Thanks for raising this! We’ve adjusted the wording over time but still haven’t hit on something that ideally conveys the different things we’d suggest to people in different circumstances.
Here’s what I think we’d suggest to people in different situations:
student or professional with low income who wants to come—yes, take the financial aid and come
professional with significant income but who’s committed to giving significantly to effective charities, or who has other significant expenses (health, family, student debt) that make money tight, and who wants to come—yes, take the financial aid and come
person of any income who thinks it wouldn’t be that good for them to come (doesn’t think they would enjoy it much, doesn’t think it would improve their career or donation decisions, doesn’t think it would strengthen their motivation / commitment, doesn’t think they’d be able to help other people at the conference) - no, leave the spot for someone else, even if you can easily afford it
person who wants to come and the price doesn’t give them serious pause—come and buy your own ticket
Would adding something like that to the FAQ address some of your concerns?
I think this would be better than the current FAQ, but it seems like what you’ve said above mostly rephrases the ambiguities I highlighted without doing much to resolve them. E.g. the ambiguity of “for anyone who needs them” isn’t much alleviated by using phrasing like “money is tight” and “doesn’t give them serious pause”. I’d take a wild guess that maybe the bottom 30% of westerners (by income) would say that “money is tight” for them, and that the top 5% would say that “spending $400+ doesn’t give them serious pause”. But it’s not clear how the remaining 65% should think about it. (And that category is probably even more than 65% for people from poorer countries.) Hence my proposal in the post that you should pay full price iff you’re already donating enough that you’re comfortable for EAG to take up $400+ of your donation budget (I’ll edit to make this more explicit).
Similarly, it also seems pretty hard to evaluate where the bar should be for “it wouldn’t be that good for them to come”, since almost everyone will have improved decisions/strengthened motivations/etc from EAG to some degree. Should it be twice as good as a typical weekend in order for people to feel justified in taking a spot? Four times? Ten times? The highlight of the year? This seems very hard to judge. Hence my proposal in the post that the bar you should use is the marginal next person who would be accepted to EAG (while weighing your own acceptance as significant evidence that you should go).
Lastly, your proposal doesn’t tell people whether they should think of EAG as “personal” or “altruistic” spending. For people who categorise these differently, their bars for marginal spending on personal versus altruistic things might be very different.
One thing that you might already know, but could be helpful to spell out: CEA already subsidizes much of the cost of the conference. The main reason we don’t just subsidize it all is that having some cost for attendees means they have personal investment in coming. At some past events like EAGx where ticket costs were very low, a lot of slots got wasted because people claimed the free or low-cost tickets and then didn’t show up. But we don’t want to keep people away because higher prices are difficult for them, which is why we do offer financial aid.
On how to compare yourself to other attendees: We haven’t asked this lately, but in the past we’ve asked attendees how good a use of time the event was for them. (I realize this doesn’t fully answer the question of how to compare yourself to others, but it might help.) Here are the responses from the last time we asked this:
It’s hard for us to say whether EAG tickets should count as “personal” or “altruistic” spending. The overall goal of the event is to have a positive impact for the world — that’s why we host it. On the other hand, it would be kind of suspect for us to tell people “You should pay for your ticket out of your donation budget!” because the event is also enjoyable for attendees (we hope!), and it’s hard to make donation decisions clearly when you also personally benefit from the donation.
Thanks for raising this! We’ve adjusted the wording over time but still haven’t hit on something that ideally conveys the different things we’d suggest to people in different circumstances.
Here’s what I think we’d suggest to people in different situations:
student or professional with low income who wants to come—yes, take the financial aid and come
professional with significant income but who’s committed to giving significantly to effective charities, or who has other significant expenses (health, family, student debt) that make money tight, and who wants to come—yes, take the financial aid and come
person of any income who thinks it wouldn’t be that good for them to come (doesn’t think they would enjoy it much, doesn’t think it would improve their career or donation decisions, doesn’t think it would strengthen their motivation / commitment, doesn’t think they’d be able to help other people at the conference) - no, leave the spot for someone else, even if you can easily afford it
person who wants to come and the price doesn’t give them serious pause—come and buy your own ticket
Would adding something like that to the FAQ address some of your concerns?
I think this would be better than the current FAQ, but it seems like what you’ve said above mostly rephrases the ambiguities I highlighted without doing much to resolve them. E.g. the ambiguity of “for anyone who needs them” isn’t much alleviated by using phrasing like “money is tight” and “doesn’t give them serious pause”. I’d take a wild guess that maybe the bottom 30% of westerners (by income) would say that “money is tight” for them, and that the top 5% would say that “spending $400+ doesn’t give them serious pause”. But it’s not clear how the remaining 65% should think about it. (And that category is probably even more than 65% for people from poorer countries.) Hence my proposal in the post that you should pay full price iff you’re already donating enough that you’re comfortable for EAG to take up $400+ of your donation budget (I’ll edit to make this more explicit).
Similarly, it also seems pretty hard to evaluate where the bar should be for “it wouldn’t be that good for them to come”, since almost everyone will have improved decisions/strengthened motivations/etc from EAG to some degree. Should it be twice as good as a typical weekend in order for people to feel justified in taking a spot? Four times? Ten times? The highlight of the year? This seems very hard to judge. Hence my proposal in the post that the bar you should use is the marginal next person who would be accepted to EAG (while weighing your own acceptance as significant evidence that you should go).
Lastly, your proposal doesn’t tell people whether they should think of EAG as “personal” or “altruistic” spending. For people who categorise these differently, their bars for marginal spending on personal versus altruistic things might be very different.
One thing that you might already know, but could be helpful to spell out: CEA already subsidizes much of the cost of the conference. The main reason we don’t just subsidize it all is that having some cost for attendees means they have personal investment in coming. At some past events like EAGx where ticket costs were very low, a lot of slots got wasted because people claimed the free or low-cost tickets and then didn’t show up. But we don’t want to keep people away because higher prices are difficult for them, which is why we do offer financial aid.
On how to compare yourself to other attendees: We haven’t asked this lately, but in the past we’ve asked attendees how good a use of time the event was for them. (I realize this doesn’t fully answer the question of how to compare yourself to others, but it might help.) Here are the responses from the last time we asked this:
It’s hard for us to say whether EAG tickets should count as “personal” or “altruistic” spending. The overall goal of the event is to have a positive impact for the world — that’s why we host it. On the other hand, it would be kind of suspect for us to tell people “You should pay for your ticket out of your donation budget!” because the event is also enjoyable for attendees (we hope!), and it’s hard to make donation decisions clearly when you also personally benefit from the donation.