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Notes -
Back in the late 00s and early 10s there was a professor who lived in Santa Clara and would throw some of the most interesting house parties in the bay area
These house parties were arguably some of the earliest in-person rationalist meet-ups, but because this professor was a gregarious outgoing sort with eclectic interests as well a man of import in the the West Coast SCA and BJJ communities, the crowd at these parties tended to be wildly diverse.
As a result early LessWrong had a lot of weird overlaps, Navy SEALs, Catholic Priests, UFC fighters, and Rocket Scientists all sharing a space, talking to (and occasionally getting high with) Silicon Valley billionaires, work-a-day code monkeys, and activitist college kids.
That was the environment in which rationalism got its start, but as rationalism became increasingly exclusive, trans, poly, and frankly "culty", and those with more diverse views relative to the bay-area activist set who formed the core clique quietly cut ties, and either returned to or started thier own groups resulting in "evaporative cooling" of the rationalist sphere and increasingly cult-like dynamics.
CFAR and Ziz are names that i haven't thought about in 10+ years and it feels odd to think that i used to know some these people, and simultaneously gratifying and tragic to have old intuitions confirmed.
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