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I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs t

by wenc 2y ago

I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisely because you meet people who are different from you, who have different ideas. Sometime even it could be obnoxious people. I think obnoxious people — I mean, what I consider obnoxious — are necessary in order to stimulate.” In North America, there is a very strong cultural preference to isolate oneself (probably a residual effect of the frontier spirit). Hence a strong preference for suburban single family homes with backyards (“for the kids and the dog”) and which results in spread out developments where people rarely have to interact. That’s fine — but realize that’s a cultural preference. I grew up in a house with no backyard and had an idyllic childhood. I knew my neighbors and biked to the playground. I was as happy as a clam. To this day, I don’t feel any need to own a house with a backyard. That is also a cultural preference.

jacobgkau 2y ago
> In North America, there is a very strong cultural preference to isolate oneself There's also a "very strong cultural preference" to be "obnoxious," as you put it. Hence a strong preference to isolate oneself. I'd be fine living and raising a family in a high-rise downtown in a country where people behave themselves. Not here in the US. The comparison isn't apples-to-apples.
- pnw 2y ago
  High density living in a downtown area is inversely correlated with having a family across a wide selection of different countries though. The highest density countries like Korea and Japan have some of the lowest fertility rates. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34914431/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34914431/
  - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    > The highest density countries like Korea and Japan have some of the lowest fertility rates. I'm going to doubt that's because of density. That's entirely because of toxic aspects of the cultures (especially work and education culture) that make it near impossible to have and raise a child for the first few years of their life.
    - astrange 2y ago
      Generally speaking, birth rate declines happen because people have more things to do than have children. That's why all rich countries experience them and noone has been able to reverse them. (Japan actually has slightly reversed theirs. Korea hasn't because Korean men are awful misogynists no women want to associate with.) There are high density countries with high birth rates though; they're either very religious (Israel) or very poor (Africa).
    - pnw 2y ago
      The same effect can be observed in animals and one theory is that it's a stress reaction to densely populated environments. https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/162/11/bqab154/6354390 https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/162/11/bqab154/6354390
l33tbro 2y ago
> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I used to think along similar lines. But I haven't found moving out of the city to be subtractive of my 'intellectual life'. If anything, it has been complementary - due to being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city. That said, I've very consciously kept those former social connections alive (I'm an hour away), as I still need semi-regular social interaction with people much smarter than me.
- fragmede 2y ago
  It depends on how you lived in the city and how much video calling you do outside of work. If you're an hour away, it doesn't make sense to meet a friend in the city for coffee for 30 minutes and then drive home, but if that's not how you interacted with people in the city, then living in the suburbs or rural areas isn't going to change how you interact with them.
- titanomachy 2y ago
  > being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city I just spent a couple weeks visiting a friend in a (fairly affluent) rural mountain town, and felt this overwhelmingly. Most discussion amongst rural people seems to focus on things that directly affect them and that they can in turn affect. Community projects, social events, improving their schools, local gossip, etc. In contrast, my city friends spend a lot of time on "bigger" subjects: wars, geopolitical and economic trends, our predictions on technological development... also, a lot of conversation about people's travel plans and that sort of thing. Rich city people always seem to be traveling out of the city, or planning their next travel. It's not that the rural people are ignorant of the world, rather, I think it's a conscious choice to focus on things in their sphere of influence. It was a really nice reminder for me. If I ask a city friend "how have you been doing?" I'm likely to hear something like "oh, I've just been so stressed about this election" or "I've been worrying about AI taking my job". A rural friend might say something about digging their neighbor's house out after the latest snowstorm, or start talking about the new ski trail that their community just built.
- bee_rider 2y ago
Waterluvian 2y ago
I’m not sure I’d draw any general conclusions from your experience. It’s a rather broad brush. I grew up in a very intellectual city (Waterloo) with a back yard with big wood fences and we just became experts climbing them, venturing from yard to yard collecting half a dozen kids. We’d bike all over, including to the universities (though Laurier campus didn’t feel interesting). I moved to a very blue collar small city and it feels pretty much the same. My kids are bringing back a lot of nostalgia for me, I’ve made a lot of friends at the curling club, and I’m mentoring a local high school’s robotics team (one difference: I’ve learned that young farmers are incredible engineers). I wouldn’t suggest that my experience is normal either, though.
- wenc 2y ago
  I get it. I lived part of my life in Southern Ontario and knew a bunch of people from Waterloo and surrounding areas — absolutely brilliant mechanical minds. (Farmers truly make great engineers — in fact many famous American engineers trace their roots to farming communities in Wisconsin or some such). But suppose you were interested in Rousseau or Great Books. You wouldn’t find too many people willing to connect on that. But in a big city you will find both types and more.
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    >But suppose you were interested in Rousseau Ironically enough as a sidenote, Rousseau most definitely was not a proponent of urban living, and in fact detested the intellectual cosmopolitan more than just about anyone else, he went so far as to declare big cities the abyss of the human species. I don't personally agree but that is one tough philosopher for the aspiring urbanite
gazook89 2y ago
I think it’s likely folly to think that the big city is only place where intellectual pursuit and learning can happen. I often tell people that living in a rural area is much like living in the city, but living next to the city is like neither.
- fragmede 2y ago
  It's a simple matter of density. It's not about intellect or intellectual pursuit at large, rural people are plenty smart. It's that intellectual pursuits can be very niche, and you're more likely to find someone that shares that very specific intellectual pursuit the more people there are, in close proximity. If you're located somewhere rural, your closest neighbors maybe 30 mins away, and friends often further. That's a totally different experience compared to having your friends live in the same high rise or be your neighbor 3 mins away. Not saying that one is better than the other, but they're clearly different.
