Separately, I feel like there are diminishing returns to having more people in the community. Like, from my perspective, if there were 200 regulars in Portland instead of 20, I don’t really think I’d get much if any more value. The 20 or so people are enough such that I can form a few close relationships, a handful more friendships, and have a pretty diverse[1] set of viewpoints and personalities at meetups.
I suppose the main benefits of having a much larger community are probably 1) dating and 2) professional networking. Neither are things that I personally care about, but I’m sure there are lots of people who do care about those things.
Edit: I guess there’s also the benefit of rationality being “in the air” or something. For me at least my head is already swimming in it all the time—and I actually would prefer less of it not more of it—but I would also expect others to be different here.
Personal side note: my girlfriend is someone who appreciates and “believes in” rationality, but isn’t someone who “eats and breathes” it like I am. When I was younger I thought I needed to be with someone who also “eats and breathes” it, given how important it is to me. I no longer think that though. Instead, I appreciate being with someone who nudges me more towards “turn your brain off and chill”.
Such as “we should go around as a community disabling rat traps (they cause pain and suffering) and instead replacing them with something that makes them infertile because doing so will, certainly not be the most effective action we can take, but be fun and develop a stronger sense of community” and “you should claim to be nonbinary on any sort of applications even if you’re not because it’ll increase the chance of getting what you want”. (I of course picked these examples because they’re extreme and fun, not because they’re at all representative.)
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.
Separately, I feel like there are diminishing returns to having more people in the community. Like, from my perspective, if there were 200 regulars in Portland instead of 20, I don’t really think I’d get much if any more value. The 20 or so people are enough such that I can form a few close relationships, a handful more friendships, and have a pretty diverse[1] set of viewpoints and personalities at meetups.
I suppose the main benefits of having a much larger community are probably 1) dating and 2) professional networking. Neither are things that I personally care about, but I’m sure there are lots of people who do care about those things.
Edit: I guess there’s also the benefit of rationality being “in the air” or something. For me at least my head is already swimming in it all the time—and I actually would prefer less of it not more of it—but I would also expect others to be different here.
Personal side note: my girlfriend is someone who appreciates and “believes in” rationality, but isn’t someone who “eats and breathes” it like I am. When I was younger I thought I needed to be with someone who also “eats and breathes” it, given how important it is to me. I no longer think that though. Instead, I appreciate being with someone who nudges me more towards “turn your brain off and chill”.
Such as “we should go around as a community disabling rat traps (they cause pain and suffering) and instead replacing them with something that makes them infertile because doing so will, certainly not be the most effective action we can take, but be fun and develop a stronger sense of community” and “you should claim to be nonbinary on any sort of applications even if you’re not because it’ll increase the chance of getting what you want”. (I of course picked these examples because they’re extreme and fun, not because they’re at all representative.)
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.