I’ve also heard some off-putting anecdotes about the internal operations of the conference. One example is the presence of staff that monitor all interactions in order to enforce certain norms. I’ve heard that they can seem a bit intimidating at times. Of course, I’ve never been to an EAG conference and cannot corroborate that first hand so please factor that in.
I agree that transparency to the public is really lacking. I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness, but still believe that there are a lot more details they could be making public without jeopardizing their objectives. I’d love to see some metrics on this and some feedback surveys for rejected applicants to ensure they are making an effort to measure the “cost of rejection.”
One example is the presence of staff that monitor all interactions in order to enforce certain norms. I’ve heard that they can seem a bit intimidating at times.
I agree that transparency to the public is really lacking. I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness, but still believe that there are a lot more details they could be making public without jeopardizing their objectives.
The content in this comment seem really false to me, both in the actual statement and the “color” this comment has. It seems like it could mislead others who are less familiar with actual EAG events and other EA activities.
Below is object level content pushing back on the above thoughts.
Basically, it’s almost physically impossible to monitor a large number of interactions, much less all interactions at EAG:
Most meetings are 1on1s that are privately arranged, and there’s many thousands of these meetings at every conference. Some meetings occur in scheduled events (e.g. speed meetings for people interested in a certain topic).
It’s not possible that CEA staff could physically hover over in all person meetings, I don’t think there’s enough staff to cover all centrally organized events (trained volunteers are used instead).
Also, if someone tried to eavesdrop in this way, it would be immediately obvious (and seem sort of clownishly absurd).
In all venues, there is “great diversity” of the physical environments people could meet.
This includes large, open standing areas, rooms of small or medium size, booths, courtyards.
This includes the ability to walk the streets surrounding the venue (which can be useful for sensitive conversations).
By the way, providing this diversity is intentionally done by the organizers.
CEA staff do not control/own the conference venue (they rent and deal with venue staff, who generally are present constantly).
It seems absurd to write this, but covert monitoring of private conversations is illegal, and there’s literally hundreds of technical people at EA conferences, and I don’t think this would go undetected for long.
While less direct, here are anecdotes about EAG or CEA that seems to suggest an open, normal culture, or something:
At one EAGx, the literal conference organizers and leader(s) of the country/city EA group were longtime EAs, who actively expressed dislike of CEA, due to its bad “pre-Dalton era” existence (before 2019)
The fact that they communicated their views openly and still lead a EAGx and enjoy large amounts of CEA funding/support, seems healthy and open.
Someone I know has been approached multiple times at EA conferences by people who are basically “intra-EA activists”, for example, who want different financing and organizing structures, and are trying to build momentum.
The way they approached seemed pretty open, e.g. the place they wanted to meet was public and they spoke reasonably loudly and directly
By the way, some of these people are employed by the canonical EA organizations or think tanks, e.g. they literally have physical offices not too far next to some of the major, major EA figures.
These people shared many details and anecdotes, some of which are hilarious.
Everything about these interactions and the existence of these people suggests openness in EA in general
On various matters, CEA staff don’t agree with other CEA staff, like all normal, healthy organizations with productive activities and capable staff. The fact these disputes exists sort of “interrogates the contours” of the culture at CEA and seems healthy.
Quick point of clarification: I don’t know what the anecdotes are referring to, but for what it’s worth, we have 3.5 CEA FTEs working on EAG along with venue/production staff and volunteers. We do not have the ability to monitor all attendee interactions, nor do we want to.
We do have a community health point of contact onsite at all of our events. This person is available in case anyone experiences harassment, bullying, has a mental health concern, or needs other assistance.
I participated in a recent EAGx, and I felt intimidated by the community health staff present onsite. Below I explain why I felt that way:
1) Context: I’m a non-native English speaker who grew up in Asia. There are social norms that are widely acceptable in the region I live but considered objectionable in the West. And I am deeply aware that I am UNAWARE of a lot of these social norms.
For example, in a normal EA meetup, I ran into a long-time EA friend of mine, and I referred to her appearance as “pretty” when I greeted her, which was very common in the city I live. I was later pointed out that this was considered offensive by another EA who grew up in a Western English-speaking country.
2) I spoke with the community health staff present at the conference I was in, nothing was off during the conversation, but I learned that he grew up in the West and likely would not know the differences of norms between his and my cultures. But this EAGx conference was set in Asia.
3) He walked around the venue again and again looking at the participants, apparently making sure he is available for assistance. In several of my 1-1s and group meetings, I observed his presence nearby. I understand he was very dedicated to his duty and had all the good intentions. But I was extremely anxious worrying that my behavior could be interpreted as inappropriate by him or someone nearby who would let him notice. I know there could be consequences if I was reported, so I went through all my conversations trying to behave like a model student in class. Fortunately there was no incident related to me, but the quality of my interactions with other participants deteriorated significantly because of this community health effort.
Going back to Constance’s comments, I get that it’s difficult to imagine how a few staff members can “monitor all interactions”, but I hope it’s clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored. Now when I think of my conference experience, I cannot shake off the image of a panopticon. If I will go to another EA event in the future, I hope I can feel much more safe and secure.