  - wenc 2y ago
    This is it. It’s proximity. Let’s say you’re interested in transformers. In a big city, you could go to a meetup, talk to different people working on this stuff at a production level (maybe there’s even some guy who works on it at Google), talk about tips or pitfalls that no one ever publishes and potentially have the conversation veer off to DuckDB or some obscure topic. When you have a gathering of like minds, the conversation can go in unpredictable directions and you can potentially land in very interesting places. In a less urban area, this is far less likely to happen because there are just fewer people with the same interests (unless you’re lucky). I grew up with friends who were absolutely brilliant (high fluid intelligence) who come from farming families. But they just weren’t interested in what I was interested in. The core of intellectual pursuit isn’t just smart people, but the confluence of people who have the same interests and who are also well positioned. You might ask, can’t you just learn this stuff online and talk to people on Reddit? But the reality is that positive effects of randomness require real life undirected interactions with the right people. (This is for instance why people are willing to relocate to a cold city like Montreal (-30°C/-22°F in the winter) to work in Bengio’s lab for a couple of years, just so they can overhear lunchtime conversations about how to train certain models. A lot of this knowledge is caught and not taught.) I’ve gotten so many ideas from just random conversations with well positioned people who happened to be doing something important and interesting. It’s not just about being smart.
ryandrake 2y ago
> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. This part of choosing where to live is so important and hard to articulate. I remember when I moved from small town to small town, then finally out to Silicon Valley. The first thing I noticed was the billboards by the side of 101. They were about programming frameworks, iPhones, hackerspaces, development tools and so on... Where I came from, the billboards along the highway said things like "Don't Shake Your Baby" and "Jesus Hates Sinners" and "Lift Kits For Your Truck". The vibe of the Valley and the general interest in intellectual things made me think for the first time in my life "I'm among my own people now!" Since then, as we all know, the vibe has changed, and I've moved away, but for a very brief special period of time, my quality of life was greatly enhanced just by being in this nexus of people who's values and interests aligned with my own.
- flawn 2y ago
  Hmm, tangentially related, but how would you say SF changed? Where would you get this feeling of SF back then nowadays? Thought about giving SF a visit in summer as an aspiring software engineer & entrepreneur but curious to what you think about it.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Hard to say, and it's highly subjective. It just feels like Silicon Valley is no longer about building cool things and making the world better through technology. It's become about exploitation and extraction, instead of building. It's about capturing and controlling users rather than serving them. It's about "crushing it in the market, bro." It's grindset, hustle culture, performative work. It's about phony tech chops and faking everything until you make it financially or crash and burn. Maybe it's always been this way and I just didn't see it when I moved there. In terms of respect for intellectual pursuits and expertise and institutions that respect these things, the place is still head and shoulders above most of the USA, but it feels like every part of the valley has been utterly corrupted by hustle and greed. I came out here expecting Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, but lately the place has morphed into Theranos, FTX, and innumerable Fintech, AI and crypto scams. Not to mention GiantTech capturing and gatekeeping everything else that's not a scam.
williamtrask 2y ago
Having lived in both rural and urban settings, I'm not sure the isolation you describe would be as correlated as you think. People in rural areas still hang out with one another (and even... alot) and people in cities still isolate themselves. To follow that line further, I'd argue that the fact that rural living gives you less choice in company increases the degree to which you invest in the relationships that happen to be around. Consequently, rural living can create a greater sense of intimacy and companionship than the bustle of a city where there's always a new face around the corner (if you get bored of the old faces).
- kennyloginz 2y ago
  I’m curious, do you live on a farm, or a suburb?
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    Villages and small towns exist.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      Yeah but on the census is your area rural or urban? Lots of people LARP as rural despite living in an urban area. Big difference between a small town a truly rural. My friend lives in a rural place; it's a full 30min drive to the grocery store on one lane each way highways. There's like six restaurants in 80mi.
      - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
        You are kind of missing the point. You can have a small rural town where the people in the town generally all live in/around the town but between that town and the next town over might be 1-2 hours. In that type of small town you still have quick access to your necessities and you can walk to your neighbors' houses but once you get out of the bounds of your small town it might be 30 minutes before you see the next building, an hour to the next small town, and 4-6 hours to the nearest city or large town.
danenania 2y ago
I don’t think suburbs are the cause of isolation. I’m on the tail end of a trip to Argentina and I can tell you that in general, people in the suburbs here are out and about, chatting with the neighbors, and getting together with family/friends in their backyards all the time.
- em-bee 2y ago
  i read the parent comment as the desire for isolation being the cause of suburbs,
  - danenania 2y ago
    Either way, the association between suburbia and loneliness/isolation isn’t a universal thing. People in Argentina definitely aren’t seeking isolation in the suburbs. They mainly seem to want more space to host gatherings of everyone they know.
scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
As an American I can see your points, but then as a European you’re making some wild leaps of logic there. Not all urban environments always provide the learning that’s best for you. Some communities which “don’t favor intellectual pursuits” end up actually being far more intellectual than the most ambitious elite city-dwelling ones. Most childhoods end up idyllic. All configurations humans put themselves into exist. Though I will say that I am lucky to say that I did come back to folks who really do value intellectual pursuits, though it did take some time for me to take notice. The urban environment though, not so sure about that anymore, lots of noise and distraction.
cactusplant7374 2y ago
I can appreciate that being a bit of an obnoxious person myself.
lolinder 2y ago
