Two nights ago, I was slowly drifting back asleep, and my mind wandered back to Berkeley.
In my mind, I saw myself taking BART out of the airport, all the way to Oakland. The dream skipped over a bus ride north, which left me on a sidewalk. I looked across the street, where Lighthaven was... just there, as it’s always been.
My heart swelling, tears getting to my eyes, I thought “I’m home”.
Although it was just a half dream then, I’ve had this feeling, each time I got back there.
Part of my heart is always there, in California.
And yet, I don’t think it’s time to move there. I’ve rehashed reasons again and again.
But my mind keeps returning there.
The issue is the calling. Why? What is calling me? What for?
Tutor Vals is there. Celeste 🌱 also. They’re having a great time. They’re living their best life, doing adventures, writing, playing, meeting new people, exploring. I would like to be there and see the wonder and excitement in Celeste’s face when she sees all the amazing places there, and meets all the amazing people!
I wish for adventure, for the thrill of a life that’s going fast, that’s intense emotionally, where nothing is prepared, but at least I know it’s going to be wild.
Here in Paris, I’m missing role models. I don’t have mentors, I don’t have inspirations. I have peers, true, like my flatmates, but no one who’s so good at a thing I care about that I’m magnetized by them and want to be with them all the time and absorb all their power. There are many people that fill this need for me in the Bay, like Oli or Ray at Lightcone, Vaniver, Tutor Vals. At my current work, I feel like the most competent person in the room, at least in the skills I care about, and while it’s nice being congratulated on my skill, I’d much rather prefer being in an organization where I’d have people to look up to.
I wish for role models, for inspiration, for people who embody the ideals and virtues I want for myself, whose sole existence is lights a fire in my soul, which pushes me to become the best version of myself, to reach up to their level.
Lighthaven is opulence. Lighthaven is a shard of utopia. Lighthaven is the embodiment of ambition. It’s a statement to the world that “so much more is possible”. It’s where I’ve spent the best weeks of my life, and met some of my dearest friends. It’s “israel for autistic people” as the meme says.
In the Bay, they can have nice things, because the community of rationalists is large enough and wealthy enough that they can muster a stupendous amount of man power and funding to make places like Lighthaven happen.
And Lighthaven is only the tip of the iceberg, the most salient point in the rationalist infrastructure and social scene in the Bay. There are so many other infrastructure and community projects, be they the network of group houses, the parents caring for each other’s kids, the secular solstice, Mox, Far Labs, Constellation, community dinners, sequence reading groups, ACX meetups. The density of people in rationalist and AI Safety circles is staggering. The social fabric is deep and fractal. Economies of scale and network effects enable shared infrastructure and community oriented ventures. And having so many people with high-tech salaries makes all this scene flush with money, ready to throw it at projects to make life better for people in the community.
And I know it’s exaggerated, but it still feels like much more than I’ll ever be able to build here in Paris.
I’ve built a lot! Two rationalist/AI Safety group houses, shared AI safety offices, regular ACX meetups. They’re my little shards of utopia. I protect and nurture them, and recruit people to help me grow them and make more, but it’s hard, and it takes so long, and nobody has money or time to spare, nor vision of how things could be so much better.
I wish people around me were richer, had more vision of how good life can be, were ready to pour effort and money into making our little local utopia.
Here in Paris, I kinda know everyone in the extended rationalist sphere. The influx of new people is low. It was much higher in the past. I feel like I’m in a closed community, one that closed the door, that pulled the ladder back up, that closed the acculturation pipeline, the halfway homes. It sometimes feels like a huis-clos, a play with an unchanging set of characters, stuck in the same room, who can’t get out.
I yearn for fresh blood! For people who are discovering LessWrong or EA for the first time, and are excited about joining this world! I want bright-eyed idealists, who shake things up, and don’t accept the status quo, and who are not yet set in their path, who try stuff and make thing weird and exciting again.
Lighthaven always feels like that. Whenever I’m there, it’s filled with interesting people, many with bright ideas about the future, who are excited about explaining their newest thing on a whiteboard for five hours, who ask if I want to start a project with them.
It’s also much easier for me to be excited about things in the Bay, because there’s so many people in the rat sphere. I don’t know a tenth of them! Each new connection is a new potential friend, a new growth opportunity, sometimes even a romantic partner.
I wish for a dynamic and exciting social scene, be it from new peeps joining in, or the scene being so deep I’ve yet to meet everyone. I want a scene that’s not yet settled into a groove, a scene where ideas clash and sparks set ablaze new projects and opportunities!
One day, I’ll make a parallel version of this post, of all the things from Paris I’m longing for when I’m in the Bay.
But for now, I’ll keep visiting Lighthaven in my dreams.
Wishing Paris was just a little bit more like it.