I’m Dion from EAGxSingapore, one of the two community contact people for the event. I’m sorry you felt this way during the conference and wanted to clarify some points.
We did not monitor attendee interactions or 1-1s during the conference. The only exception where we kept track of attendees was for the underaged participants, as alcohol was served during the event. This was explicitly stated to the affected individuals.
It was a priority for us to have a local community contact person. (Me!) However, I (personally) felt that our other contact person was valuable as he had much more context on the EAs flying in from outside the region than any other person on the team. The decision was also partially made because the two of us were the most likely to be contactable since our responsibilities during the conference allowed us to be on our phones/laptops more than the others.
The community contact persons did not work in isolation. Whenever an issue was raised, we would consult each other, the rest of the team, and sometimes CEA’s Community Health team or the local group organizers relevant to the situation to get as much context as possible. For the cases in EAGxSingapore, we preferred to have people sort it out themselves unless we were explicitly requested to step in.
The staff for the conference were probably walking/looking around a lot more than at other events. However, this was because we underestimated the required clean-up crew and were on the lookout for trash lying around.
Happy to discuss any other feedback that you have about the conference!
I couldn’t help laughing at myself after reading your comment as it seemed that I connected two unrelated dots: the presence of community health, and staff looking around for trash.
Thank you for the clarifications, Dion, and for the terrific job you did organizing EAGxSingapore! I wish I could say this in person while I was at the conference, but I saw you were constantly in a “socially exhausted” mode, so I kept my mouth shut. It’s great to e-meet you here and finally get this chance :)
Hi Jonathan, I’m Catherine from CEA’s Community Health team. Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and I’m so sorry you felt uncomfortable.
A minor clarification: Each EAG or EAGx conference has a community contact person (or two). They are sometimes members of CEA’s community health team, but often they are either members of the local EA community or are members of CEA’s events team. It is not our intention for people to feel that they are being monitored.
I believe the person you are referring to is Ollie from CEA’s events team, whose role is to support the local organisers of EAGx events. He was walking around the venue to ensure the event was running smoothly and help out when needed.
Ollie was one of the two community contact people for EAGxSingapore, and a Singaporean organiser was the other contact person. This contact person role was a minor part of both of their roles that weekend. It is plausible that we should have had two locals as community contact people—we have done this in some EAGx conferences before. We will consider how we can communicate the roles of the organisers and contact people more effectively so others don’t feel that the role involves monitoring interactions.
Happy to talk more about any suggestions you have.
I understand the difficulty of running events, and it’s not clear to me how EAGxSingapore could be done better. Looking at the suggestions you gave, for example:
1) Local community contact: I can see that they likely understand local customs and norms better. But I also see that EA is a global community of a unique culture that is much closer to the West.
2) Clearer communication of the roles. It would’ve been a big reliever for ME if I knew that community health contact was just a minor part of Ollie’s roles. And as Dion explained in her response above, now I understand he walked around not to monitor us, but on the lookout for trash. Not only now I feel stupid, but also that I underappreciated Ollie’s efforts. But I digress. In a large event like EAGx, many details have impacts on the participants’ experiences, including the length of the communication of these details. I am not sure whether it is worth making the point of “community health staff usually have other more important roles”.
Most measures I can imagine right now, are like the two above where the choice is not clear, but an intricate balance of various considerations. Therefore I have to admit that even if I had a somewhat negative experience myself, I don’t have any good suggestions for improvement.
Finally let me mention that I am positively surprised to see your response to my rant deeply buried in a thread of 100+ comments. I am confident that with this level of care and dedication, EA events can only better and will have increasingly larger impacts for the good of the participants!
Thanks so much for your kind response Jonathan! I’ll be discussing ways to explain the role better with the next community contact people . I hope we can prevent future attendees from experiencing the discomfort you felt.
To be honest, in situations like this my normal course of action is to not suggest anything and just deal with my feelings.
To me, community health is an unusual function. Although I fail to appreciate why it should be there, I am also convinced that there are good reasons. This thinking applies more generally: since I have zero experience organizing in-person networking events, I have very little chance of coming up with sensible suggestions of improvement unless I spend substantial time in this field.
But I could spend much less time to get over my own feeling of anxiety and insecurity. I also get better at this by repeated practices, so I can deal with future episodes more easily.
How about help the event organizers do better job, you might ask? But I’d rather spend serious time in AI safety, which ranks higher on the pressing issues list than building the EA community.
So sorry Jonathan I don’t have anything valuable to add re your prompt of concrete improvement suggestions. Hope I have explained this clearly in my reasoning above. I think the organizers have done a great job, and given how responsive they’re in this thread, I’m also confident that their best event will always be the next one :)
I’d say that in general in the West, if you as a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive (bc it’s often a precursor to/intended as unwanted sexual attention, rather than just being an arbitrary social norm). But it’s not in itself offensive: if it’s a friend that you have a level of trust with such that she can believe there’s no unwanted sexual attention behind the comment, I don’t think it’s considered offensive. Perhaps the person who told you this didn’t realise you were friends with the person you complemented? Or perhaps they didn’t realise that by calling something ‘offensive’ you would think it was a transgression rather than just a faux pas?Like I’m pretty confident that overhearing someone calling another person ‘pretty’ is not a red flag that would enter on a community health person’s radar.
