First, I’m really thankful for EAG events and for the responsible teams.
I think the main difference of opinion I have around EA Global is around the fact that they seem to really put forward an optimistic and unified picture of things. The opening/closing presentations and introductions to presenters all have really positive and deferential spins.
They feel a bit (to me) like they’re sending the message:
“Things are going great in EA right now. We’ve sort of figured out how the world works, and we know what to do about it. All of these speakers have super esteemed backgrounds and deserve to be listened to. Each one is really smart and is making a great point.”
I think this is basically the same message as other popular conferences in other disciplines. And there are a lot of nice things about this sort of positivity.
In comparison, to me, my picture is more like,
“We’ve barely done some incremental steps, and we’re very likely to be highly mistaken about some crucial steps, we just can’t figure out which ones. We have a bunch of people who seem pretty good, but it’s really hard to tell. It’s not clear at all how many of the world’s problems we could actually conquer, or if things are really hopeless. We need to try out best, but be really humble, and we should constantly be questioning ourselves.”
I imagine this would be a far worse sales pitch for new EAs.
It’s quite possible that a very positive picture is good for the larger events, with more newcomers, but that we’d want more of the “angrier, debate-friendly” structures for either more strategic/senior people, or for select smaller groups.
I really appreciate this feedback. Communicating uncertainty in reasonable ways and getting the “message of EAG” right is super difficult, so I think there’s probably a lot of room for brainstorming on this front.
First, I’m really thankful for EAG events and for the responsible teams.
I think the main difference of opinion I have around EA Global is around the fact that they seem to really put forward an optimistic and unified picture of things. The opening/closing presentations and introductions to presenters all have really positive and deferential spins.
They feel a bit (to me) like they’re sending the message:
I think this is basically the same message as other popular conferences in other disciplines. And there are a lot of nice things about this sort of positivity.
In comparison, to me, my picture is more like,
I imagine this would be a far worse sales pitch for new EAs.
It’s quite possible that a very positive picture is good for the larger events, with more newcomers, but that we’d want more of the “angrier, debate-friendly” structures for either more strategic/senior people, or for select smaller groups.
I really appreciate this feedback. Communicating uncertainty in reasonable ways and getting the “message of EAG” right is super difficult, so I think there’s probably a lot of room for brainstorming on this front.