EDIT: Lukas Gloor does a much better job than me at getting across everything I wanted to in this comment here
There was a vague tone of “the goal is to get accepted to EAG” instead of “the goal is to make the world better,” which I felt a bit uneasy about when reading the post. EAGs are only useful in so far as they let community members to better work in the real world.
From my reading her goals are not simply get into EAG. It seems obvious to me that her goal to get into EAG is instrumental to the end of making the world a better place. The crux is not “Constance just wants to get into EAG.” The crux I think is Constance believes she can help make the world a better place much more through connecting with people at EAG. The CEA does not appear to believe this to be the case.
The crux should be the focus. Focusing on how badly she wants to get into EAG is a distraction.
“EAG exists to make the world a better place, rather than serve the EA community or make EAs happy.”
For many EAs you cannot have a well-run conference that makes the world a better place without it also being a place that makes many EAs very happy. I’d think the two goals are synonymous for a great many EAs.
In their comment Eli says:
This unfortunately sometimes means EAs will be sad due to decisions we’ve made — though if this results in the world being a worse place overall, then we’ve clearly made a mistake.
Let’s also remember that EAs that get rejected from EAG that believe their rejection resulted in the world being a worse place overall will also be sad—probably moreso because they get both the FOMO but also a deeper moral sting. In fact, they might be so sad it motivates them to write an EA Forum post about it in the hopes of making sure that the CEA didn’t make a mistake.
I like Eli’s comment. It captures something important. But I also don’t like it because it can also provide a false sense of clarity—seperating goals that aren’t actually always that seperate—and this false clarity can possibly provide a motivated reasoning basis that can be used to more easily believe the EAG admission process didn’t make a mistake and make the world a worse place. Why? Because it makes it easier to dismiss an EA that is very sad about being rejected from EAG as just someone who “wants to get into EAG.”
EDIT: Lukas Gloor does a much better job than me at getting across everything I wanted to in this comment here
From my reading her goals are not simply get into EAG. It seems obvious to me that her goal to get into EAG is instrumental to the end of making the world a better place. The crux is not “Constance just wants to get into EAG.” The crux I think is Constance believes she can help make the world a better place much more through connecting with people at EAG. The CEA does not appear to believe this to be the case.
The crux should be the focus. Focusing on how badly she wants to get into EAG is a distraction.
For many EAs you cannot have a well-run conference that makes the world a better place without it also being a place that makes many EAs very happy. I’d think the two goals are synonymous for a great many EAs.
In their comment Eli says:
Let’s also remember that EAs that get rejected from EAG that believe their rejection resulted in the world being a worse place overall will also be sad—probably moreso because they get both the FOMO but also a deeper moral sting. In fact, they might be so sad it motivates them to write an EA Forum post about it in the hopes of making sure that the CEA didn’t make a mistake.
I like Eli’s comment. It captures something important. But I also don’t like it because it can also provide a false sense of clarity—seperating goals that aren’t actually always that seperate—and this false clarity can possibly provide a motivated reasoning basis that can be used to more easily believe the EAG admission process didn’t make a mistake and make the world a worse place. Why? Because it makes it easier to dismiss an EA that is very sad about being rejected from EAG as just someone who “wants to get into EAG.”