This is very similar to my model of the highly active EA places are expensive problem.
I suspect that creating the culture from the ground up would not be extremely hard, though it would impose a fixed cost/require some dedicated people to push it forward. Primarily because we could bring people in who are already familiar with relevant mindsets/ideas rather than having to spread them to locals where we arrive. I would expect a group on the order of ~15-30 awesome people (+low-cost, +high quality of life) to start to be attractive to many from around the world, even if the wider culture of the country/city was not particularly involved in ‘cutting-edge thinking’. To start with only those okay with a relatively small/tight social circle would join, but as it grew people who wanted a wider circle of interaction would be happier. Most people don’t need a huge social circle, so long as the wider culture is not actively hostile towards us and we were careful to build a healthy internal social environment early on I think it’d be okay.
This is quite a different project to setting up in a place which already has a bunch of EAs, but it seems doable to me. Rough steps: figure out what people want, gather names, and pick a location, then find funding, scout the location, and pick an exact building, then bring a founding team over (~4-10 people?) to do initial setup, then start bringing more people who want to be part of that kind of group over to help and live. Once you have a seed community and a schelling point for interacting with it expansion is relatively straightforward (people rent nearby, similar co-living spaces pop up, etc).
This is very similar to my model of the highly active EA places are expensive problem.
I suspect that creating the culture from the ground up would not be extremely hard, though it would impose a fixed cost/require some dedicated people to push it forward. Primarily because we could bring people in who are already familiar with relevant mindsets/ideas rather than having to spread them to locals where we arrive. I would expect a group on the order of ~15-30 awesome people (+low-cost, +high quality of life) to start to be attractive to many from around the world, even if the wider culture of the country/city was not particularly involved in ‘cutting-edge thinking’. To start with only those okay with a relatively small/tight social circle would join, but as it grew people who wanted a wider circle of interaction would be happier. Most people don’t need a huge social circle, so long as the wider culture is not actively hostile towards us and we were careful to build a healthy internal social environment early on I think it’d be okay.
This is quite a different project to setting up in a place which already has a bunch of EAs, but it seems doable to me. Rough steps: figure out what people want, gather names, and pick a location, then find funding, scout the location, and pick an exact building, then bring a founding team over (~4-10 people?) to do initial setup, then start bringing more people who want to be part of that kind of group over to help and live. Once you have a seed community and a schelling point for interacting with it expansion is relatively straightforward (people rent nearby, similar co-living spaces pop up, etc).