Because of short timelines and strong constraints on human capital, people in AI alignment / governance / etc. are of course the priority for this kind of spending.
However, other than that, I don’t see a reason to distinguish much between cause areas. “The Berlin Hub will be a co-living and event space hosting people who are interested in contributing to humanity’s long-term future” Why say “humanity’s long-term future” instead of “improving the world as effectively as possible ”? It’s excluding some people (non-longtermist charity entrepreneurship comes to mind, maybe also various policy causes), and I don’t see the reason for it. “Too many people/not enough capacity” doesn’t hold up, that’s just about choosing admissions, not the framing of the whole facility.
Anyway, do you have a reason for framing this as a long-termist hub in particular? If it’s “that’s who we want to hang out with” I personally think that’s a totally fine reason. If that’s not the reason, then given recent discussion around community norms, I think we should default to something like “including all EAs, then disagreeing on the details/beliefs.” Here that means encouraging everyone to apply, but being honest about why you are accepting people, and being open to accepting some non-longtermist people.
Also, it could be that I’m way off here so please tell me.
Here you go for a chunk of the background models which informed our decision:
I see three main potential benefits that can come from impact-focused co-living projects like these: 1) Reduced living cost 2) centralizing everyday chores like cooking, cleaning, and restocking to keep peoples’ backs free for work 3) fostering synergies and cross-pollination between residents’ projects
CEEALAR (formerly “EA Hotel”) leverages 1) to the max by pushing the living costs as low as 6500£/year/person (according to memory, I might be off). At the same time, all the restocking and a significant chunk of the cooking and cleaning is taken care of so that people have their backs maximally free for EA work. Meanwhile, CEEALAR doesn’t have a specific cause area focus and doesn’t specifically invest much resources into enabling mentorship for residents and facilitating cooperations. These things are encouraged and do happen, but they are not a key priority. In the three months I have been there so far, the default has been people working on their projects side by side and only occasionally exchanging feedback and plotting shared endeavors over dinner.
As Berlin is significantly more expensive than Blackpool, we won’t be able to leverage the reduced living cost as well as CEEALAR can. At the same time, we are making plans to maximize synergies between residents’ projects. If things go according to my current dreams, The Berlin Hub might turn into an incubator for longtermist research groups and startups within the next years. A bit of diversity is useful for preventing groupthink, but with insufficient overlap between peoples’ subculture and interests, it would make little sense for people to even try collaborate. The filter we are putting into place shall ensure that professional exchange and cooperation between the residents is possible with relatively low effort.
We explicitly don’t want to only hang out with longtermists, but are trying to find a good balance. For example, we plan to run open-to-(EA-)public events at the hub without a specific cause area focus to make sure we don’t only simmer in our own juice. We’ll also encourage residents to mingle with the local EA- and non-EA community. After all, that is one of the reasons we picked Berlin in the first place.
In addition to my personal cause prioritization, I’m doing this because I’m excited about the idea of impact-focused co-living projects in general. I’d be delighted if we manage to deliver a proof of concept that goes beyond what CEEALAR already did and inspire others to try similar things. In fact, I’m already in contact with people from several countries across the globe who have plans for founding EA co-living projects. I’m happy to share my models and network with anyone who wants to do that as well, independent of their cause area focus and specific theory of change.
I only have limited time and would rather do one thing well than ten things badly. In this case, following my personal cause prio and my understanding of the longtermist community’s bottlenecks, the one thing I’m trying to do well is to start a longtermist research group incubator for the Schengen area. Somebody has to run the pizza booth. If my comparative advantage and what excites me most is baking pizza, I believe it would be unwise of me to not focus on making the best pizza in town, but to offer mediocre pizza instead so that I can sell veggie burgers, curry, tacos, hot dogs, pasta, ice cream, and haircuts on the side.
Is that response satisfying? Do let me know if not.
Yeah, that’s satisfying to me. I think it’s honest and clear. I thought it was worth asking though, in case the framing wasn’t deliberate, or you hadn’t thought about it.
I can see you put a lot of effort into this reply—thanks!
Having spent time at the EA hotel, there isn’t as much collaboration there as you might expect or hope for. I think it is worthwhile at least trying the experiment to see if this results in improved collaboration. Beyond this, there is a fundamental split between long-termismism and near-termism, in that near-termist spending on these kinds of projects directly trades off against donating to the Against Malaria foundation, while there isn’t a similar comparable option in terms of long-termism (ie. long-termism is less funding constrained).
I find the focus on longtermism a bit strange.
