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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Berlin Hub: Longtermist co-living space (plan), published by Severin T. Seehrich on April 10, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Tl;dr: Following the example of the EA Hotel, The Berlin Hub will be a co-living and event space hosting people who are interested in contributing to humanity’s long-term future. Features include a visiting scholars program, as well as stipends for selected early-stage researchers and mentors. If you want to get involved, you can express your interest, or join our Discord. Why we think this is needed A growing number of people want to do longtermist direct work. We have mostly focused on AI alignment when assessing the demand for the hub, but already have several expressions of interest from individuals working on other causes as well. Despite there being a significant number of people who want to work on alignment in Europe, there is a mainland Europe-shaped hole in the alignment organization landscape. This makes the on-ramp for people aspiring to do direct work challenging: It is hard for individuals to convince funders, find collaborators and mentors, deal with the unusual tax situation that comes with independent research, and sustain motivation to study and work without a knowledgeable and supportive social environment. Our preliminary research leaves us convinced that there would be sufficient demand for this in the AI alignment community alone to warrant starting this project. What we offer We aim to enable longtermists to fulfill their potential by converting a full hotel or similar building into a co-living space. We will offer food and accommodation at no or low cost both for long- and short-term guests. In addition, we strive to create an atmosphere and supporting structures that take care of peoples’ basic needs. We plan to help them skill up via mentorship, resources, cohorts, talks, and workshops so that they can successfully take on projects which shift the needle on making the future good. Once things are up and running, we will also welcome individuals who fit our values and culture and decide to live nearby to use our shared spaces, e.g. for co-working. Community plan We strive to become a center for the exchange of ideas instead of cultivating an intellectual monoculture. Our plans for achieving that include contacting potential visiting scholars and offering them an engaged audience, hosting (un)conferences, and setting up exchange programs with adjacent organizations, hubs, and group houses. Once the exchange program is operational, people staying with us could swap places with people from different EA-adjacent projects and communities, granting us helpful memetic exchange. In addition, we are building partnerships with established researchers. These will help us assess applications, allow us to offer mentorship to the residents we selected, and may provide further room for synergy through the possibility of incubating new research groups and longtermist startups. An excellent example of the kind of project we would be enthusiastic to provide ops and infrastructure support to is Adam Shimi’s proposal to scale conceptual alignment research (which also has a well thought-out argument for why having an on-ramp in the Schengen Area would be valuable). He is considering us as a place to host a future version of this. Community health is a central focus. Some projects and interventions we are exploring to ensure it include: Encouraging interactions with the wider EA Berlin community, e.g. through open-to-public events at the hub Setting things up so all residents have an easy way out if they want to leave (e.g. a fund for temporary external accommodation, encouraging everyone to come up with backup plans, and normalizing taking regular time away.) Thinking carefully about how to avoid death spirals (and having that as...