People, Ideas, Machines
In that order
Out of the blue, a handful of people messaged me regarding an obscure blog post I wrote a year ago about spaced repetition and recommendation algorithms. Surprisingly all of them found me through Exa, an AI search engine that seems to do a much better job of matchmaking weirdos than Google, which (justifiably) buries my blog somewhere in the abyss beyond the tenth page of search results.
The experience got me thinking: as the cost to build drops, the value of ideas, interesting problems and intelligent starting assumptions increases. A huge portion of the world’s knowledge is private - locked in people’s minds, private conversations, and informal networks. Since people are still the best idea generators in the universe, this means that the value of personal connections with interesting people will only go up over time.
Deferred Filtration
This led me to another thought: there aren’t many low-effort ways to meet interesting people to build things with in the UK. Everything seems to require vaulting into some kind of walled garden like a startup accelerator, or invite-only event, or a black-tie dinner etc.
In How might we heal the sick man of Europe? I argued that since Britain has plenty of talented young people, stable institutions and funding opportunities, the real problem is galvanisation. Like pre-industrial China or Russia, it’s an issue of mobilising the peasantry (fellow directionless youths) under a shared vision (national rejuvenation/improving the lives of others/solving hard problems) and getting them in the factories building (working together on businesses/other ventures).
I think that this view aligns with advances in AI and automation - if everyone’s capabilities have been raised a thousandfold and we’re all walking around with PhDs in our pockets, then the limiting factor to progress is not exceptional, rare talent that you need to meticulously filter for, it’s simply the will and determination to try!
Could a more egalitarian, open-source, third place model work? With the goal of maximising resource utilisation of the young and ambitious, not having a bunch of them lazing around between application deadlines until they finally meet people they can build with?
Historically, the most successful knowledge-creating cultures followed the principle of deferred filtration. They allowed for a large amount of random exploration and open-ended interaction - they didn’t start filtering too early. Like the Ancient Greek Agora - a small, densely concentrated marketplace for free exchange of ideas, with the stoa providing space for smaller collaborative circles to branch off, meet, and conspire.
Minimum Viable Community
This is one thing the Effective Altruists do well - their focus is on widening the number of people involved rather than prematurely filtering for an elite few. Having attended a few of their events here in Oxford, I got the sense that they were genuinely excited to have anyone interested in debating them about existential risk, AI doom, or morality.
They’ve built a smooth on-ramp - from the rationality community and Less Wrong to meet-ups, to shared houses where people can co-work and host events.1
Imagine something like this but centred around working on interesting problems. Sounds enticing to me. I feel like a minimum viable community is achievable for trivial money. What do you really need other than people, a building with WiFi and some chairs?
Tell a good story
Gather people
Brainstorm ideas
???
The plan is simple: People, ideas, machines—in that order!
Love this idea.
But I wonder if this underrates the importance of filtering. You *do* need to be able to turn people away if they're diminishing the community, as awkward as that can be.