With the caveat that this is obviously flawed data because the sample is “people who came to an all-expenses-paid retreat,” I think it’s useful to provide some actual data Harvard EA collected at our spring retreat. I was slightly concerned that the spending would rub people the wrong way, so I included as one of our anonymous feedback questions, “How much did the spending of money at this retreat make you feel uncomfortable [on a scale of 1 to 10]?” All 18 survey answerers provided an answer. Mean: 3.1. Median: 3. Mode: 1. High: 9.
I think it’s also worth noting that in response to the first question, “What did you think of the retreat overall?”, nobody mentioned money, including the person who answered 9 (who said “Excellent arrangements, well thought out, meticulous planning”). On the question “Imagine you’re on the team planning the next retreat, and it’s the first meeting. Fill in the blank: “One thing I think we could improve from the last retreat is ____”,” nobody volunteered spending less money; several suggestions involved adding things that would cost more money, including the person who answered 9, who suggested adding daily rapid tests. The question “Did participating in this retreat make you feel more or less like you want to be part of the EA community?” received mean 8.3, median 9, including a 9 from the person who felt most uncomfortable about the spending.
I concluded from this survey that, again, with the caveats for selection bias, the spending was not alienating people at the retreat, and especially not alienating enough to significantly affect their engagement with EA.
apologies if this was obvious from the responses in some other way, but did you consider that the person who gave a 9 might have had the scale backwards, i.e. been thinking of 1 as the maximally uncomfortable score?
Hmm, this does seem possible and maybe more than 50% likely. Reasons to think it might not be the case is that I know this person was fairly new to EA, not a longtermist, and somebody asked a clarifying question about this question that I think I answered in a clarifying way, but may not have clarified the direction of the scale. I don’t know!
Acknowledging that important caveat, I am very pleased to have this counterbalancing data available. I hope that we can continue to gather more of it and get a better sense of how the EA movement and its social surroundings think about these questions over time. Thank you for collecting it.
With the caveat that this is obviously flawed data because the sample is “people who came to an all-expenses-paid retreat,” I think it’s useful to provide some actual data Harvard EA collected at our spring retreat. I was slightly concerned that the spending would rub people the wrong way, so I included as one of our anonymous feedback questions, “How much did the spending of money at this retreat make you feel uncomfortable [on a scale of 1 to 10]?” All 18 survey answerers provided an answer. Mean: 3.1. Median: 3. Mode: 1. High: 9.
I think it’s also worth noting that in response to the first question, “What did you think of the retreat overall?”, nobody mentioned money, including the person who answered 9 (who said “Excellent arrangements, well thought out, meticulous planning”). On the question “Imagine you’re on the team planning the next retreat, and it’s the first meeting. Fill in the blank: “One thing I think we could improve from the last retreat is ____”,” nobody volunteered spending less money; several suggestions involved adding things that would cost more money, including the person who answered 9, who suggested adding daily rapid tests. The question “Did participating in this retreat make you feel more or less like you want to be part of the EA community?” received mean 8.3, median 9, including a 9 from the person who felt most uncomfortable about the spending.
I concluded from this survey that, again, with the caveats for selection bias, the spending was not alienating people at the retreat, and especially not alienating enough to significantly affect their engagement with EA.
apologies if this was obvious from the responses in some other way, but did you consider that the person who gave a 9 might have had the scale backwards, i.e. been thinking of 1 as the maximally uncomfortable score?
Hmm, this does seem possible and maybe more than 50% likely. Reasons to think it might not be the case is that I know this person was fairly new to EA, not a longtermist, and somebody asked a clarifying question about this question that I think I answered in a clarifying way, but may not have clarified the direction of the scale. I don’t know!
Acknowledging that important caveat, I am very pleased to have this counterbalancing data available. I hope that we can continue to gather more of it and get a better sense of how the EA movement and its social surroundings think about these questions over time. Thank you for collecting it.