This is the feedback that I sent to Greg about his EA-Hotel application, published with his permission. (He also provided some good responses that I hope he can reply with)
Thoughts on the EA Hotel:
The EA Hotel seems broadly pretty promising, though I do also have a good amount of concerns. First, the reasons why I am excited about the EA Hotel:
Providing a safety net: I think psychological safety matters a lot for people being able to take risks and have creative thoughts. Given that I think most of the value of the EA community comes from potentially pursuing high-risk projects and proposing new unconventional ideas, improving things on this dimension strikes me as pretty key for the success of the overall community.
I expect the EA Hotel has a chance to serve as a cheap distributed safety net for a lot of people who are worried that if they start working on EA stuff, they will run out of money soon and will then potentially end up having to take drastic actions as they run out of money. The EA Hotel can both significantly extend those people’s runway, but also soften the costs of running out of money significantly for anyone who is working on EA-related ideas.
Acting on historical interest: There has been a significant historical interest in creating an EA Hub in a location with much lower living expenses, and from a process perspective I think we should very strongly reward people who feel comfortable acting on that level of community interest. Even if the EA Hotel turns out to be a bad idea, it strikes me as important that community members can take risks like this and have at least their expenses reimbursed afterwards (even if it turns out that the idea doesn’t work out when implemented), as long as they went about pursuing the project in broadly reasonable terms.
Building high-dedication cultures: I generally think that developing strong cultures of people who have high-levels of dedication is a good way of multiplying the efforts of the people involved, and is generally something that should be encouraged. I think the EA Hotel has a chance to develop a strong high-dedication culture because moving to it requires a level of sacrifice (moving to Blackpool) that will only cause people above a pretty high dedication-threshold to show up. I do also think this can backfire (see later section on concerns).
I do however also have a set of concerns about the hotel. I think over the past few weeks as more things have been written about the hotel, I have started feeling more positive towards it, and would likely recommend a grant to the EA Hotel in the next LTF-Fund grant rounds, though I am not certain.
I think the EA Hotel is more likely than most other projects I have recommended grants to to be net negative, though I don’t think it has a significant chance to be hugely negative.
Here are the concrete models around my concerns:
1. I think the people behind the EA Hotel where initially overeager to publicize the EA Hotel via broad media outreach in things like newspapers and others media outlets with broad reach. I think interaction with the media is well-modeled by a unilateralist curse-like scenario in which many participants have the individual choice to create a media narrative, and whoever moves first frames a lot of the media conversation. In general, I think it is essential for organizations in the long term future space to recognize this kind of dynamic and be hesitant to take unilateral action in cases like this.
I think the EA Hotel does not benefit much from media attention, and the community at large likely suffers from the EA Hotel being widely discussed in the media (not because it’s weird, which is a dimension on which I think EA is broadly far too risk-averse to, but instead because it communicates the presence of free resources that are for the taking of anyone vaguely associated with the community, which tends to attract unaligned people and cause adversarial scenarios).
Note: Greg responded to this and I now think this point is mostly false, though I still think something in this space went wrong.
2. I think there is a significant chance of the culture of the EA Hotel becoming actively harmful for the people living there, and also spark unnecessary conflict in the broader community. I think there are two reasons why I am more worried about this than for most other locations:
I expect the EA Hotel to attract a kind of person who is pretty young, highly dedicated and looking for some guidance on what to do with their life. I think this makes them a particularly easy and promising target for people who tend to abuse that kind of trust relationship and who are looking for social influence.
I expect the hotel to attract people who have a somewhat contrarian position in the community, for a variety of different reasons. I think some of it is the initial founding effect that I already observed, but another likely cause is that the hotel will likely be filled with highly dedicated people who are not being offered jobs or grants that would allow them to work from other locations, which I think can cause many of these people to feel disenfranchised from the community and feel a (potentially quite valid) sense of frustration.
I am not at all opposed to helping people who are dissatisfied with things in the community to coordinate on causing change, and usually think that’s good. But I think locality matters a lot for dispute resolution and I think it’s plausible that the EA Hotel could form a geographically and memetically isolated group that is predisposed for conflict with the rest of the EA community in a way that could result in a lot of negative-sum conflict.
Generally high-dedication cultures are more likely to cause people to overcommit to to take drastic actions that they later regret. I think this is usually worth the cost, but is compounded with some of the other factors I list here.
3. I don’t have a sense that Greg wants to really take charge on the logistics of running the hotel, and don’t have a great candidate for someone else to run it. Though it seems pretty plausible that we could find someone to run it if we invest some time into finding someone.
