For the first time since Lighthaven's founding we are opening up the campus for individual stays to the public!
Lighthaven is a campus located in Downtown Berkeley, California, run by the Lightcone Infrastructure team (who also run LessWrong.com) for people who work on making humanity's future better in a scope-sensitive way.
Eternal September is our first open campus season, during which this place will be like a combination of a rationalist community coworking space, an inn, a large hamlet, a very small city, and a three-month-long unconference. Eternal September lasts from September 16th to January 2nd 2025 (yes, most of Eternal September is not in September).
There is a calendar. If you purchase access, you can attend sessions on this calendar. You can also add sessions to it. What sort of sessions are run is largely up to you and your fellow campus occupants.
Not all the campus will be available for community events all the time, since we have some non-open events happening in parallel (like the amazing-looking Progress Forum conference in late October). Make sure to check the calendar for what's going on during the time you want to visit (but we'll always have at least some space for coworking and evening hangout space).
There are two ways to purchase access to Lighthaven during this time:
Both of these have a 10% discount per week purchased (eg, if you buy four weeks of common space access you will get 40% off of your total price).
If you would like to know some facts about what it would be like to come to Lighthaven during Eternal September read our FAQ below. If you would like to know more about what the general vibe will be like, keep reading.
All of the fire pits around campus are lit this evening.
The music boys are covering all of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" in order again. They might get through it without looking up the lyrics this time, although of course their voices still won't crack quite right when they get to the mid section of "Oh Comely".
You smell the angel's trumpet blooming. It’s particularly salient to you that this is a way for the plant to reproduce. You wonder how it would feel if it knew it was surrounded by concrete and turf having no real chance of success. You consider that the only grass you have touched in weeks is turf. You feel for the plant, for your situations are not so different.
A couple of alignment researchers play go by the cabinet of curiosities as they argue about whether the control paradigm would help in the real world. You know that it makes no sense to judge who is right based on who is winning the game, but you think you probably can’t help it. You decide to stop watching the game in order to avoid learning the outcome.
A group of people gather around a whiteboard frantically scribbling equations and diagrams. You ask an onlooker what is happening. “They’re trying to solve the alignment problem.” You can tell from their enthusiasm that they think they are close. You notice that they are writing the exact same equations and diagrams that another group wrote on this very whiteboard last year. You consider letting them know, but decide it is best not to disturb the course of nature.
A popular but controversial internet personality is strategizing with a bioinformatics PhD about how to get hundreds of thousands of human genomes into a dataset so that they can create super babies. They are considering a product where you send in a genetic sample and are then told which celebrity you are genetically closest to. You begin to doubt your own sanity as you start to think not only that their scheme might work, but also that it might be the most important thing you could possibly work on.
At the very least the permanent campus residents, which currently includes the Lightcone team (9 people), John Wentworth, David Lorell, Adam Scholl, Aysja Johnson, Chase Denecke and Ben Korpan. And then whoever decides to show up. Hopefully a lot of interesting people.
You can run anything you'd like. One member of the lightcone team, Ronny Fernandez, will likely run authentic relating games and sing alongs. We'll also have some sequences reading groups, a new-years-eve party, a bunch of movie nights, and probably a bunch of other things we'll come up with.
You can bring guests on occasion, but if they are taking up a lot of the campus's resources, eg, snacks, common space, etc. we may ask you to stop bringing them or pay for their common space access. If you buy a room, you can have guests in your room whenever you would like.
Yes. We'll be working to make sure there's space where children can hang out, and I expect we can find you a cluster of bedrooms that meet your needs. (Each additional person should also pay for general access. Children under 12 can come for free.)
Snacks are included with a room and with common space access. There are no restrictions on where you can go, other than other people's private rooms/offices, unless they invite you.
