My personal experience—I live in SF and used to live in Berkley / work in Oakland -
There are more “deep rationalists” in Berkeley, Oakland; but there are enough rationalists / EAs in SF to say that a rationalist community exists here. All the big AI capabilities companies are here, and their employees are smart and familiar with lesswrong. And also the non-”rationalists” in SF are way smarter than the non-”rationalists” in Berkeley / Oakland. The baseline level of ambition / energy is way higher. So if you just want to hang out with rational people or chat about deep things then I suggest coming to SF, particularly around the Hayes Valley neighborhood.
South bay sucks though. It really suffers from brain drain. I guess David Friedman (founder of anarcho capitalism) is down there and goes to / hosts ACX meetups sometimes. I consider him the only anchor of the community down there. Almost everyone else cool has left.
My personal experience—I live in SF and used to live in Berkley / work in Oakland -
There are more “deep rationalists” in Berkeley, Oakland; but there are enough rationalists / EAs in SF to say that a rationalist community exists here. All the big AI capabilities companies are here, and their employees are smart and familiar with lesswrong. And also the non-”rationalists” in SF are way smarter than the non-”rationalists” in Berkeley / Oakland. The baseline level of ambition / energy is way higher. So if you just want to hang out with rational people or chat about deep things then I suggest coming to SF, particularly around the Hayes Valley neighborhood.
South bay sucks though. It really suffers from brain drain. I guess David Friedman (founder of anarcho capitalism) is down there and goes to / hosts ACX meetups sometimes. I consider him the only anchor of the community down there. Almost everyone else cool has left.