Interestingly, the quote you cite here seems to be specifically directed at G.K. Chesterton, who said exactly the opposite—that larger societies tend towards reducing the amount of variety that you experience, precisely because you can choose to associate primarily with people who you relate to [0]. In a small community, you could choose to be entirely isolated, but if you want company you'll need to associate with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker—there's no way to keep company only with the particular class of intellectuals that you find stimulating. Speaking as someone who's currently living in a small rural town, I concur with Chesterton here: if you really want to understand people in all their varieties, the city isn't the place to be. In most cities I've spent time in everyone walks or (worse) drive past thousands to reach the few who they already relate to. If you want variety, if you want to stretch your own perspectives, then you want to be in a small town where people actually stop and talk to each other because there's no one else to talk to. [0] > It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. ... the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul ... A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Yes, this is often overlooked by VHCOL urbanists. I split my time between a VHCOL city and a MCOL exurb. My VHCOL city neighbors / friends all have laptop jobs like me. They all vote like me. They all went to competitive colleges like me. They had to pass through all the same sorting mechanisms in order to afford the VHCOL lifestyle. My MCOL exurb friends & neighbors include building contractors, teachers, professors, cops, cafe owners, etc. Their voting and education are heterogenous.
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mlinhares 2y ago
Reminder that there was no cultural preference, this was done (like in other places) to keep the industrial engine running, mainly carmakers. The more roads there are, the more cars people will buy and the more they will drive, this, mixed up with redlining and other racist policies created the environment we live in today. This was not the only way it could have gone, but it ended up being like this due to the government kowtowing to the moneyed interests.
- vel0city 2y ago
  > Reminder that there was no cultural preference, this was done (like in other places) to keep the industrial engine running, mainly carmakers. Sounds like you've barely talked to people living in suburbs. A ton of the people I talk to are very pro-SFH, big easements, lot restrictions, etc. Go to a city council meeting talking about rezoning for higher density. Tell me how all those people are on the car manufacturer's payrolls. These people want this. They keep moving further outwards willingly because they want bigger houses on bigger lots with fewer of the "others". It's the same people who argue transit brings the homeless and crime to your area, so the way to end homelessness is to end public transit. They don't need to be on the auto industry payroll or influenced by their propaganda; isolation is the goal.
  - mlinhares 2y ago
    They didn't want this, they've been made to want this because that's what society expects out of them, due to how public transportation in this country sucks everywhere and the infrastructure in big cities is a joke. Worse, having kids in such places is terrible as childcare is expensive, there are few parks or things to do with kids that don't require you to pay for it, and the city itself isn't made for kids on strollers. These people are now sicker, sadder, more isolated, and with less access to good jobs and education than before. Now the jobs are far away, requiring hour-long commutes and they can't even buy bread without driving, sometimes for a long time. Whenever I visit Europe its such a wild experience, being able to take public transportation to many places, having parks all over the place, sometimes parks surrounded by restaurants and bars. It feels vibrant, with kids everywhere. I'm glad I have a large support group here in the US and we've made many friends in the burbs (mainly because they also have kids), but this is not the reality for a lot of folks.
jongjong 2y ago
I had to move back to be closer to my parents in a town which doesn't value intellectual pursuits because I couldn't find a job in the tech sector in the big city after almost a year. This is in spite of having a long list of technical accomplishments and an impeccable public track record under my belt. My dad kept reminding me how I shouldn't have pursued coding and studied to be a lawyer instead... He alluded to my cousin who never went to university and was able to buy a house by being a truck driver and then working in the mines. Sigh. He is right though. I feel like a fool; a caricature of the stereotypical book-smart, street-dumb geek, crawling back to the small town on my knees just to have the town folk rub dirt in my face, feeling proud of themselves for never having taken such foolish risks in their lives.
- dqh 2y ago
  > This is in spite of having a long list of technical accomplishments and an impeccable public track record under my belt. If skills aren’t the problem, one possibility is that a rigid attitude, lack of humility, or something like that is rubbing interviewers the wrong way. Please forgive my unsolicited advice and good luck with the search.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Or honestly maybe just bad luck. Lots of possibilities for just a one-off internet comment. But yeah no doubt wise to do some self reflection and analyze what one could do better when trying again. One shouldn't just continue the same strategy without reflection when faluire occurs. But also don't be too hard on yourself, sometimes things just don't work out.
    - jongjong 2y ago
      I hope it's bad luck because I struggle to find what else to improve. I can launch high quality projects quickly and reliably and my main concern is product-market fit. I feel like I've tried everything and its opposite. Problem I face now is I've lost a lot of faith in the system and it requires a lot of energy to maintain my work ethic and also maintain the outward appearance that I still believe in success. I often feel like I'm only role-playing entrepreneurship and there is no chance of success. Sometimes I feel as though I'm being hindered artificially by some hidden forces but I try not to focus on this. It's partly why I share my experiences online and why I talk about this with my co-founder and family members. It helps when others validate my experiences because it can often feel like too many coincidences. I worry the feeling might get worse with AI now literally manipulating people's psychology and thus, the markets as well. There's a chance my fears may become reality. It'd be silly to keep working on a startup if there was a super-intelligence preventing me (or any new industry entrant) from succeeding right? This is a new reality I may need to factor in at some point. Would have been insane to think that way 5 years ago. Not so insane anymore.
bodegajed 2y ago
