HPMOR is very popular in Russia. some Russians are going to organize an hpmor anniversary party in Moscow. I'll send emails to the 1.5k olympiad winners and 7k crowdfunding participants, and the organizers will try to get the translators to publish this as an update to the original translation page.
A bunch of people have left Russia, but I'm curious whether more people will participate in the event in Moscow than in Berkeley.
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ109 | |
| 2 | Ṁ84 | |
| 3 | Ṁ68 | |
| 4 | Ṁ20 | |
| 5 | Ṁ17 |
What the... HOW? I thought the overwhelming majority of the rationalist movement were in the SF bay area, with the remainder in the rest of the US and other Western countries, not to mention that Russia in particular is a totalitarian state actively at war with the West, this is like if a marvel fan meetup in Tehran somehow outnumbered comic con
@TheAllMemeingEye Moscow has ~ 10% of all the people in Russia. Berkeley has ~0.05% and even the entire SF bay area has ~2% of the US population
And yeah despite everything there are rationalists in Russia
@Inosen_Infinity I see two key takeaways from this:
If the meetup in Moscow (population ~22M) was more successful than the meetup in Berkeley (population ~7.7M), despite being in a culturally and geographically distant country to the source of the movement, because the city was so much bigger, then perhaps the next meetup should be in Guangzhou, the heart of the largest megalopolis on the planet (population ~86M).
There is evidently a large community of rationalists in Russia, a movement that is heavily predisposed towards prediction markets according to another poll of mine, but according to my poll I shared here Russians currently make up a near zero fraction of the Manifold userbase, therefore Russia may be the most promising region for Manifold to advertise itself in to grow.
@TheAllMemeingEye there’s a cultural chunk of Russians that is closer to Berkeley than to anything else. HPMOR is a very natural fit for them.
(Mostly, these people in Russia don’t speak English well; and also, they can’t really buy mana due to their cards not working for purchases on the internet abroad.)
@ms thanks for explaining 👍
Is there a name for this cultural chunk? Is it just the Russian translation for techbros / progressives?
@TheAllMemeingEye there isn’t really a name. People who are into science, atheism, sci-fi, etc.; not techbros; just well-educated people into the science aesthetics; not necessarily as a notable part of their identity. HPMOR is a great fit for people who don't find that kind of mindset alien.
Two random pieces of context:
In the USSR, people weren’t supposed to think critically; atheism was more of a religion than reasonable beliefs; but there was a lot of aesthetics around figuring out what the world really is, doing science, etc., and many grew up generalizing to think critically anyway (and many didn’t and were eaten by religions immediately after the USSR collapsed). So some people are culturally into science, space, etc.
One of the traditional NYE Russian movies is a story based on a popular sci-fi about a “Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday_Begins_on_Saturday.
@ms Thanks for sharing :)
HPMOR is a very natural fit for them
[...]
HPMOR is a great fit for people who find that kind of mindset alien.
Hang on, aren't these opposites? Is the second one a typo?
the organizers of the party in Moscow hope fewer 500 people will join it