I agree with Kevin. The main goal of EAG is reportedly to “make the world a better place” and they have processes in place to filter out people that they don’t think will add to that goal. Other conferences like the academic and political conferences you mentioned may be trying to optimize for other metrics like more exposure, inclusiveness, profit, diversity, etc.
I do believe CEA should be more transparent with these processes and try harder to measure the harm that can result from a high rejection rate conference that people’s identitites are closely tied to.
I don’t think it’s true that they are trying to filter out people they don’t think will make the world a better place. It’s definitely the case that the same person can be rejected or accepted at different stages, so my impression is that the criteria are more about ‘can attending this conference with the goals they’ve outlined, at this time, significantly help this person, and the others attending, increase their impact?’
So e.g. I was accepted to EAG SF 2019 when I was in the process of deciding on a thesis topic, but rejected from EAGx Singapore 2022, most likely for not having enough relevance to Asia (I live in Australia). I felt sad that I couldn’t go, but I think it’s clear that it’s not got anything to do with a judgement of my likelihood of impact as a person.
Yes that is a good caveat to include. It is deinitely easy to conflate effectiveness of a person vs effectiveness of a person at a given point in time. I think that would be an important point to emphasize in rejection emails.
I agree with Kevin. The main goal of EAG is reportedly to “make the world a better place” and they have processes in place to filter out people that they don’t think will add to that goal. Other conferences like the academic and political conferences you mentioned may be trying to optimize for other metrics like more exposure, inclusiveness, profit, diversity, etc.
I do believe CEA should be more transparent with these processes and try harder to measure the harm that can result from a high rejection rate conference that people’s identitites are closely tied to.
I don’t think it’s true that they are trying to filter out people they don’t think will make the world a better place. It’s definitely the case that the same person can be rejected or accepted at different stages, so my impression is that the criteria are more about ‘can attending this conference with the goals they’ve outlined, at this time, significantly help this person, and the others attending, increase their impact?’
So e.g. I was accepted to EAG SF 2019 when I was in the process of deciding on a thesis topic, but rejected from EAGx Singapore 2022, most likely for not having enough relevance to Asia (I live in Australia). I felt sad that I couldn’t go, but I think it’s clear that it’s not got anything to do with a judgement of my likelihood of impact as a person.
Yes that is a good caveat to include. It is deinitely easy to conflate effectiveness of a person vs effectiveness of a person at a given point in time. I think that would be an important point to emphasize in rejection emails.