. SF has been the “Global Weird HQ” since, what, the 60s or 70s? And I really, really don’t think a culture of optimistic, power-seeking weirdness would thrive in the contemporary UK.
I don’t quite understand this objection (which seems similar to other objections I’ve seen to uses of the term).
We’ve all exchanged information in the past. If you think of a Schelling point as the point we’d coordinate on with no further exchange of information, then I think the above kind of usage is valid.
Isn’t meeting up at the information desk in Grand Central Station at noon (if you know you’re meeting someone during the day in Manhattan, but you haven’t agreed upon where) supposed to be the canonical example of a Schelling point?
But arriving at that point didn’t involve zero coordination. There’s a bunch of information we all have to know, and there are a bunch of specific reasons why that would be the place to meet. We all had to know that Grand Central exists. That it’s prominent. That it’s a convenient point for getting to lots of other parts of New York City. And people certainly had to coordinate to build Grand Central in the first place.
Similarly, there are a bunch of reasons why the SF Bay Area is the rationalist hub. And some people have put in effort to attract others here. But if you’re a rationalist who wants to get to meet a bunch of other rationalists in person, then does anybody have to coordinate with anyone else to get you to make a trip to SF? It seems like at this point, it’s become the default place for rationalists to meet, just as Grand Central would be the default place to meet up with someone in NYC.
If you think of a Schelling point as the point we’d coordinate on with no further exchange of information,
The problem I have with this definition is that it makes Schelling point a fairly useless term. I think of Schelling points as the the things that result without specific coordination, but only common background knowledge.
But arriving at that point didn’t involve zero coordination. There’s a bunch of information we all have to know, and there are a bunch of specific reasons why that would be the place to meet. We all had to know that Grand Central exists. That it’s prominent. That it’s a convenient point for getting to lots of other parts of New York City. And people certainly had to coordinate to build Grand Central in the first place.
Exactly this type of background knowledge that’s separate from the game/decision being made.
Yes. And schelling points refer to the latter (IE, coordination that was done in the long time past that creates common knowledge), and not the former (coordination around this specific decision point)
Similarly, I’ve seen people complain when someone said at a CFAR alumni reunion, “I declare the Schelling location for xyz activity to be abc place.”
I find this to be a perfectly valid (if tongue-in-cheek) usage of the term. Sure, that location wasn’t the Schelling point for that activity before, but the act of declaring it to be makes it so!
Once that statement has been made and everyone has heard it, no further coordination is required for that location to be the default location for that activity. It is the Schelling point from now on.
Could this be the thing that will finally push the San Francisco’s Schelling point away from SF?
I assume you meant to say something like “the rationalist’s Schelling point”? Or maybe “the Effective Altruism Schelling point?”. Since presumably it is very hard to change “San Fancisco’s Schelling point” to anything else but somewhere in San Francisco.
Yes.
I mean, all of them. Thank you for asking.
It’s probably not a coincidence that those two you mentioned and many other Schelling points are currently in San Francisco, is it? Though I’m not there, I don’t know what other specific groups this applies to.
I was actually thinking of Patrick Collinson’s advice to travel to SF. He called it the “Global Weird HQ”. And of one of the Samo Burja’s short videos that I unfortunately can’t find right now.
I don’t think this is nearly enough to move it. The inertia behind these hubs is astounding. SF has been the “Global Weird HQ” since, what, the 60s or 70s? And I really, really don’t think a culture of optimistic, power-seeking weirdness would thrive in the contemporary UK.
I don’t like that schelling point is used to mean “coordination point” here when it’s supposed to mean “common point without coordination”
I don’t quite understand this objection (which seems similar to other objections I’ve seen to uses of the term).
We’ve all exchanged information in the past. If you think of a Schelling point as the point we’d coordinate on with no further exchange of information, then I think the above kind of usage is valid.
Isn’t meeting up at the information desk in Grand Central Station at noon (if you know you’re meeting someone during the day in Manhattan, but you haven’t agreed upon where) supposed to be the canonical example of a Schelling point?
But arriving at that point didn’t involve zero coordination. There’s a bunch of information we all have to know, and there are a bunch of specific reasons why that would be the place to meet. We all had to know that Grand Central exists. That it’s prominent. That it’s a convenient point for getting to lots of other parts of New York City. And people certainly had to coordinate to build Grand Central in the first place.
Similarly, there are a bunch of reasons why the SF Bay Area is the rationalist hub. And some people have put in effort to attract others here. But if you’re a rationalist who wants to get to meet a bunch of other rationalists in person, then does anybody have to coordinate with anyone else to get you to make a trip to SF? It seems like at this point, it’s become the default place for rationalists to meet, just as Grand Central would be the default place to meet up with someone in NYC.
Am I missing something?
The problem I have with this definition is that it makes Schelling point a fairly useless term. I think of Schelling points as the the things that result without specific coordination, but only common background knowledge.
Exactly this type of background knowledge that’s separate from the game/decision being made.
Yes, but specific coordination today can create the common background knowledge for tomorrow.
Yes. And schelling points refer to the latter (IE, coordination that was done in the long time past that creates common knowledge), and not the former (coordination around this specific decision point)
Similarly, I’ve seen people complain when someone said at a CFAR alumni reunion, “I declare the Schelling location for xyz activity to be abc place.”
I find this to be a perfectly valid (if tongue-in-cheek) usage of the term. Sure, that location wasn’t the Schelling point for that activity before, but the act of declaring it to be makes it so!
Once that statement has been made and everyone has heard it, no further coordination is required for that location to be the default location for that activity. It is the Schelling point from now on.
I’ve heard this type of speech named “enactive” (to go along with the more common denotative aka descriptive, normative aka prescriptive, imperative).
But Schelling’s whole point was about how it’s virtually impossible to separate those two things.
I think Schelling’s point about schelling points was about cultural background in the absence of coordination.