My rough take: the rationalist scene in Berkeley used to be very bad at maintaining boundaries. Basically the boundaries were “who gets invited to parties by friends”. The one Berkeley community space (“REACH”) was basically open-access. In recent years the Lightcone team (of which I am a part) has hosted spaces and events and put in the work to maintain actual boundaries (including getting references on people and checking out suspicion of bad behavior, but mostly just making it normal for people to have events with standards for entry) and this has substantially improved the ability for rationalist spaces to have culture that is distinct from the local Berkeley culture.
My rough take: the rationalist scene in Berkeley used to be very bad at maintaining boundaries. Basically the boundaries were “who gets invited to parties by friends”. The one Berkeley community space (“REACH”) was basically open-access. In recent years the Lightcone team (of which I am a part) has hosted spaces and events and put in the work to maintain actual boundaries (including getting references on people and checking out suspicion of bad behavior, but mostly just making it normal for people to have events with standards for entry) and this has substantially improved the ability for rationalist spaces to have culture that is distinct from the local Berkeley culture.