That’s fair—I’m not the earlier commenter but would suggest (as someone who’s heard some of these conversations but isn’t necessarily representative of others’ thinking):
For dinners: Suppose offering to buy a $15 dinner for someone makes it 10% more likely than they’ll go to a group dinner, and suppose that makes it 1% more likely that they’ll have a very impactful career. Suppose that means counterfactually donating 10% of $100k for 40 years. Then on average the dinner costs $15 and yields $400.
For retreats: Suppose offering to subsidize a $4oo flight makes someone 40% more likely to go to a retreat and that this makes them 5% more likely to have a very impactful career. Again suppose that means counterfactually donating 10% of $100k for 40 years. Then on average the flight costs $400 and yields $8,000.
(And expected returns are 100x higher than that under bolder assumptions about how much impact people will have. Although they’re negative if optics costs are high enough.)
Thanks—this is exactly what I think is useful to have out there, and ideally to refine over time.
My immediate reaction is that the % changes you are assigning look very generous. I doubt a $15 dinner makes some 1% more likely to pursue an impactful career; and especially that a subsidised flight produced a 5% swing. I think these are likely orders of magnitude too high, especially when you consider that other places will also offer free dinners/retreats.
If a $400 investment in anything made someone 5% more likely to pursue an impactful career, that would be amazing.
But I guess what I’m really hoping is that CEA and FTX have exactly this sort of reasoning internally, with some moderate research into the assumptions, and could share that externally.
Thanks! Agree it’s good to refine these and that these are very optimistic—I suspect the optimism is justified by the track record of these events. Anecdotally, it seems nontrivially common for early positive interactions to motivate new community members to continue/deepen their (social and/or motivational) engagement, and that seems to often lead to impactful career plan changes.
(I think there’s steeply diminishing returns here—someone’s first exposure to the community seems much more potentially impactful than later exposures. I tried to account for “how many participants will be having their first exposure” in the earlier estimate.)
In other words, we could (say) break down the ~1% estimate (which is already conditioned on counterfactual dinner attendance) into the following (ignoring benefits for people who are early on but not totally new):
30% chance that this is their first exposure
conditional on the above, 10% chance that the experience kickstarts long/deep engagement
conditional on the above, 50% chance of an impactful career switch
(although early exposures that aren’t quite the first one also seem valuable)
If 1% is far too generous, which of the above factors are too high? (Maybe the second one?)
(Edited to add) And yup, I acknowledge this isn’t the source you were looking for—hopefully still adds to the conversation.
In the spirit of this post, maybe you could share these informal BOTECs?
‘Here is a BOTEC’ is going to help more than ‘I’ve done a BOTEC and it checks out’.
(I appreciate the post isn’t actually aimed at you)
That’s fair—I’m not the earlier commenter but would suggest (as someone who’s heard some of these conversations but isn’t necessarily representative of others’ thinking):
For dinners: Suppose offering to buy a $15 dinner for someone makes it 10% more likely than they’ll go to a group dinner, and suppose that makes it 1% more likely that they’ll have a very impactful career. Suppose that means counterfactually donating 10% of $100k for 40 years. Then on average the dinner costs $15 and yields $400.
For retreats: Suppose offering to subsidize a $4oo flight makes someone 40% more likely to go to a retreat and that this makes them 5% more likely to have a very impactful career. Again suppose that means counterfactually donating 10% of $100k for 40 years. Then on average the flight costs $400 and yields $8,000.
(And expected returns are 100x higher than that under bolder assumptions about how much impact people will have. Although they’re negative if optics costs are high enough.)
Thanks—this is exactly what I think is useful to have out there, and ideally to refine over time.
My immediate reaction is that the % changes you are assigning look very generous. I doubt a $15 dinner makes some 1% more likely to pursue an impactful career; and especially that a subsidised flight produced a 5% swing. I think these are likely orders of magnitude too high, especially when you consider that other places will also offer free dinners/retreats.
If a $400 investment in anything made someone 5% more likely to pursue an impactful career, that would be amazing.
But I guess what I’m really hoping is that CEA and FTX have exactly this sort of reasoning internally, with some moderate research into the assumptions, and could share that externally.
Thanks! Agree it’s good to refine these and that these are very optimistic—I suspect the optimism is justified by the track record of these events. Anecdotally, it seems nontrivially common for early positive interactions to motivate new community members to continue/deepen their (social and/or motivational) engagement, and that seems to often lead to impactful career plan changes.
(I think there’s steeply diminishing returns here—someone’s first exposure to the community seems much more potentially impactful than later exposures. I tried to account for “how many participants will be having their first exposure” in the earlier estimate.)
In other words, we could (say) break down the ~1% estimate (which is already conditioned on counterfactual dinner attendance) into the following (ignoring benefits for people who are early on but not totally new):
30% chance that this is their first exposure
conditional on the above, 10% chance that the experience kickstarts long/deep engagement
conditional on the above, 50% chance of an impactful career switch (although early exposures that aren’t quite the first one also seem valuable)
If 1% is far too generous, which of the above factors are too high? (Maybe the second one?)
(Edited to add) And yup, I acknowledge this isn’t the source you were looking for—hopefully still adds to the conversation.