I think EA Global admissions is currently checking for something like “does this person have a very different impression of what EA is about than most of the current leadership?”, which I think has a pretty substantial effect on culture.
It is hard to talk about admissions in too much detail publicly. I agree that we want to make sure attendees have an understanding of EA but we also want to avoid the “guessing the teacher’s password” problem. We also check for reasoning skills/epistemics. In other words, some people don’t know much about EA principles, but manage to exhibit good reasoning skills as they make the case for a clear plan, or by explaining that they are uncertain and laying out which options they are thinking about.
Is there any attempt to increase diversity (of experience, perspectives, gender, race) through admissions?
I’m asking because this kind of idea was made in another comment here, and sounds good to me, but contrasts with your description.
It is hard to talk about admissions in too much detail publicly
I also have a bit of a hard time understanding this. If there are some objective criteria that you use to assess those other things you mentioned, then yeah, I wouldn’t want people to just start optimizing for them and ruin the process. But so far from CEA staff comments here, it sounds much more like a judgement call that you can’t really game.
Like, from my perspective as a musician, if I wanted to get into music school I know what the basic criteria in an audition would be, but they’re subjective and optimizing for them is almost identical to “training to be a good musician”, so there’s no problem in making them publicly known.
I think EA Global admissions is currently checking for something like “does this person have a very different impression of what EA is about than most of the current leadership?”, which I think has a pretty substantial effect on culture.
It is hard to talk about admissions in too much detail publicly. I agree that we want to make sure attendees have an understanding of EA but we also want to avoid the “guessing the teacher’s password” problem. We also check for reasoning skills/epistemics. In other words, some people don’t know much about EA principles, but manage to exhibit good reasoning skills as they make the case for a clear plan, or by explaining that they are uncertain and laying out which options they are thinking about.
Is there any attempt to increase diversity (of experience, perspectives, gender, race) through admissions?
I’m asking because this kind of idea was made in another comment here, and sounds good to me, but contrasts with your description.
I also have a bit of a hard time understanding this. If there are some objective criteria that you use to assess those other things you mentioned, then yeah, I wouldn’t want people to just start optimizing for them and ruin the process. But so far from CEA staff comments here, it sounds much more like a judgement call that you can’t really game.
Like, from my perspective as a musician, if I wanted to get into music school I know what the basic criteria in an audition would be, but they’re subjective and optimizing for them is almost identical to “training to be a good musician”, so there’s no problem in making them publicly known.
Thanks! Makes sense.