Where do you live?
post by DPiepgrass · 2021-10-31T17:07:31.294Z · LW · GW · 4 commentsThis is a question post.
Contents
Answers 6 seed 5 gjm 4 swestrup 4 Randomized, Controlled 4 ike 4 DPiepgrass 2 Dagon 1 nafal 1 finolex1 None 4 comments
I've been interested in joining the rationalist community in person for years, but the cost of living in the Bay Area (and NYC) is a big turn-off. So like mingyuan [LW · GW], I think we should pick a secondary Schelling point, most likely in the U.S., with a tertiary non-U.S. destination for non-American aspiring rationalists, a place where (i) English is common, (iii) cost of living is low-ish, and (iii) immigration to there tends to be easier than immigration to the U.S. (with extra points for pleasant climate, good infrastructure, etc.). Ideas for the new location have included cadillion's plan [LW(p) · GW(p)] to move to a U.S. county where we'd have major voting power, or to just follow MIRI if it moves [LW(p) · GW(p)], except actually they're not moving [LW · GW]. On the other hand, it tends to be easier for people to move shorter distances or not at all, so I'd like to know where everyone lives right now.
Please answer either (1) by upvoting your city of residence (short click) or (1) by creating a new answer with your city of residence, if no one has mentioned it yet. Please don't vote for places you don't live; instead, give your opinion in a reply.
Also: LW user profiles have a location field, but is there a way to get tallies of locations of all users? Bonus points if it can be filtered to active users.
Edit: if you identify as EA, consider adding your info to EAHub.org: they have a map! See also: tagmap of "rationalist" and "slatestarcodex". Notably, slatestarcodex has three large clusters in Texas.
I'd also like to see links/information on immigration laws in various countries (as comments, not answers).
Answers
Berlin.
↑ comment by seed · 2021-11-01T13:58:59.433Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What the heck did I do wrong, why are you downvoting me, guys?
Replies from: gjm↑ comment by gjm · 2021-11-01T15:40:34.265Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I suspect that either (1) someone misclicked or (2) someone unscrupulous took a dislike to something else you wrote and decided to downvotes lots of your comments. If it's just this one, it's probably #1. If you suddenly lost a lot of karma, it's probably #2. That sort of bulk-downvoting is not supposed to be a thing that happens here, but sometimes people do it (in my experience, usually for political reasons; they've decided that some other person is The Enemy and must be punished and their voice suppressed); if you have good reason to suspect it's happened, you might consider contacting the site admins.
[EDITED to add: I (weak-)upvoted seed's answer even though I do not live in Berlin, because I can think of no reason why it should have been downvoted.]
↑ comment by Visa Ray (visa-ray) · 2022-03-31T11:29:43.792Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In my opinion Malta is the best country to live in because it shares no land border with any other country and has always been peaceful, have no conflict with any other country, high standard of living, better educational facilities than most of the developing countries.
Cambridge, UK.
↑ comment by gjm · 2021-11-01T15:44:33.418Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Strictly, I'm a few miles out of Cambridge.
In and around Cambridge, (i) English is common, (ii) cost of living is not low and in particular housing is annoyingly expensive, and (iii) immigration is I think easier than to the US, though for inhabitants of the rest of Europe it recently became more difficult than it had been before.
Also relevant: Cambridge has a world-class university and a pretty strong (though not Bay-Area-strong) ecosystem of technology companies.
↑ comment by DPiepgrass · 2021-11-02T16:27:26.866Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hm, somebody strong-upvoted this (and Calgary - I wonder who)
Calgary, AB, Canada (north of Idaho)
Seattle, WA, USA for me.
But I think the premise behind the question is flawed. Trying to pick a Schelling point for your proposal that is an anti-Schelling point (not subject to the costs and pressures of current population centers) for very similar communities is not feasible, unless you can identify distinct attributes of this community that lead to different needs.
4 comments
Comments sorted by top scores.
comment by DPiepgrass · 2021-10-31T18:21:58.984Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
As a Canadian I can testify that Canada certainly seems to be welcoming to all skilled professionals, but from personal experience, their system for issuing temporary/visitor visas stinks: they rejected my wife's application to leave her son behind in the Philippines and visit me in Canada because she failed to "prove" that she would leave at the end of her visit. The thing is, it's impossible to prove! A return flight is not considered evidence, I can't buy a bond to promise she will leave, and leaving a child behind is considered evidence but, in my case, was insufficient. Notably, there is nothing on any government web site hinting at how hard it is to visit Canada, or how arbitrary and opaque the decisions are.
As a preliminary check, I filled out a questionnaire and verified that a 35-year-old person with good English skill (7.5/9 scores on IELTS), 2 years of college, 2 years experience in a skilled profession, married, one child, no job offer in Canada, but $30,000 CAD to bring to Canada, is eligible to apply for Express Entry if the wife scored likewise on the English test (oddly there is no provision for native English speakers). But this is just the very beginning; the Express Entry program doesn't seem particularly "express" (or fast or cheap). You might be able to apply, but do you have enough "points" to actually immigrate? After a brief review I couldn't figure out how the point system actually correlates to getting a "invitation to apply". The most recent minimum number of points was 744 out of 1200, but I can't find anyone saying whether (1) you're guaranteed to get an "invitation to apply" if you pass the threshold, or (2) there is some kind of probabilistic formula for the "draw" system based on the points (as this page seems to imply). If you do get an "invitation to apply" I would guess you have some kind of temporary "right" to permanent residence if you immediately do the copious paperwork and pay the $1,325 application fee, but I don't see anyone spelling out the probability of successful immigration conditional upon having an "invitation to apply".
comment by mingyuan · 2021-10-31T18:48:41.042Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's currently an effort to start an EA Hub in the Bahamas [EA · GW], which I'm told is easier to immigrate to than the US (though that's a low bar tbh).
comment by Randomized, Controlled (BossSleepy) · 2021-10-31T19:57:50.050Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
the problem with upvotes is that it's somewhat easy to heavy click and then undoing the heavy click and only having a normal click is a bit fiddly, eg, I assumed down voting with return me to neutral, (ie, previousScore, but it actually toggles the answer to previousScore -1. Someone not noticing how this works might introduce noise.
↑ comment by DPiepgrass · 2021-11-01T19:33:38.162Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, and it is probably very tempting for people to click places they like :D. Also I got downvoted and probably most people will never see the survey.
As far as I've seen, downvoting typically works the same way on other sites; LW is normal in this regard.