That is true. I would love to have intellectual friends who like the arts, like pottery, writing, and music. I imagine those hobbies to be very affordable. > cultural preference to isolate oneself In retrospect, we, as a society, developed this notion of private property. Consumerism and mass media did this to us. But historically, we did not own much. Someone would hunt and gather, and the elders would stay and look out for the children. Imagine you're retired, old, frail, yet surrounded by children who are willing to help you.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  consumerism and mass media did not create private property. Scribes didn't write about it that anybody read, and the first printing press was already private property.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  "Private property"* in the sense you're using it here likely already existed by the the time of hunter gatherers. In some senses it even exists in many animals. The more common term for it is personal property: "this is my house, you can't live here; those are my scraps, you can't have them". Many animals also have their own nests, that they will defend from others; or even their own territory where only they hunt, and which they will fight others trying to encroach on. This is the type of property that is the most natural actually, and I can't really see what it has to do with isolation. Even an idealized communist society (think Ursula LeGuinn, not Stalin) would still have this type of property, and consumerism (accumulating doodads you use every day) would still be a possible risk. * in these types of discussions, when discussing the origins of such basic concepts, private property is often understood to refer to ownership of goods you are not directly using on a day-to-day basis. If you live in a house, that's personal property. If you own a house someone else lives in, that's private property. And this is indeed a much newer idea in human society (though still much, much older than media).
vel0city 2y ago
I grew up in a suburban house with a backyard that opened to many acres of swamplands and nature preserves. It was also a bicycle ride away to go to a few different parks, the movie and video game rental store in the same strip as a corner store with all kinds of snacks and ice cream, go visit Space Center Houston, go fishing on the lake, and even take a canoe all the way to the bay. I had friends in my neighborhood, friends in nearby neighborhoods, and friends all over the city by the time I was 13. Now my kids have a backyard. They are also a short walk to a city park with multiple playgrounds, a small trail through the woods, a fishing pond, and more. They can hop on the bus and go to the library or the many other parks. They can hop on grade separated bike trails and ride for dozens of miles through nature reserves. We take the train to watch hockey games deeper into the city pretty often. Suburb doesn't have to mean isolation. If often does, but it doesn't have to. Meanwhile I know many people who live deeper in the city who barely know anyone in the city and rarely interact with people outside of Discord.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I'm curious what suburb you're in, that sounds nice. Grade separated bike trails and train service is something most suburbs in the US lack (though they might have recreational bike trails that don't go to the centre of town). Visiting Houten in the Netherlands is a reminder that you can have a boring suburb that still gives kids freedom.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    My childhood was in Clear Lake (just outside of Houston, Southeast side, near the bay), I live in Richardson today. And yes I do agree many suburbs aren't like this. They should be IMO, if we're going to keep building suburbs.
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
I think it’s easier to isolate in an urban setting.
aylmao 2y ago
> Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisely because you meet people who are different from you, who have different ideas. Sometime even it could be obnoxious people. I think obnoxious people — I mean, what I consider obnoxious — are necessary in order to stimulate.” I've experienced the opposite too, having lived in both NYC and San Francisco: urban homogeneity, and even monocultures. Yes, San Francisco is very diverse in the origin of its people, but the people who move there tend to fit certain molds, regardless of their cultural background. New York might attract more varied "types", but the act of moving to NYC still tends to select for a certain socio-economic level, a willingness to make certain sacrifices, people with certain life-goals and expectations, etc. I surprisingly have found more diverse personalities and ideas in smaller places that are less selective (in price, profession, ideology, etc) to move to or to live in. Places where a software engineer might frequent the same gym as an insurance salesperson, an elementary-school teacher and a tattoo artist, even if (and perhaps because) they're all from there and didn't move in for a job.
- donw 2y ago
  This fits with my experience living in SF: people might look different, but if you were to be blindfolded and talk to a group of them, you would struggle mightily to pick out any substantial differences between individuals.
  - everly 2y ago
    Sounds like you're thinking inside of a fairly small bubble. If you picked 10 people, at random, from the 800k residents, I assure you that there would be substantial differences. Off the top of my head, you might get SF State students, tech bros, Chinatown senior citizens who have never left an 8-block radius and don't speak english, Marina moms, Mission District multi-gen families. I mean, come on. Maybe if you were only picking from people working at tech cos, but even then my experience does not match yours.
    - lolinder 2y ago
throwingrocks 2y ago
Sorry AI, not taking the bait today.
imrehg 2y ago
Where's that Alain Bertaud quote from? I'd be interested in listening/reading more about his stuff.
- veunes 2y ago
  I do not know from where the quote is but he wrote a book - Order Without Design
somenameforme 2y ago
Your experience in rural areas differs quite extremely from those I have had. In particular living in rural areas basically forces one to have hobbies. Even in the most rural areas of areas I found people whose interests included astronomy, plenty of guys into computing stuff, radio/ham culture, taxonomy, and so on endlessly. Incidentally the guy who was huge into astronomy, with an educational background in it on top, was also a biker who was built like a tank and tatted from (nearly) head to toe. Of course there were also plenty of people whose hobby was 'drink self into stupor and watch TV' but they were not the rule. It's also way easier to meet people in rural areas because you see the same people regularly, and a friendly chat at the local convenience mart is pretty normal, as opposed to the instinct you get in cities where if somebody is actively seeking you out to chat, then he's probably either a weirdo or looking to scam you or, equivalently, sell you something. The same instinct that makes it difficult for you to approach people to chat.
dukeofdoom 2y ago
I grew up in a small nowhere village, lived in small and large cities, and even Rome. But I think the sweet spot is a small city of about 200k. Though I find that it probably depends on which stage of life you are at. The older I get the more I'm tempted to move to even smaller city. And now, it's even hard to go camping, without civilization being within short driving distance. People are everywhere. My closet is full of winter jackets, that somehow it never gets cold enough for me to wear. I think people sometimes shop for a solution to a problem they don't have. Or that they fear the problem so much they overcompensate.