Summary:
Overall, I think all of my concerns can be overcome, at which point I would be quite excited about supporting the hotel. It seems easy to change the way the hotel relates to the media, I think there are a variety of things one could do to avoid cultural problems, and I think we could find someone to who can take charge on the logistics of running the hotel.
At the moment, I think I would be in favor of giving a grant that covers the runway of the hotel for the next year. (There is the further question of whether they should get enough money to buy the hotel next door, which is something I am much less certain about)
I think I would be in favor of giving a grant that covers the runway of the hotel for the next year.
Wow this is awesome, thanks!
# Thoughts on the EA Hotel:
Thanks for your detailed response.
First, the reasons why I am excited about the EA Hotel:
Providing a safety net …
Acting on historical interest …
Building high-dedication cultures …
All good reasons, eloquently put!
1. I think the people behind the EA Hotel where initially overeager to publicize the EA Hotel via broad media outreach in things like newspapers and others media outlets with broad reach.
I think this is based on an unfortunate misconception. The whole thing with the media interest has been quite surprising to us. We have never courted the media—quite the opposite in fact. It started with The Economist approaching us. This was whilst I was on holiday and out of communication. The first I heard about it was 3 days before they went to press (the piece appeared in print whilst I was still away). The journalist was told not to come to Blackpool. I spoke to them on the phone and said I wanted more time to think about it and discuss it with people. They went ahead anyway and were told “no comment” by a resident when they knocked on the door. They picked up the story from Slate Star Codex originally and decided — whether we liked it or not — to run a piece on it. I don’t think there was anything we could’ve done to prevent it.
After that, The Times (and many other media outlets) picked it up. The Times journalist booked a call with me via my Calendly. At the exact time I was expecting the call, there was a knock on the door instead and she was there with a photographer—we got doorstepped! I had a panicked 5 minute talk “off the record” with her outside, where she explained that they were going to write about us anyway (whether we liked it or not) so I might as well let her in to interview some people so we could have at least some control over the narrative (we had none with the Economist piece).
I thought it went pretty well, and the piece could’ve been worse. However, they printed some errors, despite me sending clarifications—see the “For the record” here—which made me lose more faith in the journalistic process. It seems that even when you send corrections/clarifications they don’t factor them in if it doesn’t fit their narrative. And of course you have no right of reply (or at least no right of reply at the same level of visibility).
After The Times we had another national newspaper showing up at the door unannounced the next day. Gave them nothing despite them being very persistent.
In the next couple of weeks we were inundated with media requests. We discussed the issue with many people in EA and at CEA and 80k and decided against embracing the media (we could’ve been on prime-time TV and radio with millions of viewers/listeners). The decision was largely based around considerations encapsulated by the fidelity model of spreading ideas and the Awareness/Inclination Model of movement growth. We have turned down something like 20 media requests since The Times. Most were in October following the initial media interest. But we still get some every now and again. The outside view from my friends and family is that I’m completely crazy not to accept any of these offers. I think it’s probably the right call for the EA movement, but I’m still not 100% sure given that there is basically no data on the impact of mass media appearances on movement growth/talent discovery for EA—as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been any since the launch of GWWC and 80k (I’m talking appearances in national/international media with millions of viewers/readers here).
To try and avoid this misconception being perpetuated, I have added a disclaimer to the media page on our website saying that we have never courted the media. Also, journalistic ethics are such that requesting the media cover you is not something you can easily do or be successful with. You can write a press release and send it out, but they don’t generally do requests (note we definitely did not post a press release, nor do anything to publicise the project really, apart from me posting my initial EA Forum piece and sharing it on a couple of EA Facebook groups).
because it communicates the presence of free resources that are for the taking of anyone vaguely associated with the community
I’ve actually been surprised at how few applicants from outside the movement we’ve had, even after the media.
2. I expect the EA Hotel to attract a kind of person who is pretty young, highly dedicated and looking for some guidance on what to do with their life. I think this makes them a particularly easy and promising target for people who tend to abuse that kind of trust relationship and who are looking for social influence.
Yes, one thing I’m wary of is anyone looking to gain too much social influence at the hotel. Note that the average age is actually reasonably high at around 28 though (range 20-40) (i.e. there are a fair few people changing the trajectory of their careers).
the EA Hotel could form a geographically and memetically isolated group that is predisposed for conflict with the rest of the EA community in a way that could result in a lot of negative-sum conflict.