Basically my read of the situation is that you were spooked due to miscommunication from one person, and understandably extrapolated an inaccurate belief from that. But given how specific this interaction was, I don’t think it’s fair to say that in general people would easily feel like all their interactions are being monitored.
It also seems like there was some information lost in this anecdote being relayed to Constance—ie she believed that monitoring had taken place, rather than it being likely for people to believe monitoring was taking place (if I’m correct in understanding that you were the person she got the anecdote from).
This is always the danger with information being relayed 2nd and 3rd hand—e.g. I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
Yes I can confirm that I was the person Constance got the anecdote from. It was also my belief at the conference and at the time I spoke with Constance that participants were monitored for community health, because I understood that community health 1) had an objective of making sure the event is welcoming and considerate, 2) had power to not admit participants to future events, and 3) had staff walking around the venue looking for something. From other commenters I learned that 3) was false (they were looking for trash, not monitoring interactions).
So re information lost, I want to be clear that nothing was lost when it’s relayed to Constance. I wrongly believed monitoring had taken place and told her just that in our chat.
Re your comment about calling someone pretty: it was meant to be an example of how cross-cultural understanding was difficult. It was the first example that came to mind when I wrote my comment, but certainly not the only example. I thought it was a good example to make the point that normal social interactions in one culture could be considered deeply inappropriate or offensive in a different culture.
Coming back to your comment that “a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive”. I’d like to refer you to this blog post (may not be the best source, I just Googled it) where it is mentioned that “people in China often address women who they don’t know” “beautiful woman” or “beautiful girl” to create connections and make the person being addressed to feel good. So in the example I gave, whether the person was a good friend of mine would not have mattered.
Just to clarify, my point was that the ‘whether the person was a good friend’ part mattered for the question of whether you were told an accurate statement about what’s ‘offensive’ in the West. This question doesn’t rely on anything that’s true of any other culture, so I’m a bit confused why you mentioned the China example?
Re the communication between you and Constance, that’s my bad. I had understood your comment of “but I hope it’s clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored [emphasis mine]” (in your initial comment before the clarification from others about the trash issue etc) to mean that you were already aware from not long after the experience that monitoring hadn’t actually taken place. ie that the issue you wanted to raise was about CEA staff was that they didn’t consider how easily others would perceive their actions as monitoring.
The point of the example in my original comment is to demonstrate that well-accepted social norms in one culture can be deemed offensive in another.
Your counterargument is that 1) the conclusion is drawn from only one example, and 2) even that example could be due to the person who gave me the feedback misunderstood the situation, ie my example was bad luck and not generally applicable.
In my reply to your counterargument, my claim of this being just one but not the only example is the response to 1). And the China example is the response to 2), that is, even if she were a new EA I just met for the first time, I could still have remarked on her good appearance, a polite and friendly gesture in my local culture, and be correctly deemed offensive by someone from the West. Therefore the main story line in my example still holds and is representative of difficult multi-cultural situations.
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
This is a minor point, but I did notice Constance’s revised application had long answers with lots of content, and as she said she spent two hours on it. Is this usual/expected?
I usually just write a few sentences for each question, and I don’t believe I’ve ever spent more than an hour on one.
I’m interested to discuss this, but am slightly confused about your 2nd paragraph haha: are you saying that you’ve never spent more than an hour on one question, or an hour on one application? Just because it reads like you’re saying the former, which obviously with at least 2 questions in the application, is compatible with Constance’s 2 hours on the application overall as well. Or are you interpreting her as saying that she spent 2 hours on each question?
I don’t think this assessment is true (see quote below), since Scott’s entire post was about opening up EAG to anyone (it seems odd that he would be hyper critical about how much time she spent on an application if this is what he believes).
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
To clarify, my point has nothing to do with being critical of another person. I just think the take that ‘even someone who is so aligned with EA had their application rejected, so clearly there’s something broken in the admissions process’ probably assumes that person was aware that it even was a real application that they were filling out, not just a formality.
Thank you for the quick response in clarifying this. If I find out more from the person I got the anecdote from, I can let you know and perhaps it can be looked into more.
To clarify, I felt uneasy because I believed that attending an expensive event (which would cost myself over $3000 to attend coming from Canada) was hard to justify when I could donate that money instead. I had just read “Doing Good Better” and thought the idea that the CEA would spend money to host such an event, as well as even fund college students to attend, was counter to everything I had just read. It seemed obvious that, based on EA principles, the better idea would be to donate all of the money spent hosting that event. I believe, at minimum, this is an optics issue. As I said, I have since been somewhat convinced that EAG can be useful so people who may have never met, can share ideas and collaborate to “make the world a better place”. I’m still not fully convinced of this though.
