I would have no fixed amount of rooms for paying or non-paying guests.
I think having at least some rooms reserved for each is actually pretty important. If there aren’t any non-paying guests working on projects then you lose out on the networking/synergy/culture of productivity, which is the main reason the hotel is interesting in the first place. Not having rooms for short-term paying guests also seems like a failure mode, for cultural reasons: the hotel’s status as a “destination” raises its own visibility and attracts more projects in the future, but I think even more importantly it serves as a symbol of the community. Taking a train out to the countryside to stay in a hotel where a bunch of EAs are incubating their projects is the sort of emotionally resonant experience that strengthens people’s bond with the movement, and is also the sort of thing that is interesting to talk about and will organically raise the visibility of effective altruism as a whole.
You need a critical mass of people working on projects to develop culture, and enough short-term visitors to disseminate that cultural product. Too much skew in either direction makes the whole thing less impactful.
We have dorms that are purely dedicated to short term paying guests. This allows us to honestly tell people that they’re always welcome. I think that’s great.
Actually I agree this is really good, I hadn’t thought enough about it before. Not sure I agree that reserving rooms for non-paying impact projects/people is good though. I think this should vary with demand of good projects.
For me, the fact that my post is currently here means something: there are people who are working on it. I want to encourage them into working on it, so I need to get a leg up on them.
My own, lesswrongish, one that I’d have a problem with. My first reaction is “of course it helps, but...”, which isn’t enough to make this post. Just because it didn’t fit my goals and my motivation is insufficient, I need to change that.
(Note: I’m not saying you should take these posts seriously or otherwise deal with them, nor am I saying you should. I’m saying “you may not like my post, but I would prefer that you take the post seriously” because the only reason I’d like to do that is so that I don’t need to.)
I find this bit much more distracting than the previous two, which strikes me as rather good. The worst part is the third part, which gives people a way of seeing the “hey, what’s going on?” and the lack of obvious structure.
I think having at least some rooms reserved for each is actually pretty important. If there aren’t any non-paying guests working on projects then you lose out on the networking/synergy/culture of productivity, which is the main reason the hotel is interesting in the first place. Not having rooms for short-term paying guests also seems like a failure mode, for cultural reasons: the hotel’s status as a “destination” raises its own visibility and attracts more projects in the future, but I think even more importantly it serves as a symbol of the community. Taking a train out to the countryside to stay in a hotel where a bunch of EAs are incubating their projects is the sort of emotionally resonant experience that strengthens people’s bond with the movement, and is also the sort of thing that is interesting to talk about and will organically raise the visibility of effective altruism as a whole.
You need a critical mass of people working on projects to develop culture, and enough short-term visitors to disseminate that cultural product. Too much skew in either direction makes the whole thing less impactful.
We have dorms that are purely dedicated to short term paying guests. This allows us to honestly tell people that they’re always welcome. I think that’s great.
Actually I agree this is really good, I hadn’t thought enough about it before. Not sure I agree that reserving rooms for non-paying impact projects/people is good though. I think this should vary with demand of good projects.
For me, the fact that my post is currently here means something: there are people who are working on it. I want to encourage them into working on it, so I need to get a leg up on them.
My own, lesswrongish, one that I’d have a problem with. My first reaction is “of course it helps, but...”, which isn’t enough to make this post. Just because it didn’t fit my goals and my motivation is insufficient, I need to change that.
(Note: I’m not saying you should take these posts seriously or otherwise deal with them, nor am I saying you should. I’m saying “you may not like my post, but I would prefer that you take the post seriously” because the only reason I’d like to do that is so that I don’t need to.)
I find this bit much more distracting than the previous two, which strikes me as rather good. The worst part is the third part, which gives people a way of seeing the “hey, what’s going on?” and the lack of obvious structure.