And yeah, I was very surprised by the dearth of strong community efforts in SF. Some guesses at this:
Berkeley and Oakland have been historical nexus for EA and rationality, with a rich-get-richer effect where people migrating to the bay choose East Bay
In SF, there’s much more competition for talent: people can go work on startups, AI labs, FAANG, VC
And also competition for mindshare: SF’s higher population and density means there are many other communities (eg climbing, biking, improv, yimby, partying)
Yeah all seems plausible. I suspect that lack of a great “seed” for community projects is more predictive—it just happens to be the case that few people have done high effort projects that got product market fit. Maybe this is the rich-get-richer thing you mentioned.
Thank you Caleb, I appreciate the endorsement!
And yeah, I was very surprised by the dearth of strong community efforts in SF. Some guesses at this:
Berkeley and Oakland have been historical nexus for EA and rationality, with a rich-get-richer effect where people migrating to the bay choose East Bay
In SF, there’s much more competition for talent: people can go work on startups, AI labs, FAANG, VC
And also competition for mindshare: SF’s higher population and density means there are many other communities (eg climbing, biking, improv, yimby, partying)
Yeah all seems plausible. I suspect that lack of a great “seed” for community projects is more predictive—it just happens to be the case that few people have done high effort projects that got product market fit. Maybe this is the rich-get-richer thing you mentioned.