With that said, it makes almost no sense to me, if that was their goal, why someone like you would not have been accepted to attend. From what you said above, you embody everything that EA should represent (in my view)- your commitment to animal welfare and advocacy, and to maximizing your own wealth for the good, is commendable and should be celebrated.
When this post was first shared among the EA community I am part of, I assumed you were rejected as a speaker at EAG. To learn that you were rejected as a participant, is incredibly baffling, when I know first hand of someone being accepted after only learning about EA a month prior.
From the little I understand, they seem to accept attendees who are fit two categories (but I’m happy to get corrected on this if someone with more knowledge can clarify):
1) Young, ambitious college students 2) Mentors who can work with these college students
I can tell you are very busy Constance, but I would like to invite you to speak to the EA group I help run at the University of British Columbia (over zoom of course). Please let me know if you are interested and have the time.
I was in the same conversation. It was at an EAGx conference, not EAG. I’ve pinged the person who shared the anecdote. They’ll respond here soon. Better to get it straight from the source. I don’t think they mentioned the staff member enforced any norms—just that their prescence felt kind of odd given they are someone with the power to ban people from the conference (which I guess implicitly enforces norms). They also mentioned that this particular staff member was regardless a lovely person and mentioned how their prescence feeling odd or intimidating may have something to do with a cultural difference since the EAGx was held in Asia.
But let us wait for the anecdote source to respond directly lest we let this hearsay evidence train derail itself.
I’d also like to say as someone who has been to multiple EAGs and even volunteered, I’ve not experienced there being any intimidating norm-enforcer. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of even a single EAG staff member that wasn’t incredibly approachable, kind, professional and compassionate. No matter where they were on the implicit status hierarchy—even if they were virtually EA-celebrities—nobody felt intimidating to me.
I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness
Could you elaborate on what this internal justification is? (Blink twice if they made you sign an NDA and/or if they revoked your access to the relevant Google-doc).
I was the person at CEA who spoke with Constance. I don’t remember asking her to promise anything, and CEA certainly didn’t suggest an NDA. (Though I was surprised to see my private correspondence with her published here, since we didn’t discuss publishing it.)
I don’t think I gave Constance additional insights into the admissions process that aren’t already published fairly widely (see here and CEA comments here). I did give her specific feedback on her application and her fit for the event, and other advice about how to get more engaged with the community but I did not ask her to keep that between us. I agree that we could improve communications, and we are reflecting on that.
I agree that we could improve communications, and we are reflecting on that.
That’s a good start. But the root of the issue was never communications. The root of the issue is that the CEA has a lot of power, concentrated in the hands of relatively few people, and lacks transparency.
So treating this like a “communications” issue is the wrong approach. Because, for one thing, it’s a superficial fix, and does not get at the root of the issue.
And, second, it makes the CEA look bad. For instance, though this is anecdotal, I’ve already heard people in my university EA group make passing comments about how the CEA’s response to this post is reminiscent of a corporation dealing with a PR controversy. So I worry doubling down on improving “communications” will only make these sorts of perceptions more prevalent.
I’m curious if you (or Constance) have any theories about why there’s this differing perception of the conversation. One guess is that perhaps Constance wasn’t (and still isn’t) aware that this information is publicly available?
I’m not sure. She linked to both sources her post, so I don’t think the issue is that she doesn’t know about them.
I did give her quite a bit of feedback on her application and things she might include/ways she might get involved in the future, which would have given her some additional insight into how we think about the process. That might be what she means.
I have the hypothesis that the two of you are just different types of people personality-wise with different communication styles that led to a far larger inferential distance between the two of you than either of you could have anticipated. Possibly also since each of you saw the other as “a fellow EA” this made it even easier for both of you to underestimate how large the inferential distance could be between the two of you.
My understanding is you and Constance only talked for an hour. That doesn’t sound like that long and if anything sounds like the perfect amount of time for both parties to come away confidently and incorrectlybelieving that the object level information had been properly transmitted and understood.
Though I don’t know what the insight was, nor do I know the justification for not revealing it, and even though I currently believe more transparency in the admissions process is probably a good idea given how confused even long-time EAs are—despite all this, I strongly doubt there is anything insidious going on.
And because I had a hard time finding what “government house utilitarianism” meant without being blocked by the paywall of a scholarly article here is probably the most important part found on Henry Sidgewick’s wikipedia article:
Sidgwick is closely, and controversially, associated with esoteric morality: the position that a moral system (such as utilitarianism) may be acceptable, but that it is not acceptable for that moral system to be widely taught or accepted.[17]
I strongly doubt there is anything insidious going on.
That’s not the issue. The issue is not what the organizers of EAG are doing in secret, but that they are doing stuff in secret.
I had a hard time finding what “government house utilitarianism”
The idea behind government house utilitarianism is that there is stuff that is morally acceptable to do in private that is not morally acceptable to do in public. Because if it was done in public, people would know about it, and that would lead to bad consequences. (See here).
Hi Lauren,
I’ve also heard some off-putting anecdotes about the internal operations of the conference. One example is the presence of staff that monitor all interactions in order to enforce certain norms. I’ve heard that they can seem a bit intimidating at times. Of course, I’ve never been to an EAG conference and cannot corroborate that first hand so please factor that in.