I don’t think we are especially memetically isolated—most of us keep up with the EA Forum and EA Facebook groups etc. There is generally a high level of shared memetic culture/jargon etc that is general to the broader movement. Geographically, many guests have travelled to EA events in continental Europe, and have visited other UK EA hubs like London and Oxford.
3. I don’t have a sense that Greg wants to really take charge on the logistics of running the hotel, and don’t have a great candidate for someone else to run it. Though it seems pretty plausible that we could find someone to run it if we invest some time into finding someone.
Yes, it’s not something that I want to do long term (although I have been doing a lot). And it’s taking a lot longer than I initially thought it would take to get things fully set up (especially setting up a charity and fundraising). There are two main aspects to the job really—logistics and guest mentoring/vetting. Currently one of the guests is taking on most of the cooking/dishes/food monitor work, and we have a rota for weekends (this could potentially be outsourced with more funds available). And we have a cleaner doing the cleaning/room changes. (Interim Manager) Toon has been doing checkins with guests to discuss their work. He’s only been working on the hotel part time though (he also runs RAISE) and is leaving in a couple of months. We haven’t been able to start the process for hiring a full time manager to take over due to funding insecurity. Would be great if you could help us find someone, thanks!
I thought I’d share my impressions as someone who has spent significant time at the EA hotel
I think this makes them a particularly easy and promising target for people who tend to abuse that kind of trust relationship and who are looking for social influence.
Most of the people at the EA hotel have been involved in the movement for a while, so they already have reasonably well-developed positions already
it’s plausible that the EA Hotel could form a geographically and memetically isolated group that is predisposed for conflict with the rest of the EA community in a way that could result in a lot of negative-sum conflict.
The EA hotel has a limit of 2 years free accommodation (although it is possible exceptions might be made). Most people tend to stay only a certain number of months given that it is Blackpool and not the most desirable location. Further, there are regularly visitors and there is frequent change over in the guests. I actually feel more memetically isolated in Australia than when I was at the EA hotel; especially since visiting London is relatively easy.
Generally high-dedication cultures are more likely to cause people to overcommit to to take drastic actions that they later regret
None of the projects that I am aware of having being undertaken at the EA hotel seemed to be especially high risk. But further than this, whoever is running the checkins will have an opportunity to steer people away from high risk projects.
Thanks for continuing to write up your thoughts in so much detail, Oliver; this is super interesting and useful stuff.
When you say “Note: Greg responded to this and I now think this point is mostly false”, I assume that “this” refers to the previous point (1) rather than the subsequent point (2)?
A point I’d personally want to add to Habryka’s list: I’m currently unsure whether there is sufficiently good vetting of guests. Since the EA Hotel provides valuable services (almost) for free, it kind of acts as a de facto grantmaker, and runs the risk of funding people who are accidentally doing harm. There are reasons to think that harmful projects will be overrepresented in the application pool (Habryka also made some similar points). As I understand it, the EA Hotel is currently improving their vetting, which I think will be a step in the right direction, and could potentially resolve this issue.
I am hesitant about this. I think to serve as a functional social safety net that allows people to take high-risk actions (including in the social domain, in the form of criticisms of high-status people or institutions), I think a high barrier to entry for the EA-Hotel might drastically reduce the psychological safety it could provide to many people.
I think if we had a vetting process that people could trust would reliably cause you to identify good people, even if they made a bunch of recent critical statements of high-status institutions or something in that reference class (or had their most recent project fail dramatically, etc.), then I think that might be fine.
But I think having such a vetting process and having that vetting process have a very low false negative rate and having it be transparent that that vetting process is that good are difficult enough to make it too costly.
There already is a basic vetting process; I’d mostly welcome fairly gradual improvements to lower downside risk. (I think my initial comment sounded more like the bar should be fairly high, similar to that of, e.g., the LTFF. This is not what I intended to say; I think it should still be considerably lower.)
I think even just explicitly saying something like “we welcome criticism of high-status people or institutions” would go a long way for both shaping people’s perception of the vetting process and shaping the vetters’ approach.
That said, your arguments did update me in the direction “small changes to the vetting process seem better than large changes.”
My impression of how the EA Hotel crew dealt with media attention was something like “better than many did in the early stages (including myself in the early stages of EAF) but (due to lack of experience or training) considerably worse than most EA orgs would do these days.” There are many counterintuitive lessons to be learnt, many of which I still don’t fully understand, either.
However, since the initial media interest has abated, I think this isn’t really relevant for current grants anyway.