Because of short timelines and strong constraints on human capital, people in AI alignment / governance / etc. are of course the priority for this kind of spending.
However, other than that, I don’t see a reason to distinguish much between cause areas. “The Berlin Hub will be a co-living and event space hosting people who are interested in contributing to humanity’s long-term future” Why say “humanity’s long-term future” instead of “improving the world as effectively as possible ”? It’s excluding some people (non-longtermist charity entrepreneurship comes to mind, maybe also various policy causes), and I don’t see the reason for it. “Too many people/not enough capacity” doesn’t hold up, that’s just about choosing admissions, not the framing of the whole facility.
Anyway, do you have a reason for framing this as a long-termist hub in particular? If it’s “that’s who we want to hang out with” I personally think that’s a totally fine reason. If that’s not the reason, then given recent discussion around community norms, I think we should default to something like “including all EAs, then disagreeing on the details/beliefs.” Here that means encouraging everyone to apply, but being honest about why you are accepting people, and being open to accepting some non-longtermist people.
Also, it could be that I’m way off here so please tell me.
Thanks for the question!
Here you go for a chunk of the background models which informed our decision:
I see three main potential benefits that can come from impact-focused co-living projects like these:
1) Reduced living cost
2) centralizing everyday chores like cooking, cleaning, and restocking to keep peoples’ backs free for work
3) fostering synergies and cross-pollination between residents’ projects
CEEALAR (formerly “EA Hotel”) leverages 1) to the max by pushing the living costs as low as 6500£/year/person (according to memory, I might be off). At the same time, all the restocking and a significant chunk of the cooking and cleaning is taken care of so that people have their backs maximally free for EA work. Meanwhile, CEEALAR doesn’t have a specific cause area focus and doesn’t specifically invest much resources into enabling mentorship for residents and facilitating cooperations. These things are encouraged and do happen, but they are not a key priority. In the three months I have been there so far, the default has been people working on their projects side by side and only occasionally exchanging feedback and plotting shared endeavors over dinner.
As Berlin is significantly more expensive than Blackpool, we won’t be able to leverage the reduced living cost as well as CEEALAR can. At the same time, we are making plans to maximize synergies between residents’ projects. If things go according to my current dreams, The Berlin Hub might turn into an incubator for longtermist research groups and startups within the next years. A bit of diversity is useful for preventing groupthink, but with insufficient overlap between peoples’ subculture and interests, it would make little sense for people to even try collaborate. The filter we are putting into place shall ensure that professional exchange and cooperation between the residents is possible with relatively low effort.
We explicitly don’t want to only hang out with longtermists, but are trying to find a good balance. For example, we plan to run open-to-(EA-)public events at the hub without a specific cause area focus to make sure we don’t only simmer in our own juice. We’ll also encourage residents to mingle with the local EA- and non-EA community. After all, that is one of the reasons we picked Berlin in the first place.
In addition to my personal cause prioritization, I’m doing this because I’m excited about the idea of impact-focused co-living projects in general. I’d be delighted if we manage to deliver a proof of concept that goes beyond what CEEALAR already did and inspire others to try similar things. In fact, I’m already in contact with people from several countries across the globe who have plans for founding EA co-living projects. I’m happy to share my models and network with anyone who wants to do that as well, independent of their cause area focus and specific theory of change.
I only have limited time and would rather do one thing well than ten things badly. In this case, following my personal cause prio and my understanding of the longtermist community’s bottlenecks, the one thing I’m trying to do well is to start a longtermist research group incubator for the Schengen area. Somebody has to run the pizza booth. If my comparative advantage and what excites me most is baking pizza, I believe it would be unwise of me to not focus on making the best pizza in town, but to offer mediocre pizza instead so that I can sell veggie burgers, curry, tacos, hot dogs, pasta, ice cream, and haircuts on the side.
Is that response satisfying? Do let me know if not.
Yeah, that’s satisfying to me. I think it’s honest and clear. I thought it was worth asking though, in case the framing wasn’t deliberate, or you hadn’t thought about it.
I can see you put a lot of effort into this reply—thanks!
Having spent time at the EA hotel, there isn’t as much collaboration there as you might expect or hope for. I think it is worthwhile at least trying the experiment to see if this results in improved collaboration. Beyond this, there is a fundamental split between long-termismism and near-termism, in that near-termist spending on these kinds of projects directly trades off against donating to the Against Malaria foundation, while there isn’t a similar comparable option in terms of long-termism (ie. long-termism is less funding constrained).