I agree that transparency to the public is really lacking. I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness, but still believe that there are a lot more details they could be making public without jeopardizing their objectives. I’d love to see some metrics on this and some feedback surveys for rejected applicants to ensure they are making an effort to measure the “cost of rejection.”
The content in this comment seem really false to me, both in the actual statement and the “color” this comment has. It seems like it could mislead others who are less familiar with actual EAG events and other EA activities.
Below is object level content pushing back on the above thoughts.
Basically, it’s almost physically impossible to monitor a large number of interactions, much less all interactions at EAG:
Most meetings are 1on1s that are privately arranged, and there’s many thousands of these meetings at every conference. Some meetings occur in scheduled events (e.g. speed meetings for people interested in a certain topic).
It’s not possible that CEA staff could physically hover over in all person meetings, I don’t think there’s enough staff to cover all centrally organized events (trained volunteers are used instead).
Also, if someone tried to eavesdrop in this way, it would be immediately obvious (and seem sort of clownishly absurd).
In all venues, there is “great diversity” of the physical environments people could meet.
This includes large, open standing areas, rooms of small or medium size, booths, courtyards.
This includes the ability to walk the streets surrounding the venue (which can be useful for sensitive conversations).
By the way, providing this diversity is intentionally done by the organizers.
CEA staff do not control/own the conference venue (they rent and deal with venue staff, who generally are present constantly).
It seems absurd to write this, but covert monitoring of private conversations is illegal, and there’s literally hundreds of technical people at EA conferences, and I don’t think this would go undetected for long.
While less direct, here are anecdotes about EAG or CEA that seems to suggest an open, normal culture, or something:
At one EAGx, the literal conference organizers and leader(s) of the country/city EA group were longtime EAs, who actively expressed dislike of CEA, due to its bad “pre-Dalton era” existence (before 2019)
The fact that they communicated their views openly and still lead a EAGx and enjoy large amounts of CEA funding/support, seems healthy and open.
Someone I know has been approached multiple times at EA conferences by people who are basically “intra-EA activists”, for example, who want different financing and organizing structures, and are trying to build momentum.
The way they approached seemed pretty open, e.g. the place they wanted to meet was public and they spoke reasonably loudly and directly
By the way, some of these people are employed by the canonical EA organizations or think tanks, e.g. they literally have physical offices not too far next to some of the major, major EA figures.
These people shared many details and anecdotes, some of which are hilarious.
Everything about these interactions and the existence of these people suggests openness in EA in general
On various matters, CEA staff don’t agree with other CEA staff, like all normal, healthy organizations with productive activities and capable staff. The fact these disputes exists sort of “interrogates the contours” of the culture at CEA and seems healthy.
Hi Constance,
Quick point of clarification: I don’t know what the anecdotes are referring to, but for what it’s worth, we have 3.5 CEA FTEs working on EAG along with venue/production staff and volunteers. We do not have the ability to monitor all attendee interactions, nor do we want to.
We do have a community health point of contact onsite at all of our events. This person is available in case anyone experiences harassment, bullying, has a mental health concern, or needs other assistance.
Hi Amy,
I participated in a recent EAGx, and I felt intimidated by the community health staff present onsite. Below I explain why I felt that way:
1) Context: I’m a non-native English speaker who grew up in Asia. There are social norms that are widely acceptable in the region I live but considered objectionable in the West. And I am deeply aware that I am UNAWARE of a lot of these social norms.
For example, in a normal EA meetup, I ran into a long-time EA friend of mine, and I referred to her appearance as “pretty” when I greeted her, which was very common in the city I live. I was later pointed out that this was considered offensive by another EA who grew up in a Western English-speaking country.
2) I spoke with the community health staff present at the conference I was in, nothing was off during the conversation, but I learned that he grew up in the West and likely would not know the differences of norms between his and my cultures. But this EAGx conference was set in Asia.
3) He walked around the venue again and again looking at the participants, apparently making sure he is available for assistance. In several of my 1-1s and group meetings, I observed his presence nearby. I understand he was very dedicated to his duty and had all the good intentions. But I was extremely anxious worrying that my behavior could be interpreted as inappropriate by him or someone nearby who would let him notice. I know there could be consequences if I was reported, so I went through all my conversations trying to behave like a model student in class. Fortunately there was no incident related to me, but the quality of my interactions with other participants deteriorated significantly because of this community health effort.
Going back to Constance’s comments, I get that it’s difficult to imagine how a few staff members can “monitor all interactions”, but I hope it’s clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored. Now when I think of my conference experience, I cannot shake off the image of a panopticon. If I will go to another EA event in the future, I hope I can feel much more safe and secure.
Hi Jonathan!
I’m Dion from EAGxSingapore, one of the two community contact people for the event. I’m sorry you felt this way during the conference and wanted to clarify some points.
We did not monitor attendee interactions or 1-1s during the conference. The only exception where we kept track of attendees was for the underaged participants, as alcohol was served during the event. This was explicitly stated to the affected individuals.
