Secret Rationality Base in Europe

SquirrelInHell

In short, I'm wondering what place/group/organisation/activity could do for rationality in Europe what Berkeley does for rationality in the US?

Soon, we'll have LWCW in Berlin, which I hope will be an occasion to do some networking among people who think seriously about developing rationality communities. But in the meantime, let's do some brainstorming.

Important note: in comments to this post, please use only consequentialist language. For example, say "If we decided for the base to be on Malta, then X would happen" instead of "I think it should be in Malta, because..."

What would happen if the rationality base was located in [insert specific city/country]?

What could such a place offer to you now, that would make you consider a temporary/permanent move?

What would happen if the European rationality community efforts were centered around some particular research topic (e.g. AI)?

Is there something you can think of that would speed up community-building in Europe?

Of course, share anything else that you think is relevant to the topic.

Also, see you all in Berlin :)

In short, I'm wondering what place/group/organisation/activity could do for rationality in Europe what Berkeley does for rationality in the US?

What would happen if the rationality base was located in [insert specific city/country]?

What could such a place offer to you now, that would make you consider a temporary/permanent move?

What would happen if the European rationality community efforts were centered around some particular research topic (e.g. AI)?

Is there something you can think of that would speed up community-building in Europe?

Of course, share anything else that you think is relevant to the topic.

Also, see you all in Berlin :)

It seems to me that the role Berkeley plays in the US rationalist community is mostly a consequence of there having already been lots of rationalists and rationalist-friendly people in and near Berkeley. I'm not sure this is the kind of thing you can build without that initial critical mass.

In that case, it might be more informative to look at where people are already located.

The image I have is that Berkeley just happened to be where Eliezer was, and he gradually built the whole thing. Is it wrong?

4Viliam10y

The wiki list of European meetup groups, filtered by "at least once in a month" (mentioned explicitly in the group description), gives us the list of possible candidates: * Vienna, Austria * Brussels, Belgium * Prague, Czech Republic * Berlin, Germany * Hamburg, Germany * Munich, Germany * Kraków, Poland * Poznan, Poland * Moscow, Russia * St. Petersburg, Russia * London, UK Note that some of the information may be out of date, the wiki page does not mention the average number of people attending the meetups, etc. (Also, it's not just the number of members that matter, but how seriously they take the topic, etc.) So we can use this as an "upper bound" on places where enough active European LW-ers live. As the next step I would recommend looking at what the local groups have already done, using the "past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior" heuristic. Berlin seems like an obvious winner; they organized the 2014 and 2015 European LW Community Weekends.