by wenc 2y ago

jacobgkau 2y ago

> In North America, there is a very strong cultural preference to isolate oneself There's also a "very strong cultural preference" to be "obnoxious," as you put it. Hence a strong preference to isolate oneself. I'd be fine living and raising a family in a high-rise downtown in a country where people behave themselves. Not here in the US. The comparison isn't apples-to-apples.

pnw 2y ago
High density living in a downtown area is inversely correlated with having a family across a wide selection of different countries though. The highest density countries like Korea and Japan have some of the lowest fertility rates. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34914431/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34914431/
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  > The highest density countries like Korea and Japan have some of the lowest fertility rates. I'm going to doubt that's because of density. That's entirely because of toxic aspects of the cultures (especially work and education culture) that make it near impossible to have and raise a child for the first few years of their life.
  - astrange 2y ago
    Generally speaking, birth rate declines happen because people have more things to do than have children. That's why all rich countries experience them and noone has been able to reverse them. (Japan actually has slightly reversed theirs. Korea hasn't because Korean men are awful misogynists no women want to associate with.) There are high density countries with high birth rates though; they're either very religious (Israel) or very poor (Africa).
  - pnw 2y ago
    The same effect can be observed in animals and one theory is that it's a stress reaction to densely populated environments. https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/162/11/bqab154/6354390 https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/162/11/bqab154/6354390

l33tbro 2y ago

> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I used to think along similar lines. But I haven't found moving out of the city to be subtractive of my 'intellectual life'. If anything, it has been complementary - due to being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city. That said, I've very consciously kept those former social connections alive (I'm an hour away), as I still need semi-regular social interaction with people much smarter than me.

fragmede 2y ago
It depends on how you lived in the city and how much video calling you do outside of work. If you're an hour away, it doesn't make sense to meet a friend in the city for coffee for 30 minutes and then drive home, but if that's not how you interacted with people in the city, then living in the suburbs or rural areas isn't going to change how you interact with them.
titanomachy 2y ago
> being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city I just spent a couple weeks visiting a friend in a (fairly affluent) rural mountain town, and felt this overwhelmingly. Most discussion amongst rural people seems to focus on things that directly affect them and that they can in turn affect. Community projects, social events, improving their schools, local gossip, etc. In contrast, my city friends spend a lot of time on "bigger" subjects: wars, geopolitical and economic trends, our predictions on technological development... also, a lot of conversation about people's travel plans and that sort of thing. Rich city people always seem to be traveling out of the city, or planning their next travel. It's not that the rural people are ignorant of the world, rather, I think it's a conscious choice to focus on things in their sphere of influence. It was a really nice reminder for me. If I ask a city friend "how have you been doing?" I'm likely to hear something like "oh, I've just been so stressed about this election" or "I've been worrying about AI taking my job". A rural friend might say something about digging their neighbor's house out after the latest snowstorm, or start talking about the new ski trail that their community just built.
bee_rider 2y ago

Waterluvian 2y ago

I’m not sure I’d draw any general conclusions from your experience. It’s a rather broad brush. I grew up in a very intellectual city (Waterloo) with a back yard with big wood fences and we just became experts climbing them, venturing from yard to yard collecting half a dozen kids. We’d bike all over, including to the universities (though Laurier campus didn’t feel interesting). I moved to a very blue collar small city and it feels pretty much the same. My kids are bringing back a lot of nostalgia for me, I’ve made a lot of friends at the curling club, and I’m mentoring a local high school’s robotics team (one difference: I’ve learned that young farmers are incredible engineers). I wouldn’t suggest that my experience is normal either, though.

wenc 2y ago
I get it. I lived part of my life in Southern Ontario and knew a bunch of people from Waterloo and surrounding areas — absolutely brilliant mechanical minds. (Farmers truly make great engineers — in fact many famous American engineers trace their roots to farming communities in Wisconsin or some such). But suppose you were interested in Rousseau or Great Books. You wouldn’t find too many people willing to connect on that. But in a big city you will find both types and more.
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >But suppose you were interested in Rousseau Ironically enough as a sidenote, Rousseau most definitely was not a proponent of urban living, and in fact detested the intellectual cosmopolitan more than just about anyone else, he went so far as to declare big cities the abyss of the human species. I don't personally agree but that is one tough philosopher for the aspiring urbanite

gazook89 2y ago

I think it’s likely folly to think that the big city is only place where intellectual pursuit and learning can happen. I often tell people that living in a rural area is much like living in the city, but living next to the city is like neither.

