Rationalist meetups are great. Once in a while they're life-changingly so. Lighthaven, a conference venue designed and run by rationalists, plays host to a lot of really good rationalist meetups. It's best-in-class for that genre of thing really, meeting brilliant and interesting people then staying up late into the night talking with them.
I come here not to besmirch the virtues of Lighthaven, but to propose the active ingredient isn't the venue, it's the people. (The venue's great though.)
The following example is a composite of several real people, with the details blurred a bit.
He found HPMOR and reread it multiple times. Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres was relatable in a way characters before HPMOR just weren't relatable. He went to his first rationalist met, LessOnline in Berkeley, and had an absolutely amazing time, flowing from neat conversation to neat conversation, staying up late into the night talking to strangers who, by the end of the weekend, felt like instant friends. For a few days, it felt like there was nothing between him and just enjoying life. Perhaps he flies back home with great memories, and visits again and again for other events. Each one is an amazing experience.
So he packed up and moved to Berkeley. The rent was high, he had to get a new job, but man there were so many awesome people! Now he'd live the life of the mind more.
Except, well, half of those people weren't Berkeley locals. Many of those instant friends actually lived hundreds of miles away in cities like Austin, or Seattle, or New York; some of them weren't in America at all.
Also, a lot of frictions appeared. Like, LessOnline provides, as part of the cost of the ticket, delicious catered lunches and dinners. If you live in Berkeley and don't work for, say, Google, you are not provided delicious catered lunches and dinners without having to think about it anymore. Even if his new friends are in the Californian bay area,[1] some of them live in San Jose, or San Francisco. That is close enough to be on cheap public transit, but it's not "walk out your front door" levels of easy to get to. Relaxing fairy lights and comfortable low couches don't come with the apartment no matter how exorbitant the rent. He has a job, and so must spend much of his days doing other things. Even when he's free, sometimes the people he wants to talk to are busy with something else and so he can't spend time with them.
The travel expenses for other conferences at Lighthaven are cheaper at least. Perhaps, late at night at Lighthaven, he remarks that he wishes he could live at the venue.
(Reminder, I'm making a composite of multiple people.)
And that's a pretty good outcome. Other people move to Berkeley only to somehow[2] fail to become as enmeshed in the community as they want. That gets frustrating for them, and some later move away with varying amounts of hard feelings.
(Again, composites.)
I found HPMOR and read it multiple times. Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres was relatable in a way characters before HPMOR just weren't relatable. I went to the East Coast Rationalist Megameetup in New York City and had an absolutely amazing time, flowing from neat conversation to neat conversation, staying up late into the night talking to strangers who, by the end of the weekend, felt like instant friends. For a few days, it felt like there was nothing between me and just enjoying life. I took a train back home with great memories, and visited again and again for other events. Each one was an amazing experience.
-except the people I spent the most time with at East Coast Rationalist Megameetup were from Boston, not NYC, so I visited them again and again. The venue for the ECRM was just some short-term rented apartment after all. Eventually I packed up and moved to Boston. The rent was high, I had to get a new job, but man there were so many awesome people!
Now, I happened to have the exceptionally poor luck to move to Boston in November of 2019 for the in-person social life, but even still I think this was an excellent decision. Within the last week I've chatted with two of the people I met at ECRM almost a decade ago now. It's not as good as the weekend of the megameetup; I have all the frictions of day-to-day life like cooking dinner and waiting for the train. Life is pretty good though. I still smile when I pass by that old group house I used to crash at. . . or that other group house that had Friday dinners every week. . . or, well, lots of places in Boston. The city has a decent amount of warm fuzzy associations for me.
Now, I have a very atypical relationship with Lighthaven. I do a lot of operations work for various events there. Prior to last month,[3] I'm pretty sure if you added up all the hours I've spent at that venue most of them were work hours. The next biggest category of time is sleep. Socialization is a distant third.
("Wait," you might say, "you work more hours than sleep?" Oh you sweet summer child.)
My emotional reaction to walking in through that gate is closer to that of a sprinter lining up to the starting block. I don't want to live there any more than you want to live at your office. I enjoy my work, it's a very nice place to work, and sometimes there's very good food, but it's hard for me to relax except in a kind of locked in, tetris-effect kind of way. I keep waiting for the slack ping that heralds a Problem.
Some of you may have attended East Coast Rationalist Megameetup since 2019 when I became the lead organizer for it-
(-and if you haven't, it's in one week from the time I write this and tickets are still on sale! As mentioned previous years were literally life changing for me, and I know from feedback forms I'm not the only one-)
-and you may have observed I'm not exactly a picture of relaxation there either these days. Same thing really. That weekend is not an opportunity for me to flow effortlessly from neat conversation to neat conversation, nothing between me and enjoying life. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but I'm not the audience I'm part of the stage crew.
I get my rationalist relaxation around Boston at dinner parties other people put on or hanging out with the folks I moved down here to socialize with.
If you live in a city that doesn't have any kind of rationalist community, and you've become enamored of what it's like to be a part of the rationalist community, I do seriously think it can be worth moving to spend more time with these kinds of people.[4] I just don't think the Califonian bay area is automatically the one you should pick.
Ask where the people you actually talked to live. Maybe they have a cluster closer than you think. Inquire as to whether their city is one of the cities with weekly rationalist meetups, and whether those are fun. I see the ACX Everywhere survey reports, most rationalist meetups are fun.
Are you excited about having a job at a rationalist-adjacent organization? Great! Berkeley's got a bunch but it's hardly unique. There's a bunch of EA stuff in the UK, there's some forecasting and prediction market stuff in NYC, and hey there's AI jobs in Boston. Lots of places do remote hires these days.
Do you want to be close by for a big conference of interesting people? New England is pretty great overall. In particular Baltimore has a rationalist community a decade old, and it's in driving distance of Vibecamp, ManifestxDC, and an annual Secular Solstice.
I suspect I am coming off anti-Berkeley here. I don't want to overstate my case. There really are more LW-style rationalists there than anywhere else in the world. Lighthaven really does run best-in-genre events, and it runs a lot of 'em. If moving to the Californian bay would be best for you, I desire to believe that moving to the Californian bay would be best for you.
But I strongly suspect the gap is closer than you might think. I have randomly run into people I know from the community in Boston coffee shops. I think I'm about one in three for running into one unexpectedly on the NY subway when I visit NY for non-rationalist reasons. Sure, I've twice had that experience in Berkeley too; my point isn't that Berkeley isn't like this, my point is Berkeley isn't the only one.
And at least for my datapoint, I have never had the kind of wonderful serendipity at Lighthaven that I did in New York City in 2017.
(I'll note again, East Coast Rationalist Megameetup 2025 is the weekend of December 19th, and Solstice is December 20th. We'll see if I can recreate the magic.)
Did you know that "The Bay State" is the official nickname of Massachusetts? Growing up in Vermont people would sometimes say they were going to vacation "in the bay" and in every case I can remember they meant Cape Cod.
I may wind up writing more about this someday, though I expect the locals have a better view of what's going on here than I do.
Might still be true after last month, but I'm less sure. I spent November there as part of a writer's retreat. I wasn't on the staff team for that retreat. A lot of what I wrote was part of my normal role though, and I kept trying to do other work for that role alongside writing. I didn't track my hours that month so I'm not confident one way or the other.
You can also try starting one in your city- ACX Everywhere is a great season to try- but I will admit that these days I think most of the places with large latent demand for rationalist meetup groups have been tried at least once. Still, it's cheap to try and the odds aren't that far against you getting half a dozen to a dozen folks in a greenfield meetup.