It was a priority for us to have a local community contact person. (Me!) However, I (personally) felt that our other contact person was valuable as he had much more context on the EAs flying in from outside the region than any other person on the team. The decision was also partially made because the two of us were the most likely to be contactable since our responsibilities during the conference allowed us to be on our phones/laptops more than the others.
The community contact persons did not work in isolation. Whenever an issue was raised, we would consult each other, the rest of the team, and sometimes CEA’s Community Health team or the local group organizers relevant to the situation to get as much context as possible. For the cases in EAGxSingapore, we preferred to have people sort it out themselves unless we were explicitly requested to step in.
The staff for the conference were probably walking/looking around a lot more than at other events. However, this was because we underestimated the required clean-up crew and were on the lookout for trash lying around.
Happy to discuss any other feedback that you have about the conference!
I couldn’t help laughing at myself after reading your comment as it seemed that I connected two unrelated dots: the presence of community health, and staff looking around for trash.
Thank you for the clarifications, Dion, and for the terrific job you did organizing EAGxSingapore! I wish I could say this in person while I was at the conference, but I saw you were constantly in a “socially exhausted” mode, so I kept my mouth shut. It’s great to e-meet you here and finally get this chance :)
Hi Jonathan,
I’m Catherine from CEA’s Community Health team. Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and I’m so sorry you felt uncomfortable.
A minor clarification: Each EAG or EAGx conference has a community contact person (or two). They are sometimes members of CEA’s community health team, but often they are either members of the local EA community or are members of CEA’s events team. It is not our intention for people to feel that they are being monitored.
I believe the person you are referring to is Ollie from CEA’s events team, whose role is to support the local organisers of EAGx events. He was walking around the venue to ensure the event was running smoothly and help out when needed.
Ollie was one of the two community contact people for EAGxSingapore, and a Singaporean organiser was the other contact person. This contact person role was a minor part of both of their roles that weekend. It is plausible that we should have had two locals as community contact people—we have done this in some EAGx conferences before. We will consider how we can communicate the roles of the organisers and contact people more effectively so others don’t feel that the role involves monitoring interactions.
Happy to talk more about any suggestions you have.
Hi Catherine,
Thank you for reading my comment!
I understand the difficulty of running events, and it’s not clear to me how EAGxSingapore could be done better. Looking at the suggestions you gave, for example:
1) Local community contact: I can see that they likely understand local customs and norms better. But I also see that EA is a global community of a unique culture that is much closer to the West.
2) Clearer communication of the roles. It would’ve been a big reliever for ME if I knew that community health contact was just a minor part of Ollie’s roles. And as Dion explained in her response above, now I understand he walked around not to monitor us, but on the lookout for trash. Not only now I feel stupid, but also that I underappreciated Ollie’s efforts. But I digress. In a large event like EAGx, many details have impacts on the participants’ experiences, including the length of the communication of these details. I am not sure whether it is worth making the point of “community health staff usually have other more important roles”.
Most measures I can imagine right now, are like the two above where the choice is not clear, but an intricate balance of various considerations. Therefore I have to admit that even if I had a somewhat negative experience myself, I don’t have any good suggestions for improvement.
Finally let me mention that I am positively surprised to see your response to my rant deeply buried in a thread of 100+ comments. I am confident that with this level of care and dedication, EA events can only better and will have increasingly larger impacts for the good of the participants!
Thanks so much for your kind response Jonathan!
I’ll be discussing ways to explain the role better with the next community contact people . I hope we can prevent future attendees from experiencing the discomfort you felt.
I have a suggestion for you guys: be more transparent. Thanks.
What concrete improvements would you suggest that would help make you safer at events like these?
To be honest, in situations like this my normal course of action is to not suggest anything and just deal with my feelings.
To me, community health is an unusual function. Although I fail to appreciate why it should be there, I am also convinced that there are good reasons. This thinking applies more generally: since I have zero experience organizing in-person networking events, I have very little chance of coming up with sensible suggestions of improvement unless I spend substantial time in this field.
But I could spend much less time to get over my own feeling of anxiety and insecurity. I also get better at this by repeated practices, so I can deal with future episodes more easily.
How about help the event organizers do better job, you might ask? But I’d rather spend serious time in AI safety, which ranks higher on the pressing issues list than building the EA community.
So sorry Jonathan I don’t have anything valuable to add re your prompt of concrete improvement suggestions. Hope I have explained this clearly in my reasoning above. I think the organizers have done a great job, and given how responsive they’re in this thread, I’m also confident that their best event will always be the next one :)
I’d say that in general in the West, if you as a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive (bc it’s often a precursor to/intended as unwanted sexual attention, rather than just being an arbitrary social norm). But it’s not in itself offensive: if it’s a friend that you have a level of trust with such that she can believe there’s no unwanted sexual attention behind the comment, I don’t think it’s considered offensive. Perhaps the person who told you this didn’t realise you were friends with the person you complemented? Or perhaps they didn’t realise that by calling something ‘offensive’ you would think it was a transgression rather than just a faux pas?Like I’m pretty confident that overhearing someone calling another person ‘pretty’ is not a red flag that would enter on a community health person’s radar.