fragmede 2y ago
It's a simple matter of density. It's not about intellect or intellectual pursuit at large, rural people are plenty smart. It's that intellectual pursuits can be very niche, and you're more likely to find someone that shares that very specific intellectual pursuit the more people there are, in close proximity. If you're located somewhere rural, your closest neighbors maybe 30 mins away, and friends often further. That's a totally different experience compared to having your friends live in the same high rise or be your neighbor 3 mins away. Not saying that one is better than the other, but they're clearly different.
- wenc 2y ago
  This is it. It’s proximity. Let’s say you’re interested in transformers. In a big city, you could go to a meetup, talk to different people working on this stuff at a production level (maybe there’s even some guy who works on it at Google), talk about tips or pitfalls that no one ever publishes and potentially have the conversation veer off to DuckDB or some obscure topic. When you have a gathering of like minds, the conversation can go in unpredictable directions and you can potentially land in very interesting places. In a less urban area, this is far less likely to happen because there are just fewer people with the same interests (unless you’re lucky). I grew up with friends who were absolutely brilliant (high fluid intelligence) who come from farming families. But they just weren’t interested in what I was interested in. The core of intellectual pursuit isn’t just smart people, but the confluence of people who have the same interests and who are also well positioned. You might ask, can’t you just learn this stuff online and talk to people on Reddit? But the reality is that positive effects of randomness require real life undirected interactions with the right people. (This is for instance why people are willing to relocate to a cold city like Montreal (-30°C/-22°F in the winter) to work in Bengio’s lab for a couple of years, just so they can overhear lunchtime conversations about how to train certain models. A lot of this knowledge is caught and not taught.) I’ve gotten so many ideas from just random conversations with well positioned people who happened to be doing something important and interesting. It’s not just about being smart.

ryandrake 2y ago

> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. This part of choosing where to live is so important and hard to articulate. I remember when I moved from small town to small town, then finally out to Silicon Valley. The first thing I noticed was the billboards by the side of 101. They were about programming frameworks, iPhones, hackerspaces, development tools and so on... Where I came from, the billboards along the highway said things like "Don't Shake Your Baby" and "Jesus Hates Sinners" and "Lift Kits For Your Truck". The vibe of the Valley and the general interest in intellectual things made me think for the first time in my life "I'm among my own people now!" Since then, as we all know, the vibe has changed, and I've moved away, but for a very brief special period of time, my quality of life was greatly enhanced just by being in this nexus of people who's values and interests aligned with my own.

flawn 2y ago
Hmm, tangentially related, but how would you say SF changed? Where would you get this feeling of SF back then nowadays? Thought about giving SF a visit in summer as an aspiring software engineer & entrepreneur but curious to what you think about it.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Hard to say, and it's highly subjective. It just feels like Silicon Valley is no longer about building cool things and making the world better through technology. It's become about exploitation and extraction, instead of building. It's about capturing and controlling users rather than serving them. It's about "crushing it in the market, bro." It's grindset, hustle culture, performative work. It's about phony tech chops and faking everything until you make it financially or crash and burn. Maybe it's always been this way and I just didn't see it when I moved there. In terms of respect for intellectual pursuits and expertise and institutions that respect these things, the place is still head and shoulders above most of the USA, but it feels like every part of the valley has been utterly corrupted by hustle and greed. I came out here expecting Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, but lately the place has morphed into Theranos, FTX, and innumerable Fintech, AI and crypto scams. Not to mention GiantTech capturing and gatekeeping everything else that's not a scam.

williamtrask 2y ago

Having lived in both rural and urban settings, I'm not sure the isolation you describe would be as correlated as you think. People in rural areas still hang out with one another (and even... alot) and people in cities still isolate themselves. To follow that line further, I'd argue that the fact that rural living gives you less choice in company increases the degree to which you invest in the relationships that happen to be around. Consequently, rural living can create a greater sense of intimacy and companionship than the bustle of a city where there's always a new face around the corner (if you get bored of the old faces).

kennyloginz 2y ago
I’m curious, do you live on a farm, or a suburb?
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  Villages and small towns exist.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Yeah but on the census is your area rural or urban? Lots of people LARP as rural despite living in an urban area. Big difference between a small town a truly rural. My friend lives in a rural place; it's a full 30min drive to the grocery store on one lane each way highways. There's like six restaurants in 80mi.
    - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
      You are kind of missing the point. You can have a small rural town where the people in the town generally all live in/around the town but between that town and the next town over might be 1-2 hours. In that type of small town you still have quick access to your necessities and you can walk to your neighbors' houses but once you get out of the bounds of your small town it might be 30 minutes before you see the next building, an hour to the next small town, and 4-6 hours to the nearest city or large town.

danenania 2y ago

I don’t think suburbs are the cause of isolation. I’m on the tail end of a trip to Argentina and I can tell you that in general, people in the suburbs here are out and about, chatting with the neighbors, and getting together with family/friends in their backyards all the time.

em-bee 2y ago
i read the parent comment as the desire for isolation being the cause of suburbs,
- danenania 2y ago
  Either way, the association between suburbia and loneliness/isolation isn’t a universal thing. People in Argentina definitely aren’t seeking isolation in the suburbs. They mainly seem to want more space to host gatherings of everyone they know.

scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago

As an American I can see your points, but then as a European you’re making some wild leaps of logic there. Not all urban environments always provide the learning that’s best for you. Some communities which “don’t favor intellectual pursuits” end up actually being far more intellectual than the most ambitious elite city-dwelling ones. Most childhoods end up idyllic. All configurations humans put themselves into exist. Though I will say that I am lucky to say that I did come back to folks who really do value intellectual pursuits, though it did take some time for me to take notice. The urban environment though, not so sure about that anymore, lots of noise and distraction.

cactusplant7374 2y ago

I can appreciate that being a bit of an obnoxious person myself.

