Lighthaven is quite different from the Lightcone Offices. Some key differences:
We mostly charge for things! This means that the incentives and social dynamics are a lot less weird and sycophantic, in a lot of different ways. Generally, both the Lightcone Offices and Lighthaven have strongly updated me on charging for things whenever possible, even if it seems like it will result in a lot of net-positive trades and arrangements not happening.
Lighthaven mostly hosts programs, and doesn’t provide office space for a ton of people. There is a set of permanent residents at Lighthaven, but we are talking about like 10-20 people including the Lightcone team, as opposed to the ~100+ people with approximately permanent access to the Lightcone Offices. As I mention in the fundraising post, I expect this set to grow very slowly, and I feel good about supporting everyone in this set (and would feel at the very least very conflicted and probably net bad about providing the same services to everyone who we supported via the Lightcone Offices)
More broadly, Lighthaven is both a lot more curated, and a lot less insular. We have lots of big events here with people from adjacent communities and ecosystems, and I feel good about the marginal improvement to idea exchange and communication we make here. And then the people and programs we do support more consistently are things I feel good about.
Adding onto this, I would broadly say that the Lightcone team did not update that in-person infrastructure was unimportant, even while our first attempt was an investment into an ecosystem we later came to regret investing in.
Also here’s a quote of mine from the OP:
If I came up with an idea right now for what abstraction I’d prefer, it’d be something like an ongoing festival with lots of events and workshops and retreats for different audiences and different sorts of goals, with perhaps a small office for independent alignment researchers, rather than an office space that has a medium-size set of people you’re committed to supporting long-term.
I’d say that this is a pretty close description of a key change that we made, that changes my models of the value of the space quite a lot.
Lighthaven is quite different from the Lightcone Offices. Some key differences:
We mostly charge for things! This means that the incentives and social dynamics are a lot less weird and sycophantic, in a lot of different ways. Generally, both the Lightcone Offices and Lighthaven have strongly updated me on charging for things whenever possible, even if it seems like it will result in a lot of net-positive trades and arrangements not happening.
Lighthaven mostly hosts programs, and doesn’t provide office space for a ton of people. There is a set of permanent residents at Lighthaven, but we are talking about like 10-20 people including the Lightcone team, as opposed to the ~100+ people with approximately permanent access to the Lightcone Offices. As I mention in the fundraising post, I expect this set to grow very slowly, and I feel good about supporting everyone in this set (and would feel at the very least very conflicted and probably net bad about providing the same services to everyone who we supported via the Lightcone Offices)
More broadly, Lighthaven is both a lot more curated, and a lot less insular. We have lots of big events here with people from adjacent communities and ecosystems, and I feel good about the marginal improvement to idea exchange and communication we make here. And then the people and programs we do support more consistently are things I feel good about.
Adding onto this, I would broadly say that the Lightcone team did not update that in-person infrastructure was unimportant, even while our first attempt was an investment into an ecosystem we later came to regret investing in.
Also here’s a quote of mine from the OP:
I’d say that this is a pretty close description of a key change that we made, that changes my models of the value of the space quite a lot.