Leaving San-Francisco

As a kid, I decided I didn’t want to learn to drive, because I knew there will be self-driving cars by the time I grow up.

I grew up, and sometimes I listen to a song based on this Scott Alexander’s post when I’m in a Waymo.

It resonates.

I don’t feel good, being in SF. So many great people are in the Bay, and it means that I am often here. The smartest, the coolest, the agentic, the ones who are saving the world, tend to accumulate here.

But I don’t like the city.

Look at its skyscrapers.

Most of these are boxes. Zero personality. Boring. Uninspiring. Liveless.

A landscape of a dead alien planet.

Compare to London.

Guess why there’s a triangle on the left and the gherkin (egg)

More gherkin! But why

seriously, guess what led it to its shape

So much space between the skyscrapers! See the triangular one on the right btw? Its shape has the same cause. (The fancy building is a shopping center btw.)

The one on the left once focused the light from the Sun on a car and burned it. Last chance to guess the reason before reading further!

In the UK, there’s a law that St. Paul’s Cathedral in the center of London has to be visible from a bunch of points around London and, sometimes, that nothing can be on the background of the cathedral.

The map of protected views. These are three-dimensional lines of sight through central London.

And so skyscrapers bend around these lines.

They have very unusual shapes.

They create a contrast with the older buildings.

Even the most unhuman pictures of them I can find are interesting.

They acquire names. The Gherkin. The Cheesegrater. The Walkie-Talkie.

They have character.

The fastest way to get around London is often on a (rental electric) bike, and everything relevant is very close, and going this is just so much more aesthetically enjoyable to bike around London skyscrapers than to be forced into a car going around the soulless boxes.

(And there are even nicer parts of London; it’s a properly large city, with a higher population than the entire Bay Area.)

Yet, with all my love for London, I’m sad to leave San-Francisco.

This time around, I went to two Halloween parties. At one of them, I met an AI company CEO and chatted and interacted with him in very mundane settings.

London, with all the fun you can have throwing and going to wholesome or interesting parties, is not a place where things happen.

I don’t want to move to SF. I have so much more impact while I’m here, and I have a lot of fun, and I have friends in SF and Berkeley, and yet I don’t like it.

This city is overtaken by AI billboards, by the homeless is scared of, and, worst of all, by the emotionally gray skyscrapers.

Still, many of the most interesting people in the world are here. This often makes me joke that I would want to move the entire Bay Area to London. I get replies that the weather is terrible, but it’s very cheap to fix: according to ChatGPT, it would only cost a few million dollars per year to seed almost all clouds so that they rain before they get to London.

(At some point, Americans bought the London Bridge, and it’s only fair that we buy a bridge back, so I’d also take the Golden Gate Bridge. It would look pretty in London. According to ChatGPT’s calculations, that would cost many billions of dollars.)

I don’t know if one day I decide to trade off London for the San-Francisco Bay Area, but if I do, it would be a sad trade, because with all of my enjoyment of the people, I won’t enjoy the city itself.

But tomorrow I’m leaving it, and it’s sad to leave everyone who’s here.