lolinder 2y ago

Interestingly, the quote you cite here seems to be specifically directed at G.K. Chesterton, who said exactly the opposite—that larger societies tend towards reducing the amount of variety that you experience, precisely because you can choose to associate primarily with people who you relate to [0]. In a small community, you could choose to be entirely isolated, but if you want company you'll need to associate with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker—there's no way to keep company only with the particular class of intellectuals that you find stimulating. Speaking as someone who's currently living in a small rural town, I concur with Chesterton here: if you really want to understand people in all their varieties, the city isn't the place to be. In most cities I've spent time in everyone walks or (worse) drive past thousands to reach the few who they already relate to. If you want variety, if you want to stretch your own perspectives, then you want to be in a small town where people actually stop and talk to each other because there's no one else to talk to. [0] > It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. ... the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul ... A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html

steveBK123 2y ago
Yes, this is often overlooked by VHCOL urbanists. I split my time between a VHCOL city and a MCOL exurb. My VHCOL city neighbors / friends all have laptop jobs like me. They all vote like me. They all went to competitive colleges like me. They had to pass through all the same sorting mechanisms in order to afford the VHCOL lifestyle. My MCOL exurb friends & neighbors include building contractors, teachers, professors, cops, cafe owners, etc. Their voting and education are heterogenous.

deleted 2y ago

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mlinhares 2y ago

Reminder that there was no cultural preference, this was done (like in other places) to keep the industrial engine running, mainly carmakers. The more roads there are, the more cars people will buy and the more they will drive, this, mixed up with redlining and other racist policies created the environment we live in today. This was not the only way it could have gone, but it ended up being like this due to the government kowtowing to the moneyed interests.

vel0city 2y ago
> Reminder that there was no cultural preference, this was done (like in other places) to keep the industrial engine running, mainly carmakers. Sounds like you've barely talked to people living in suburbs. A ton of the people I talk to are very pro-SFH, big easements, lot restrictions, etc. Go to a city council meeting talking about rezoning for higher density. Tell me how all those people are on the car manufacturer's payrolls. These people want this. They keep moving further outwards willingly because they want bigger houses on bigger lots with fewer of the "others". It's the same people who argue transit brings the homeless and crime to your area, so the way to end homelessness is to end public transit. They don't need to be on the auto industry payroll or influenced by their propaganda; isolation is the goal.
- mlinhares 2y ago
  They didn't want this, they've been made to want this because that's what society expects out of them, due to how public transportation in this country sucks everywhere and the infrastructure in big cities is a joke. Worse, having kids in such places is terrible as childcare is expensive, there are few parks or things to do with kids that don't require you to pay for it, and the city itself isn't made for kids on strollers. These people are now sicker, sadder, more isolated, and with less access to good jobs and education than before. Now the jobs are far away, requiring hour-long commutes and they can't even buy bread without driving, sometimes for a long time. Whenever I visit Europe its such a wild experience, being able to take public transportation to many places, having parks all over the place, sometimes parks surrounded by restaurants and bars. It feels vibrant, with kids everywhere. I'm glad I have a large support group here in the US and we've made many friends in the burbs (mainly because they also have kids), but this is not the reality for a lot of folks.

jongjong 2y ago

I had to move back to be closer to my parents in a town which doesn't value intellectual pursuits because I couldn't find a job in the tech sector in the big city after almost a year. This is in spite of having a long list of technical accomplishments and an impeccable public track record under my belt. My dad kept reminding me how I shouldn't have pursued coding and studied to be a lawyer instead... He alluded to my cousin who never went to university and was able to buy a house by being a truck driver and then working in the mines. Sigh. He is right though. I feel like a fool; a caricature of the stereotypical book-smart, street-dumb geek, crawling back to the small town on my knees just to have the town folk rub dirt in my face, feeling proud of themselves for never having taken such foolish risks in their lives.

dqh 2y ago
> This is in spite of having a long list of technical accomplishments and an impeccable public track record under my belt. If skills aren’t the problem, one possibility is that a rigid attitude, lack of humility, or something like that is rubbing interviewers the wrong way. Please forgive my unsolicited advice and good luck with the search.
- vel0city 2y ago
  Or honestly maybe just bad luck. Lots of possibilities for just a one-off internet comment. But yeah no doubt wise to do some self reflection and analyze what one could do better when trying again. One shouldn't just continue the same strategy without reflection when faluire occurs. But also don't be too hard on yourself, sometimes things just don't work out.
  - jongjong 2y ago
    I hope it's bad luck because I struggle to find what else to improve. I can launch high quality projects quickly and reliably and my main concern is product-market fit. I feel like I've tried everything and its opposite. Problem I face now is I've lost a lot of faith in the system and it requires a lot of energy to maintain my work ethic and also maintain the outward appearance that I still believe in success. I often feel like I'm only role-playing entrepreneurship and there is no chance of success. Sometimes I feel as though I'm being hindered artificially by some hidden forces but I try not to focus on this. It's partly why I share my experiences online and why I talk about this with my co-founder and family members. It helps when others validate my experiences because it can often feel like too many coincidences. I worry the feeling might get worse with AI now literally manipulating people's psychology and thus, the markets as well. There's a chance my fears may become reality. It'd be silly to keep working on a startup if there was a super-intelligence preventing me (or any new industry entrant) from succeeding right? This is a new reality I may need to factor in at some point. Would have been insane to think that way 5 years ago. Not so insane anymore.

bodegajed 2y ago

That is true. I would love to have intellectual friends who like the arts, like pottery, writing, and music. I imagine those hobbies to be very affordable. > cultural preference to isolate oneself In retrospect, we, as a society, developed this notion of private property. Consumerism and mass media did this to us. But historically, we did not own much. Someone would hunt and gather, and the elders would stay and look out for the children. Imagine you're retired, old, frail, yet surrounded by children who are willing to help you.