Basically my read of the situation is that you were spooked due to miscommunication from one person, and understandably extrapolated an inaccurate belief from that. But given how specific this interaction was, I don’t think it’s fair to say that in general people would easily feel like all their interactions are being monitored.
It also seems like there was some information lost in this anecdote being relayed to Constance—ie she believed that monitoring had taken place, rather than it being likely for people to believe monitoring was taking place (if I’m correct in understanding that you were the person she got the anecdote from).
This is always the danger with information being relayed 2nd and 3rd hand—e.g. I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
Hi Rebecca,
Yes I can confirm that I was the person Constance got the anecdote from. It was also my belief at the conference and at the time I spoke with Constance that participants were monitored for community health, because I understood that community health 1) had an objective of making sure the event is welcoming and considerate, 2) had power to not admit participants to future events, and 3) had staff walking around the venue looking for something. From other commenters I learned that 3) was false (they were looking for trash, not monitoring interactions).
So re information lost, I want to be clear that nothing was lost when it’s relayed to Constance. I wrongly believed monitoring had taken place and told her just that in our chat.
Re your comment about calling someone pretty: it was meant to be an example of how cross-cultural understanding was difficult. It was the first example that came to mind when I wrote my comment, but certainly not the only example. I thought it was a good example to make the point that normal social interactions in one culture could be considered deeply inappropriate or offensive in a different culture.
Coming back to your comment that “a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive”. I’d like to refer you to this blog post (may not be the best source, I just Googled it) where it is mentioned that “people in China often address women who they don’t know” “beautiful woman” or “beautiful girl” to create connections and make the person being addressed to feel good. So in the example I gave, whether the person was a good friend of mine would not have mattered.
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your response.
Just to clarify, my point was that the ‘whether the person was a good friend’ part mattered for the question of whether you were told an accurate statement about what’s ‘offensive’ in the West. This question doesn’t rely on anything that’s true of any other culture, so I’m a bit confused why you mentioned the China example?
Re the communication between you and Constance, that’s my bad. I had understood your comment of “but I hope it’s clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored [emphasis mine]” (in your initial comment before the clarification from others about the trash issue etc) to mean that you were already aware from not long after the experience that monitoring hadn’t actually taken place. ie that the issue you wanted to raise was about CEA staff was that they didn’t consider how easily others would perceive their actions as monitoring.
Hi Rebecca,
The point of the example in my original comment is to demonstrate that well-accepted social norms in one culture can be deemed offensive in another.
Your counterargument is that 1) the conclusion is drawn from only one example, and 2) even that example could be due to the person who gave me the feedback misunderstood the situation, ie my example was bad luck and not generally applicable.
In my reply to your counterargument, my claim of this being just one but not the only example is the response to 1). And the China example is the response to 2), that is, even if she were a new EA I just met for the first time, I could still have remarked on her good appearance, a polite and friendly gesture in my local culture, and be correctly deemed offensive by someone from the West. Therefore the main story line in my example still holds and is representative of difficult multi-cultural situations.
This is a minor point, but I did notice Constance’s revised application had long answers with lots of content, and as she said she spent two hours on it. Is this usual/expected?
I usually just write a few sentences for each question, and I don’t believe I’ve ever spent more than an hour on one.
I’m interested to discuss this, but am slightly confused about your 2nd paragraph haha: are you saying that you’ve never spent more than an hour on one question, or an hour on one application? Just because it reads like you’re saying the former, which obviously with at least 2 questions in the application, is compatible with Constance’s 2 hours on the application overall as well. Or are you interpreting her as saying that she spent 2 hours on each question?
I’m saying I’ve never spent more than one hour on the application form.
I don’t think this assessment is true (see quote below), since Scott’s entire post was about opening up EAG to anyone (it seems odd that he would be hyper critical about how much time she spent on an application if this is what he believes).
To clarify, my point has nothing to do with being critical of another person. I just think the take that ‘even someone who is so aligned with EA had their application rejected, so clearly there’s something broken in the admissions process’ probably assumes that person was aware that it even was a real application that they were filling out, not just a formality.
Hi Amy,
Thank you for the quick response in clarifying this. If I find out more from the person I got the anecdote from, I can let you know and perhaps it can be looked into more.
To clarify, I felt uneasy because I believed that attending an expensive event (which would cost myself over $3000 to attend coming from Canada) was hard to justify when I could donate that money instead. I had just read “Doing Good Better” and thought the idea that the CEA would spend money to host such an event, as well as even fund college students to attend, was counter to everything I had just read. It seemed obvious that, based on EA principles, the better idea would be to donate all of the money spent hosting that event. I believe, at minimum, this is an optics issue. As I said, I have since been somewhat convinced that EAG can be useful so people who may have never met, can share ideas and collaborate to “make the world a better place”. I’m still not fully convinced of this though.
With that said, it makes almost no sense to me, if that was their goal, why someone like you would not have been accepted to attend. From what you said above, you embody everything that EA should represent (in my view)- your commitment to animal welfare and advocacy, and to maximizing your own wealth for the good, is commendable and should be celebrated.
