Free food and free conferences are things that are somewhat standard among various non-EA university groups. It’s easy to object to whether they’re an effective use of money, but I don’t think they’re excessive except under the EA lens of maximizing cost-effectiveness. I think if we reframe EA universities groups as being about empowering students to tackle pressing global issues through their careers, and avoid mentioning effective donations and free food in the same breath, then it’s less confusing why there is free stuff being offered. (Besides apparently being more appealing to students, I also genuinely think high-impact careers should be the focus of EA university groups.)
I’m in favor of making EA events and accommodation feel less fancy.
There are other expenses that I’d be more concerned about from an optics perspective about than free food and conferences.
You find out that if you build a longtermist group in your university, EA orgs will pay you for your time, fly you to conferences and hubs around the world and give you all the resources you could possibly make use of. This is basically the best deal that any student society can currently offer. Given this, how much time are you going to spend critically evaluating the core claims of longtermism?
It’s worth noting that these perks are available for new EA groups in general, not even particularly longtermist EA groups. That said, I think there are plenty of additional perks to being a longtermist (career advising from 80,000 Hours, grants from the Long-Term Future Fund or the FTX Future Fund to work on projects, etc.) that you might want to be one even if you’re intellectually unsure about it. I think another incentive pushing university organizers in favor of a longtermist direction is: it doesn’t make sense to be spending this much money on free food and conferences from a neartermist perspective, at least in my opinion.
Free food and free conferences are things that are somewhat standard among various non-EA university groups. It’s easy to object to whether they’re an effective use of money, but I don’t think they’re excessive except under the EA lens of maximizing cost-effectiveness. I think if we reframe EA universities groups as being about empowering students to tackle pressing global issues through their careers, and avoid mentioning effective donations and free food in the same breath, then it’s less confusing why there is free stuff being offered. (Besides apparently being more appealing to students, I also genuinely think high-impact careers should be the focus of EA university groups.)
I’m in favor of making EA events and accommodation feel less fancy.
There are other expenses that I’d be more concerned about from an optics perspective about than free food and conferences.
It’s worth noting that these perks are available for new EA groups in general, not even particularly longtermist EA groups. That said, I think there are plenty of additional perks to being a longtermist (career advising from 80,000 Hours, grants from the Long-Term Future Fund or the FTX Future Fund to work on projects, etc.) that you might want to be one even if you’re intellectually unsure about it. I think another incentive pushing university organizers in favor of a longtermist direction is: it doesn’t make sense to be spending this much money on free food and conferences from a neartermist perspective, at least in my opinion.