There is a song that the LessWrong team listened to awhile back, and then formed strong opinions about what was probably happening during the song, if the song had been featured in a movie.
(If you’d like to form your own unspoiled interpretation of the song, you may want to do that now)
...
So, it seemed to us that the song felt like… you (either a single person or small group of people) had been working on an intellectual project.
And people were willing to give the project the benefit of the doubt, a bit, but then you fucked it up in some way, and now nobody believed in you and you were questioning all of your underlying models and maybe also your sanity and worth as a human. (vaguely A Beautiful Mind like)
And then you retreat to your house where you’re pretty alone, and it’s raining outside. And the house is the sort of house a moderately wealthy but sometimes-alone intellectual might live, with a fair bit of space inside, white walls, whiteboards, small intellectual toys scattered about. A nice carpet.
And you’re pacing around the house re-evaluating everything, and it’s raining and the rain dapples on the windows and light scatters in on your old whiteboard diagrams that no longer seem to quite make sense.
And then you notice a small mental click of “maybe, if I applied this idea in this slightly different way, that might be promising”. And you clear off a big chunk of whiteboard and start to work again, and then over a several day montage you start to figure out a new version of your idea that somehow works better this time and you get into a flow state and then you’re just in this big beautiful empty house in the rain, rebuilding your idea, and this time it’s pretty good and maybe will be the key to everything.
So anyway the LW team listened to this song a year+ ago and we now periodically listen to it and refer to it as “Building LessWrong in the Rain.”
And, last week we had the LW Team Retreat, which was located at the new(ish) CFAR venue, and… a) it was raining all week, b) we basically all agreed that the interior of the CFAR venue looked almost exactly like how we had all imagined it. (Except, I at least had been imagining it a bit more like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, so that from the outside it looked more rectangular instead of a more traditional house/big-cottage or whatever)
...
The house interior is quite well designed. Every room had a purpose, and I’d be mulling about a given room thinking “gee, I sure wish I had X”, and then I’d rotate 30º and then X would be, like, within arm’s reach.
Most rooms had some manner of delightful thing, whether that be cute magnet puzzles or a weird glowing flower that looked like if I touched it it’d disappear and then I’d start glowing an either be able to jump higher or spit fireballs (I did not touch it)
Small complaints include:
a) the vacuum was quite big and heavy, which resulted in me switching to using a broom when I was cleaning up,
b) the refrigerator was like 500x more dangerous than any other fridge I ever encountered. Normally the amount of blood a refrigerator draws when I touch it gently is zero. The bottom of this fridge cut me 3 times, twice on my toes, once on my thumb while I was trying to clean it.
c) the first aid kit was in a black toolbox with the red “+” facing away from the visible area which made it a bit more counterintuitive to discover than most of the other things in the house.
My review of the CFAR venue:
There is a song that the LessWrong team listened to awhile back, and then formed strong opinions about what was probably happening during the song, if the song had been featured in a movie.
(If you’d like to form your own unspoiled interpretation of the song, you may want to do that now)
...
So, it seemed to us that the song felt like… you (either a single person or small group of people) had been working on an intellectual project.
And people were willing to give the project the benefit of the doubt, a bit, but then you fucked it up in some way, and now nobody believed in you and you were questioning all of your underlying models and maybe also your sanity and worth as a human. (vaguely A Beautiful Mind like)
And then you retreat to your house where you’re pretty alone, and it’s raining outside. And the house is the sort of house a moderately wealthy but sometimes-alone intellectual might live, with a fair bit of space inside, white walls, whiteboards, small intellectual toys scattered about. A nice carpet.
And you’re pacing around the house re-evaluating everything, and it’s raining and the rain dapples on the windows and light scatters in on your old whiteboard diagrams that no longer seem to quite make sense.
And then you notice a small mental click of “maybe, if I applied this idea in this slightly different way, that might be promising”. And you clear off a big chunk of whiteboard and start to work again, and then over a several day montage you start to figure out a new version of your idea that somehow works better this time and you get into a flow state and then you’re just in this big beautiful empty house in the rain, rebuilding your idea, and this time it’s pretty good and maybe will be the key to everything.
So anyway the LW team listened to this song a year+ ago and we now periodically listen to it and refer to it as “Building LessWrong in the Rain.”
And, last week we had the LW Team Retreat, which was located at the new(ish) CFAR venue, and… a) it was raining all week, b) we basically all agreed that the interior of the CFAR venue looked almost exactly like how we had all imagined it. (Except, I at least had been imagining it a bit more like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, so that from the outside it looked more rectangular instead of a more traditional house/big-cottage or whatever)
...
The house interior is quite well designed. Every room had a purpose, and I’d be mulling about a given room thinking “gee, I sure wish I had X”, and then I’d rotate 30º and then X would be, like, within arm’s reach.
Most rooms had some manner of delightful thing, whether that be cute magnet puzzles or a weird glowing flower that looked like if I touched it it’d disappear and then I’d start glowing an either be able to jump higher or spit fireballs (I did not touch it)
Small complaints include:
a) the vacuum was quite big and heavy, which resulted in me switching to using a broom when I was cleaning up,
b) the refrigerator was like 500x more dangerous than any other fridge I ever encountered. Normally the amount of blood a refrigerator draws when I touch it gently is zero. The bottom of this fridge cut me 3 times, twice on my toes, once on my thumb while I was trying to clean it.
c) the first aid kit was in a black toolbox with the red “+” facing away from the visible area which made it a bit more counterintuitive to discover than most of the other things in the house.