Index of rationalist groups in the Bay Area July 2024
[Last update: 2024-08-22]
The Bay Area rationalist community has an entry problem! Lots of listed groups are dead, the last centralized index disappeared, communication moved to private discord and slacks. This is bad, so we’re making a new index, hopefully up to date and as complete as we can!
This is now being mirrored at BayRationality.com, which will hopefully get prettier formatting over time.
Communication
Discord: Bay Area Rationalists: https://discord.gg/EpG4xUVKtf
Email Group: BayAreaLessWrong: https://groups.google.com/g/bayarealesswrong
Local Meetup Groups
Taco Tuesday: by Austin Chen, founder emeritus of Manifold. Check his Manifold questions page for the next date!
North Oakland LessWrong Meetup: every Wednesday, hosted by @Czynski.
Thursday Dinners in Berkeley: Advertised on the Discord server and Google group, alternating between a few restaurants on the northwest side of UC campus.
Lighthaven Sequences Reading Group: Currently Tuesday, hosted by the Lighthaven team. They advertise on LessWrong.
Bay Area ACX Meetups: For the ACX everywhere meetups twice per year, and some other sporadic events.
The Bayesian Choir: Usually meets every other Sunday near North Oakland, and more often during the fall to rehearse for the Solstice. Choir Director and primary organizer is Blake Jones, and coordination happens on the linked Discord server.
Official policy on new singers is “Anyone who can pitch-match is welcome.”, though joining tends to be suspended during the rehearsals for Solstice. See more detail on the introduction doc.
South Bay
David Friedman hosts irregular SSC/ACX meetups at his home in San Jose, tracked on a page of his personal website and typically also announced on the email group and Discord server. They are weekend events, starting early afternoon and running through dinner (provided) and into the evening. RSVPs are preferred for meal planning purposes.
Charles’ Sunday Roasts: Charles <Lastname> has recently begun to host monthly meetups in Sunnyvale on Sunday afternoons. They are announced on Discord and he can be reached by email. RSVPs are necessary.
Housing
To find spots in group houses, temporary or long term, you can use the Bay Area EA/Rationality Housing Board. The EA Houses spreadsheet also has some entries in the Bay.
It probably works best to ask people in the Bay if they know of housing opportunities, as lots of housing is provided peer-to-peer.
EA
If you want to discover the EA community, the EA’s Guide to Berkeley and The Bay Area and the SF Bay Area EA website are great resources. They both have more links to local groups and other resources, and you can register to the email newsletter.
Events sometimes get advertised on those websites:
SF Bay Area EA event calendar on Luma
East Bay EA Hangout on Facebook
AI Safety
There are two AI safety coworking spaces in Berkeley. They sometime accept visitors, so you can try reaching out or applying via their website:
Most AI Safety events don’t get advertised publicly, so get in contact with people in the community to know what’s happening.
We probably missed some other meetups and communities which are public and still active, so feel free to list them in the comments!
This index should include Lighthaven, right?
It’s a bit of a non-central example. It’s an event space, not a coworking space nor a group of people. On the other hand, it’s pretty relevant for people who might want to run events or are attending an event there.
This is list is aimed at people visiting the Bay area and searching how to get in contact with the local community. Currently, the Lighthaven website does not list events happening there, so I don’t think it’s relevant for someone who is not searching for a venue.
Possibly a larger index of rationalist resources in the Bay would be useful, including potential venues.
I think at normal times (when it’s not filled with MATS or a con) it’s possible to rent coworking space at Lighthaven? I haven’t actually tried myself.
I think it’s more like “it’s by default not available for public or semi-public coworking, but occasionally we have periods that are explicitly ‘now is a coworking time’”.
It would be nice to move this to a standalone website like the old Bay Rationality site. I’ve been considering that for months and dragging my feet about asking for funding to host it; I’d also like to contact whoever used to run it, check whether anything complicated brought it down, and maybe just yoink their codebase and update the content. I don’t know who that was, though.
Looks like it passed hands and the holder forgot to re-register the domain, I’ve sniped the domain and stuck a copy of this post on there for now. DMing you with more details.
Thanks for doing this! This list seems roughly accurate.
Not sure whether to add these in, but a number of local Google calendars theoretically exist: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?cid=bayarearationality%40gmail.com&cid=f6qs8c387dhlounnbqg6lbv3b0%40group.calendar.google.com&cid=94j0drsqgj43nkekg8968b3uo4%40group.calendar.google.com&cid=8hq2d2indjps3vr64l96e9okt4%40group.calendar.google.com&cid=theberkeleyreach%40gmail.com
This includes Berkeley REACH (defunct), CFAR Public Events (defunct locally AFAIK), EA Events (superseded by Luma calendar?), LW Meetups (unknown but blank), and Rationalist/EA Social and Community Events (likewise)
I expect it could be mildly valuable to index the previously existing calendars and give the best current alternative. I don’t think it will bring much though.