CEA’s semi-internal media advice contains some valuable lessons. I was going to post a write-up on the EA Forum at some point, but given that media attention has been de-emphasized as an EA priority since, I decided against pursuing that (I also have some old “EA media strategy” presentation slides but unfortunately, they’re in German). If lots of people thought this would be valuable, or if we learned that EA-Hotel-type issues occur on a regular basis, I’d consider it, though. (I also think much of my experience is only relevant to global poverty and animal welfare, not to AI or other cause areas.)
This is the feedback that I sent to Greg about his EA-Hotel application, published with his permission. (He also provided some good responses that I hope he can reply with)
Thoughts on the EA Hotel:
The EA Hotel seems broadly pretty promising, though I do also have a good amount of concerns. First, the reasons why I am excited about the EA Hotel:
Providing a safety net: I think psychological safety matters a lot for people being able to take risks and have creative thoughts. Given that I think most of the value of the EA community comes from potentially pursuing high-risk projects and proposing new unconventional ideas, improving things on this dimension strikes me as pretty key for the success of the overall community.
I expect the EA Hotel has a chance to serve as a cheap distributed safety net for a lot of people who are worried that if they start working on EA stuff, they will run out of money soon and will then potentially end up having to take drastic actions as they run out of money. The EA Hotel can both significantly extend those people’s runway, but also soften the costs of running out of money significantly for anyone who is working on EA-related ideas.
Acting on historical interest: There has been a significant historical interest in creating an EA Hub in a location with much lower living expenses, and from a process perspective I think we should very strongly reward people who feel comfortable acting on that level of community interest. Even if the EA Hotel turns out to be a bad idea, it strikes me as important that community members can take risks like this and have at least their expenses reimbursed afterwards (even if it turns out that the idea doesn’t work out when implemented), as long as they went about pursuing the project in broadly reasonable terms.
Building high-dedication cultures: I generally think that developing strong cultures of people who have high-levels of dedication is a good way of multiplying the efforts of the people involved, and is generally something that should be encouraged. I think the EA Hotel has a chance to develop a strong high-dedication culture because moving to it requires a level of sacrifice (moving to Blackpool) that will only cause people above a pretty high dedication-threshold to show up. I do also think this can backfire (see later section on concerns).
I do however also have a set of concerns about the hotel. I think over the past few weeks as more things have been written about the hotel, I have started feeling more positive towards it, and would likely recommend a grant to the EA Hotel in the next LTF-Fund grant rounds, though I am not certain.
I think the EA Hotel is more likely than most other projects I have recommended grants to to be net negative, though I don’t think it has a significant chance to be hugely negative.
Here are the concrete models around my concerns:
1. I think the people behind the EA Hotel where initially overeager to publicize the EA Hotel via broad media outreach in things like newspapers and others media outlets with broad reach. I think interaction with the media is well-modeled by a unilateralist curse-like scenario in which many participants have the individual choice to create a media narrative, and whoever moves first frames a lot of the media conversation. In general, I think it is essential for organizations in the long term future space to recognize this kind of dynamic and be hesitant to take unilateral action in cases like this.
I think the EA Hotel does not benefit much from media attention, and the community at large likely suffers from the EA Hotel being widely discussed in the media (not because it’s weird, which is a dimension on which I think EA is broadly far too risk-averse to, but instead because it communicates the presence of free resources that are for the taking of anyone vaguely associated with the community, which tends to attract unaligned people and cause adversarial scenarios).
Note: Greg responded to this and I now think this point is mostly false, though I still think something in this space went wrong.
2. I think there is a significant chance of the culture of the EA Hotel becoming actively harmful for the people living there, and also spark unnecessary conflict in the broader community. I think there are two reasons why I am more worried about this than for most other locations:
I expect the EA Hotel to attract a kind of person who is pretty young, highly dedicated and looking for some guidance on what to do with their life. I think this makes them a particularly easy and promising target for people who tend to abuse that kind of trust relationship and who are looking for social influence.
I expect the hotel to attract people who have a somewhat contrarian position in the community, for a variety of different reasons. I think some of it is the initial founding effect that I already observed, but another likely cause is that the hotel will likely be filled with highly dedicated people who are not being offered jobs or grants that would allow them to work from other locations, which I think can cause many of these people to feel disenfranchised from the community and feel a (potentially quite valid) sense of frustration.