When this post was first shared among the EA community I am part of, I assumed you were rejected as a speaker at EAG. To learn that you were rejected as a participant, is incredibly baffling, when I know first hand of someone being accepted after only learning about EA a month prior.
From the little I understand, they seem to accept attendees who are fit two categories (but I’m happy to get corrected on this if someone with more knowledge can clarify):
1) Young, ambitious college students
2) Mentors who can work with these college students
I can tell you are very busy Constance, but I would like to invite you to speak to the EA group I help run at the University of British Columbia (over zoom of course). Please let me know if you are interested and have the time.
Join us on GatherTown and you can meet Constance! :)
I can confirm she is a lot of fun to talk to.
If you can’t this weekend I’ll be sure to ask her myself if she can talk to UBC EAs and pass along her details to you.
Corn.
Edit: he has responded
I was in the same conversation. It was at an EAGx conference, not EAG. I’ve pinged the person who shared the anecdote. They’ll respond here soon. Better to get it straight from the source. I don’t think they mentioned the staff member enforced any norms—just that their prescence felt kind of odd given they are someone with the power to ban people from the conference (which I guess implicitly enforces norms). They also mentioned that this particular staff member was regardless a lovely person and mentioned how their prescence feeling odd or intimidating may have something to do with a cultural difference since the EAGx was held in Asia.
But let us wait for the anecdote source to respond directly lest we let this hearsay evidence train derail itself.
I’d also like to say as someone who has been to multiple EAGs and even volunteered, I’ve not experienced there being any intimidating norm-enforcer. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of even a single EAG staff member that wasn’t incredibly approachable, kind, professional and compassionate. No matter where they were on the implicit status hierarchy—even if they were virtually EA-celebrities—nobody felt intimidating to me.
Hi Constance.
It’s interesting that you say this:
Could you elaborate on what this internal justification is? (Blink twice if they made you sign an NDA and/or if they revoked your access to the relevant Google-doc).
I was the person at CEA who spoke with Constance. I don’t remember asking her to promise anything, and CEA certainly didn’t suggest an NDA. (Though I was surprised to see my private correspondence with her published here, since we didn’t discuss publishing it.)
I don’t think I gave Constance additional insights into the admissions process that aren’t already published fairly widely (see here and CEA comments here). I did give her specific feedback on her application and her fit for the event, and other advice about how to get more engaged with the community but I did not ask her to keep that between us. I agree that we could improve communications, and we are reflecting on that.
That’s a good start. But the root of the issue was never communications. The root of the issue is that the CEA has a lot of power, concentrated in the hands of relatively few people, and lacks transparency.
So treating this like a “communications” issue is the wrong approach. Because, for one thing, it’s a superficial fix, and does not get at the root of the issue.
And, second, it makes the CEA look bad. For instance, though this is anecdotal, I’ve already heard people in my university EA group make passing comments about how the CEA’s response to this post is reminiscent of a corporation dealing with a PR controversy. So I worry doubling down on improving “communications” will only make these sorts of perceptions more prevalent.
I’m curious if you (or Constance) have any theories about why there’s this differing perception of the conversation. One guess is that perhaps Constance wasn’t (and still isn’t) aware that this information is publicly available?
I’m not sure. She linked to both sources her post, so I don’t think the issue is that she doesn’t know about them.
I did give her quite a bit of feedback on her application and things she might include/ways she might get involved in the future, which would have given her some additional insight into how we think about the process. That might be what she means.
I have the hypothesis that the two of you are just different types of people personality-wise with different communication styles that led to a far larger inferential distance between the two of you than either of you could have anticipated. Possibly also since each of you saw the other as “a fellow EA” this made it even easier for both of you to underestimate how large the inferential distance could be between the two of you.
My understanding is you and Constance only talked for an hour. That doesn’t sound like that long and if anything sounds like the perfect amount of time for both parties to come away confidently and incorrectly believing that the object level information had been properly transmitted and understood.
OP links to insider insight in the “Personal Hypotheses for Rejection” section of the post.
The link doesn’t seem to be working.
You are right. The bookmark to the relevant section in the Google Doc appears to have been removed. Unsure why.
All I know is that Constance got some insider insight from someone at the CEA and promised she wouldn’t share it.
Nice. Nothing like some good ol’ fashioned government house utilitarianism to restore your faith in EA.
Though I don’t know what the insight was, nor do I know the justification for not revealing it, and even though I currently believe more transparency in the admissions process is probably a good idea given how confused even long-time EAs are—despite all this, I strongly doubt there is anything insidious going on.
And because I had a hard time finding what “government house utilitarianism” meant without being blocked by the paywall of a scholarly article here is probably the most important part found on Henry Sidgewick’s wikipedia article:
That’s not the issue. The issue is not what the organizers of EAG are doing in secret, but that they are doing stuff in secret.
The idea behind government house utilitarianism is that there is stuff that is morally acceptable to do in private that is not morally acceptable to do in public. Because if it was done in public, people would know about it, and that would lead to bad consequences. (See here).