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Rain comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong
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Right, I think we're saying the same thing, here: the availability of so much low-hanging fruit in organizational development as late as Sept. 2011 is some evidence against the general rationality of SIers. Eliezer seems to want to say it was all a matter of funding, but that doesn't make sense to me.
Now, on this:
For some reason I'm having a hard time parsing your sentences for unambiguous meaning, but if I may attempt to rephrase: "SIers wouldn't take any salaries higher than (say) $70k/yr if they were truly committed to the cause and good in general rationality, because they would instead use that money to accomplish other things." Is that what you're saying?
I've heard the Bay Area is expensive, and previously pointed out that Eliezer earns more than I do, despite me being in the top 10 SI donors.
I don't mind, though, <joke> as has been pointed out, even thinking about muffins might be a question invoking existential risk calculations. </joke>
...and much beloved for it.
Yes, the Bay Area is expensive. We've considered relocating, but on the other hand the (by far) best two places for meeting our needs in HR and in physically meeting with VIPs are SF and NYC, and if anything NYC is more expensive than the Bay Area. We cut living expenses where we can: most of us are just renting individual rooms.
Also, of course, it's not like the Board could decide we should relocate to a charter city in Honduras and then all our staff would be able to just up and relocate. :)
(Rain may know all this; I'm posting it for others' benefit.)
I think it's crucial that SI stay in the Bay Area. Being in a high-status place signals that the cause is important. If you think you're not taken seriously enough now, imagine if you were in Honduras...
Not to mention that HR is without doubt the single most important asset for SI. (Which is why it would probably be a good idea to pay more than the minimum cost of living.)
Out of curiosity only: what were the most significant factors that led you to reject telepresence options?
FWIW, Wikimedia moved from Florida to San Francisco precisely for the immense value of being at the centre of things instead of the middle of nowhere (and yes, Tampa is the middle of nowhere for these purposes, even though it still has the primary data centre). Even paying local charity scale rather than commercial scale (there's a sort of cycle where WMF hires brilliant kids, they do a few years working at charity scale then go to Facebook/Google/etc for gobs of cash), being in the centre of things gets them staff and contacts they just couldn't get if they were still in Tampa. And yes, the question came up there pretty much the same as it's coming up here: why be there instead of remote? Because so much comes with being where things are actually happening, even if it doesn't look directly related to your mission (educational charity, AI research institute).
I didn't know this, but I'm happy to hear it.
The charity is still registered in Florida but the office is in SF. I can't find the discussion on a quick search, but all manner of places were under serious consideration - including the UK, which is a horrible choice for legal issues in so very many ways.
In our experience, monkeys don't work that way. It sounds like it should work, and then it just... doesn't. Of course we do lots of Skyping, but regular human contact turns out to be pretty important.
(nods) Yeah, that's been my experience too, though I've often suspected that companies like Google probably have a lot of research on the subject lying around that might be informative.
Some friends of mine did some experimenting along these lines when doing distributed software development (in both senses) and were somewhat startled to realize that Dark Age of Camelot worked better for them as a professional conferencing tool than any of the professional conferencing tools their company had. They didn't mention this to their management.
I am reminded that Flickr started as a photo add-on for an MMORPG...
It does something to the motivation, yes (and you can probably speculate on “what exactly” just as well as I can) Which means that for those not in need of any additional motivation remote conferencing works just as well; but that's a very rare occasion in the first place.