I am not at all opposed to helping people who are dissatisfied with things in the community to coordinate on causing change, and usually think that’s good. But I think locality matters a lot for dispute resolution and I think it’s plausible that the EA Hotel could form a geographically and memetically isolated group that is predisposed for conflict with the rest of the EA community in a way that could result in a lot of negative-sum conflict.
Generally high-dedication cultures are more likely to cause people to overcommit to to take drastic actions that they later regret. I think this is usually worth the cost, but is compounded with some of the other factors I list here.
3. I don’t have a sense that Greg wants to really take charge on the logistics of running the hotel, and don’t have a great candidate for someone else to run it. Though it seems pretty plausible that we could find someone to run it if we invest some time into finding someone.
Summary:
Overall, I think all of my concerns can be overcome, at which point I would be quite excited about supporting the hotel. It seems easy to change the way the hotel relates to the media, I think there are a variety of things one could do to avoid cultural problems, and I think we could find someone to who can take charge on the logistics of running the hotel.
At the moment, I think I would be in favor of giving a grant that covers the runway of the hotel for the next year. (There is the further question of whether they should get enough money to buy the hotel next door, which is something I am much less certain about)
My response (edited from my email to Habryka)
Wow this is awesome, thanks!
Thanks for your detailed response.
All good reasons, eloquently put!
I think this is based on an unfortunate misconception. The whole thing with the media interest has been quite surprising to us. We have never courted the media—quite the opposite in fact. It started with The Economist approaching us. This was whilst I was on holiday and out of communication. The first I heard about it was 3 days before they went to press (the piece appeared in print whilst I was still away). The journalist was told not to come to Blackpool. I spoke to them on the phone and said I wanted more time to think about it and discuss it with people. They went ahead anyway and were told “no comment” by a resident when they knocked on the door. They picked up the story from Slate Star Codex originally and decided — whether we liked it or not — to run a piece on it. I don’t think there was anything we could’ve done to prevent it.
After that, The Times (and many other media outlets) picked it up. The Times journalist booked a call with me via my Calendly. At the exact time I was expecting the call, there was a knock on the door instead and she was there with a photographer—we got doorstepped! I had a panicked 5 minute talk “off the record” with her outside, where she explained that they were going to write about us anyway (whether we liked it or not) so I might as well let her in to interview some people so we could have at least some control over the narrative (we had none with the Economist piece).
I thought it went pretty well, and the piece could’ve been worse. However, they printed some errors, despite me sending clarifications—see the “For the record” here—which made me lose more faith in the journalistic process. It seems that even when you send corrections/clarifications they don’t factor them in if it doesn’t fit their narrative. And of course you have no right of reply (or at least no right of reply at the same level of visibility).
After The Times we had another national newspaper showing up at the door unannounced the next day. Gave them nothing despite them being very persistent.
In the next couple of weeks we were inundated with media requests. We discussed the issue with many people in EA and at CEA and 80k and decided against embracing the media (we could’ve been on prime-time TV and radio with millions of viewers/listeners). The decision was largely based around considerations encapsulated by the fidelity model of spreading ideas and the Awareness/Inclination Model of movement growth. We have turned down something like 20 media requests since The Times. Most were in October following the initial media interest. But we still get some every now and again. The outside view from my friends and family is that I’m completely crazy not to accept any of these offers. I think it’s probably the right call for the EA movement, but I’m still not 100% sure given that there is basically no data on the impact of mass media appearances on movement growth/talent discovery for EA—as far as I can tell, there hasn’t been any since the launch of GWWC and 80k (I’m talking appearances in national/international media with millions of viewers/readers here).
To try and avoid this misconception being perpetuated, I have added a disclaimer to the media page on our website saying that we have never courted the media. Also, journalistic ethics are such that requesting the media cover you is not something you can easily do or be successful with. You can write a press release and send it out, but they don’t generally do requests (note we definitely did not post a press release, nor do anything to publicise the project really, apart from me posting my initial EA Forum piece and sharing it on a couple of EA Facebook groups).
I’ve actually been surprised at how few applicants from outside the movement we’ve had, even after the media.
Yes, one thing I’m wary of is anyone looking to gain too much social influence at the hotel. Note that the average age is actually reasonably high at around 28 though (range 20-40) (i.e. there are a fair few people changing the trajectory of their careers).
I don’t think we are especially memetically isolated—most of us keep up with the EA Forum and EA Facebook groups etc. There is generally a high level of shared memetic culture/jargon etc that is general to the broader movement. Geographically, many guests have travelled to EA events in continental Europe, and have visited other UK EA hubs like London and Oxford.
