Location

The Kernel is going to be located in Manchester, England, in rented houses near Manchester University, between 1.5 and 4.5 miles to the central town square (zone 1-2 equivalent) and within a 10-minute walk of a metro stop.

Manchester was chosen for multiple reasons. Including but not limited to cheap rent, a good university, a large and growing tech industry, good public transport, high volume air and rail travel connections, independent shops, music scene and gender balance.

The city has a large population too, between 2.1 and 2.8 million people depending on which methodology you use. Unlike US cities there are other large cities nearby, with a population of 14 million people within 100 kilometers of the city including the large cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Sheffield (London and SF have 18.3m and 7.6m populations at the same distance respectively, for size reference) - meaning there is a large background population to draw from, increasing the probability that there will be someone or a group of people who have a characteristic you want, eg. full stack developer with experience in X or people who have the requisite personality/background reading to be receptive to the idea of Y.

We expect monthly rents for a room to be around £280/month - with a total baseline cost of living factoring in bills, food, tax, transport, and a small discretionary budget - of about £500 for each person. More details of this are under Numbers and cost estimates

We have a gallery of photos taken while visiting Manchester to give a feel for the city.

UK vs Everywhere Else
The main advantages the UK has, for this specific project, over the rest of the world, are as follows:
 * Everyone speaks English. This avoids friction for many services and for many goals people may want to pursue.
 * There are culturally adjacent people, including potential friends and relationship partners, permitting participants to have a social circle that extends outside of the Kernel.
 * Reasonably close to existing rationalist clusters; London, Oxford, and Cambridge can be reached by train.
 * Tech and other skilled jobs are available, permitting ready access to employment.
 * Bureaucracy is relatively efficient: many tasks can be accomplished online, long in-person waits are rare. Processes are well-documented. A limited liability company can be registered for £12 within 24 hours without any help from of an accountant or lawyer.
 * Outright bribery is very rare, although sinecures are sometimes given to politicians in return for favors.
 * Infrastructure is good. Tap water is safe to drink, roads are open, lots of supermarkets are open 24 hours a day, power cuts are very rare. Amazon Prime is available for next-day or in some areas for some items even within-an-hour delivery, and most goods are available from a range of retailers with swift delivery.


 * Housing is cheap outside of the south-east (see picture)
 * Fast and cheap Internet is available in all urban areas.
 * Substantially reduced time to setup, as there are no visas or international purchasing or renting processes that need navigating.
 * Most of the founding team is from here, so there is no risk of deportation, and they have preexisting knowledge of how to navigate the regulatory environment.
 * For British citizens, no visa uncertainty over Brexit.
 * Tolerant of alternative sexualities and genders.

Urban vs Rural
Rural locations are quieter and have nature in very close proximity. However, urban locations offer a range of advantages that leads to them winning out for this project:
 * Substantially cheaper rents; rural housing is usually upwards of £50,000 per bedroom, whereas urban housing is often under £30,000 even on the outskirts of a city.
 * Better access to jobs, friends, and other aspects of an outside community.
 * More convenient access to businesses, retailers, and government provided services.
 * Fibre-optic cable is connected to the house already, removing the need to outlay the £5,000-£20,000 needed to have it installed.
 * Easier expansion to additional houses within 5-10 minutes walk.

Big Town vs Small Town
There are two key advantages for this project of living in a bigger city compared to a smaller town.

Proximity to Culturally-Adjacent People
In a large, cosmopolitan city there is proximity to smart people, rather than just people. There are universities, there are institutes, there are think tanks, there are people who like to think in general. We have a much better chance of encountering people who think similarly to ourselves and establishing connections.

Well-Paid Skilled Jobs
Most skilled work in technology is to be found in large cities. For many other skilled jobs, large, reasonably well-off cities either offer a healthy client base due to the population density or are similarly almost exclusively found there. Most people at the Kernel are going to need to support themselves, and while some may do so with remote work, availability of local jobs is a high priority.

Manchester vs other UK cities
There are 69 cities in the UK to choose from, this was far too many to compare in depth, so we filtered out unpromising candidates using the following baseline criteria: Those cities are Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Nottingham. We compared these using 26 measurements across six categories in this spreadsheet.
 * Has a Russell Group university, which is a semi-complete list of large, selective UK universities, this is a proxy for the number of intelligent people we expect to find as well as private sector industry that has grown up around that source of graduates and researchers.
 * Average house prices below £200,000
 * At least 400,000 people within 10km, to filter out collections of large towns with a dead center
 * At least 800,000 people within 20km, to filter out small compact citis surrounded by fields
 * Not in Scotland, due to the risk of future independence referendums.
 * Not in Northern Ireland, due to needing a plane or boat to travel from the UK mainland.

Key points of comparison were maximising nearby population and available technology work, minimising rents, and favouring cities with more young, more social liberal, more well off inhabitants as correlates for finding people we can benefit from interacting with. With the weightings used, Manchester came out well ahead of all the other candidates.

Manchester vs London
London is a known quantity, and its advantages are well known (namely being where lots of other people are and having lots of large companies based there) however Manchester has some advantages over it, both general and project-specific:
 * Faster transport by car, bus or train.
 * Approximately half the cost of living.
 * Lower house prices relative to rents (London rents are bad, London mortgages are even worse)
 * Not in a property bubble.
 * Has a distinct culture of its own, rather than bland cosmopolitanism.
 * Has a slower pace of life, people are less preoccupied with their career.
 * More suitable for raising children.
 * Far enough from London to not tempt people to commute from there, yet close enough that occasional visits are feasible.
 * Less socially atomized.
 * Ability to be a "big fish in a small pond".
 * Closer to other cities in the UK.

Manchester vs Berlin
Other than London, the only plausible alternative is Berlin, there are some rationalists (25 on the SSC survey compared to 121 for London) and prices are similar to Manchester, but it does have some project-specific disadvantages:
 * Expats are not able to integrate with the local population
 * High social atomization
 * Dating scene is more focused on casual sex (a consequence of the previous point)
 * Few jobs outside tech for non-Germans
 * No houses in the inner city, only apartment blocks
 * No other nearby cities
 * Excessive bureaucracy
 * Colder winters
 * Lacking architectural diversity