fsckboy 2y ago
consumerism and mass media did not create private property. Scribes didn't write about it that anybody read, and the first printing press was already private property.
tsimionescu 2y ago
"Private property"* in the sense you're using it here likely already existed by the the time of hunter gatherers. In some senses it even exists in many animals. The more common term for it is personal property: "this is my house, you can't live here; those are my scraps, you can't have them". Many animals also have their own nests, that they will defend from others; or even their own territory where only they hunt, and which they will fight others trying to encroach on. This is the type of property that is the most natural actually, and I can't really see what it has to do with isolation. Even an idealized communist society (think Ursula LeGuinn, not Stalin) would still have this type of property, and consumerism (accumulating doodads you use every day) would still be a possible risk. * in these types of discussions, when discussing the origins of such basic concepts, private property is often understood to refer to ownership of goods you are not directly using on a day-to-day basis. If you live in a house, that's personal property. If you own a house someone else lives in, that's private property. And this is indeed a much newer idea in human society (though still much, much older than media).

vel0city 2y ago

I grew up in a suburban house with a backyard that opened to many acres of swamplands and nature preserves. It was also a bicycle ride away to go to a few different parks, the movie and video game rental store in the same strip as a corner store with all kinds of snacks and ice cream, go visit Space Center Houston, go fishing on the lake, and even take a canoe all the way to the bay. I had friends in my neighborhood, friends in nearby neighborhoods, and friends all over the city by the time I was 13. Now my kids have a backyard. They are also a short walk to a city park with multiple playgrounds, a small trail through the woods, a fishing pond, and more. They can hop on the bus and go to the library or the many other parks. They can hop on grade separated bike trails and ride for dozens of miles through nature reserves. We take the train to watch hockey games deeper into the city pretty often. Suburb doesn't have to mean isolation. If often does, but it doesn't have to. Meanwhile I know many people who live deeper in the city who barely know anyone in the city and rarely interact with people outside of Discord.

CalRobert 2y ago
I'm curious what suburb you're in, that sounds nice. Grade separated bike trails and train service is something most suburbs in the US lack (though they might have recreational bike trails that don't go to the centre of town). Visiting Houten in the Netherlands is a reminder that you can have a boring suburb that still gives kids freedom.
- vel0city 2y ago
  My childhood was in Clear Lake (just outside of Houston, Southeast side, near the bay), I live in Richardson today. And yes I do agree many suburbs aren't like this. They should be IMO, if we're going to keep building suburbs.

zeroonetwothree 2y ago

I think it’s easier to isolate in an urban setting.

aylmao 2y ago

> Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisely because you meet people who are different from you, who have different ideas. Sometime even it could be obnoxious people. I think obnoxious people — I mean, what I consider obnoxious — are necessary in order to stimulate.” I've experienced the opposite too, having lived in both NYC and San Francisco: urban homogeneity, and even monocultures. Yes, San Francisco is very diverse in the origin of its people, but the people who move there tend to fit certain molds, regardless of their cultural background. New York might attract more varied "types", but the act of moving to NYC still tends to select for a certain socio-economic level, a willingness to make certain sacrifices, people with certain life-goals and expectations, etc. I surprisingly have found more diverse personalities and ideas in smaller places that are less selective (in price, profession, ideology, etc) to move to or to live in. Places where a software engineer might frequent the same gym as an insurance salesperson, an elementary-school teacher and a tattoo artist, even if (and perhaps because) they're all from there and didn't move in for a job.

donw 2y ago
This fits with my experience living in SF: people might look different, but if you were to be blindfolded and talk to a group of them, you would struggle mightily to pick out any substantial differences between individuals.
- everly 2y ago
  Sounds like you're thinking inside of a fairly small bubble. If you picked 10 people, at random, from the 800k residents, I assure you that there would be substantial differences. Off the top of my head, you might get SF State students, tech bros, Chinatown senior citizens who have never left an 8-block radius and don't speak english, Marina moms, Mission District multi-gen families. I mean, come on. Maybe if you were only picking from people working at tech cos, but even then my experience does not match yours.
  - lolinder 2y ago

throwingrocks 2y ago

Sorry AI, not taking the bait today.

imrehg 2y ago

Where's that Alain Bertaud quote from? I'd be interested in listening/reading more about his stuff.

veunes 2y ago
I do not know from where the quote is but he wrote a book - Order Without Design

somenameforme 2y ago

Your experience in rural areas differs quite extremely from those I have had. In particular living in rural areas basically forces one to have hobbies. Even in the most rural areas of areas I found people whose interests included astronomy, plenty of guys into computing stuff, radio/ham culture, taxonomy, and so on endlessly. Incidentally the guy who was huge into astronomy, with an educational background in it on top, was also a biker who was built like a tank and tatted from (nearly) head to toe. Of course there were also plenty of people whose hobby was 'drink self into stupor and watch TV' but they were not the rule. It's also way easier to meet people in rural areas because you see the same people regularly, and a friendly chat at the local convenience mart is pretty normal, as opposed to the instinct you get in cities where if somebody is actively seeking you out to chat, then he's probably either a weirdo or looking to scam you or, equivalently, sell you something. The same instinct that makes it difficult for you to approach people to chat.

dukeofdoom 2y ago

I grew up in a small nowhere village, lived in small and large cities, and even Rome. But I think the sweet spot is a small city of about 200k. Though I find that it probably depends on which stage of life you are at. The older I get the more I'm tempted to move to even smaller city. And now, it's even hard to go camping, without civilization being within short driving distance. People are everywhere. My closet is full of winter jackets, that somehow it never gets cold enough for me to wear. I think people sometimes shop for a solution to a problem they don't have. Or that they fear the problem so much they overcompensate.