[Last update: 2025-01-05]

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!

Thursday Dinners in Berkeley: Advertised on the Discord server and Google group, alternating between a few restaurants on the northwest side of UC campus.  Has an associated Signal group chat.

Lighthaven Sequences Reading Group: Currently Tuesday, hosted by the Lighthaven team. They advertise on LessWrong.

San Francisco LessWrong Meetup: Meets every first Saturday in San Francisco, hosted by Nate and Andrew.

Thai Temple Brunch, on irregular Sundays in South Berkeley. Advertised on Discord server and in some Signal groups.

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.

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:

• FAR Labs
• Constellation

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!