SquirrelInHell comments on Secret Rationality Base in Europe - Less Wrong

2 Post author: SquirrelInHell 17 June 2016 02:50AM

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Comment author: SquirrelInHell 17 June 2016 03:17:06PM 0 points [-]

Community and organisation are two different things. A community by it's nature contains people from different organisations.

Fair enough, the question was unclear. I've changed it to (I hope) better reflect what I wanted to ask: Would you like the European rationality community efforts to be centered around some particular research topics (e.g. AI)?

As such it's not something that's usually decided in a top-down way.

E.g. what initially set events in motion in Berkeley seems to have been mostly MIRI-related research, not explicit community building. And it seems very possible to choose this kind of focus top-down.

Comment author: Benito 17 June 2016 05:39:21PM 0 points [-]

Btw I think the consequentialist version of your question is "What happens if the EU rationality community centres its efforts around a research topic (with the question being open to different consequences from different topics)".

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 18 June 2016 10:23:14PM 0 points [-]

Haha, thanks a lot, indeed the questions themselves can be phrased in a way that strongly suggests a consequentialist answer :) I'll use this a lot for now on :)

Comment author: ChristianKl 17 June 2016 03:41:32PM *  0 points [-]

E.g. what initially set events in motion in Berkeley seems to have been mostly MIRI-related research, not explicit community building.

There are many different reasons for a computer programmer who's interested in rationality to move to Berkeley besides MIRI-related research. The good jobs for computer programmers are in Silicon Valley and so computer programmers migrate there.

And it seems very possible to choose this kind of focus top-down.

If you have enough money than you can do everything top-down. If I understand right than MIRI had over a longer time >500,000/per year in donations. Do you think there somebody who would want to invest that kind of money into building a European LW community?