Yes, it’s not something that I want to do long term (although I have been doing a lot). And it’s taking a lot longer than I initially thought it would take to get things fully set up (especially setting up a charity and fundraising). There are two main aspects to the job really—logistics and guest mentoring/vetting. Currently one of the guests is taking on most of the cooking/dishes/food monitor work, and we have a rota for weekends (this could potentially be outsourced with more funds available). And we have a cleaner doing the cleaning/room changes. (Interim Manager) Toon has been doing checkins with guests to discuss their work. He’s only been working on the hotel part time though (he also runs RAISE) and is leaving in a couple of months. We haven’t been able to start the process for hiring a full time manager to take over due to funding insecurity. Would be great if you could help us find someone, thanks!
I thought I’d share my impressions as someone who has spent significant time at the EA hotel
Most of the people at the EA hotel have been involved in the movement for a while, so they already have reasonably well-developed positions already
The EA hotel has a limit of 2 years free accommodation (although it is possible exceptions might be made). Most people tend to stay only a certain number of months given that it is Blackpool and not the most desirable location. Further, there are regularly visitors and there is frequent change over in the guests. I actually feel more memetically isolated in Australia than when I was at the EA hotel; especially since visiting London is relatively easy.
None of the projects that I am aware of having being undertaken at the EA hotel seemed to be especially high risk. But further than this, whoever is running the checkins will have an opportunity to steer people away from high risk projects.
Thanks for continuing to write up your thoughts in so much detail, Oliver; this is super interesting and useful stuff.
When you say “Note: Greg responded to this and I now think this point is mostly false”, I assume that “this” refers to the previous point (1) rather than the subsequent point (2)?
Yes, that corresponds to point (1), not point (2)
A point I’d personally want to add to Habryka’s list: I’m currently unsure whether there is sufficiently good vetting of guests. Since the EA Hotel provides valuable services (almost) for free, it kind of acts as a de facto grantmaker, and runs the risk of funding people who are accidentally doing harm. There are reasons to think that harmful projects will be overrepresented in the application pool (Habryka also made some similar points). As I understand it, the EA Hotel is currently improving their vetting, which I think will be a step in the right direction, and could potentially resolve this issue.
I am hesitant about this. I think to serve as a functional social safety net that allows people to take high-risk actions (including in the social domain, in the form of criticisms of high-status people or institutions), I think a high barrier to entry for the EA-Hotel might drastically reduce the psychological safety it could provide to many people.
Interesting! I agree with the points you make, but I was hoping that good vetting wouldn’t suffer from these problems.
I think if we had a vetting process that people could trust would reliably cause you to identify good people, even if they made a bunch of recent critical statements of high-status institutions or something in that reference class (or had their most recent project fail dramatically, etc.), then I think that might be fine.
But I think having such a vetting process and having that vetting process have a very low false negative rate and having it be transparent that that vetting process is that good are difficult enough to make it too costly.
There already is a basic vetting process; I’d mostly welcome fairly gradual improvements to lower downside risk. (I think my initial comment sounded more like the bar should be fairly high, similar to that of, e.g., the LTFF. This is not what I intended to say; I think it should still be considerably lower.)
I think even just explicitly saying something like “we welcome criticism of high-status people or institutions” would go a long way for both shaping people’s perception of the vetting process and shaping the vetters’ approach.
That said, your arguments did update me in the direction “small changes to the vetting process seem better than large changes.”
My impression of how the EA Hotel crew dealt with media attention was something like “better than many did in the early stages (including myself in the early stages of EAF) but (due to lack of experience or training) considerably worse than most EA orgs would do these days.” There are many counterintuitive lessons to be learnt, many of which I still don’t fully understand, either.
However, since the initial media interest has abated, I think this isn’t really relevant for current grants anyway.
Can you say what these lessons are? Would be good to have a write up of advice and I would like to see an EA forum post on this.
CEA’s semi-internal media advice contains some valuable lessons. I was going to post a write-up on the EA Forum at some point, but given that media attention has been de-emphasized as an EA priority since, I decided against pursuing that (I also have some old “EA media strategy” presentation slides but unfortunately, they’re in German). If lots of people thought this would be valuable, or if we learned that EA-Hotel-type issues occur on a regular basis, I’d consider it, though. (I also think much of my experience is only relevant to global poverty and animal welfare, not to AI or other cause areas.)
Personally, I’d be interested to see this writeup, and I’d definitely chip in with some of my thoughts if you posted it.