Late to the party, but I just came across this post and wanted to add another perspective. For context, I’ve been “living EA principles” for a while, but am not really involved in the community and have never applied to EAG.
The fact that the biggest EA conference is intentionally exclusive is something of a red flag for me and makes me significantly less likely to apply to EAG. In my experience, one of the strongest predictors of whether I will connect with a given community is how much they value inclusivity. (This has been true even in cases where I was part of the “in-group”.)
I understand that there are tradeoffs, and I don’t have enough context to form an opinion on whether the benefits of exclusivity are worth the costs in this case. My goal here isn’t to argue for either position; I just wanted to add another data point for those costs.
Late to the party, but I just came across this post and wanted to add another perspective. For context, I’ve been “living EA principles” for a while, but am not really involved in the community and have never applied to EAG.
The fact that the biggest EA conference is intentionally exclusive is something of a red flag for me and makes me significantly less likely to apply to EAG. In my experience, one of the strongest predictors of whether I will connect with a given community is how much they value inclusivity. (This has been true even in cases where I was part of the “in-group”.)
I understand that there are tradeoffs, and I don’t have enough context to form an opinion on whether the benefits of exclusivity are worth the costs in this case. My goal here isn’t to argue for either position; I just wanted to add another data point for those costs.