A cool thing about the amount of critical mass we have in Berkeley is that we can do things like have a rationalist choir! And more generally a rationalist culture, things like “songs everyone knows and will sing along with if I have a singing night”, and a large set of people to find friendships and relationships in if one is picky, etc. It does have the drawback that it’s easy to get stuck in a local optimum of only hanging out with rationalists, which is suboptimal in some ways. But the benefits are also pretty substantial imo.
A cool thing about the amount of critical mass we have in Berkeley is that we can do things like have a rationalist choir! And more generally a rationalist culture, things like “songs everyone knows and will sing along with if I have a singing night”, and a large set of people to find friendships and relationships in if one is picky, etc. It does have the drawback that it’s easy to get stuck in a local optimum of only hanging out with rationalists, which is suboptimal in some ways. But the benefits are also pretty substantial imo.