Amber—thanks for sharing these candid reactions to EAG. I suspect they’re fairly common reactions among many attendees.
I would just contextualize your reactions by pointing out that these reactions are very common in many young people attending conferences in any scientific field! I don’t think most of them are unique to EA. Most are generic to almost any kind of intellectually focused conference.
When I was in grad school and in my early academic career, I attended a wide variety of conferences in cognitive science, machine learning, genetics, decision theory, evolutionary psychology, primatology, etc. Across all these fields, many young researchers had similar reactions to the conferences, concerning the reactions you mentioned—high career stakes, imposter syndrome, confronting one’s limitations, everything being busy and frantic, having some bad interactions, etc. The social challenges of conferences are especially acute for people (like me) with Aspergers, introversion, and/or social awkwardness.
So I think EAs need to be careful about a couple of things.
First, it’s important for EAs to attend a variety of non-EA conferences, so we realize that a lot of the challenges of EA conferences aren’t unique to EA, but are just generic to what happens when you put hundreds of smart, motivated, ambitious young adults together in the same space and time, jostling for status, opportunities, recognition, and connections.
Second, it’s important for EAs not to over-correct our conference structures in reaction to these fairly common ‘conference blues’. If there were easy ways to make conferences less demanding, stressful, and exhausting, other sciences would probably have already discovered and implemented them. EAs aren’t likely to solve conference-planning problems that have eluded the best other sciences for decades. (Maybe we can, but I’m being Bayesian here.)
Having said that, EA conference do have one unusual challenge, as you mentioned: ‘you spend a lot of time talking about depressing things’. That really is a unique part of EA. Many behavioral sciences conferences do spend a lot of time talking about ‘social problems’ that loom large within current political narratives, such as prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, inequality, etc. But none of these are existential risks, so it’s easy to act like they’re Very Important Problems Indeed during the conference talks (e.g. at a typical social psychology conference), but to set them aside during evening socializing (since everybody knows they’re not actually massive risks to our entire species and civilization.) By contrast, EA deliberately seek out large-scale, neglected, tractable problems, and this can impose unique emotional challenges during conferences.
I think if EAs are concerned about making EA conferences more pleasant and rewarding, we should focus a fair amount of attention on this last issue—how to stay positive, social, and motivated even when the intellectual and emotional content of EA talks and discussion is uniquely alarming, and/or uniquely likely to induce ‘empathy fatique’.
The thing that is quite unique about EAG compared to other conferences is the strong reliance on one-on-ones planned through the app. I think this comes with some advantages, but also downsides.
In ‘normal’ scientific conferences, one would approach people in a less planned, more organic way. Discussions would usually involve more than two people. The recent EAG London conference felt like it was so dominated by pre-planned one-on-ones that these other ways of interaction suffered.
I would add that micro-aggressions and sexual advances are also unique to EA. This is not because they do not happen in other places, but because there is probably, and justifiably an expectation that a community of altruists would behave better in this regard, especially when there is a screening process to attend this conference. To illustrate: I would expect less micro-aggressions if I was attending a UN conference than a paintballing (random example) conference in the US south.
‘Micro-aggressions’ aren’t a thing. Psychology research debunked this strange, unempirical, activist concept years ago, e.g. this paper. The fact that the DEI industry continues to promote the concept of ‘microaggressions’ shows that they can profit from it, not that it is empirically grounded.
As for sexual advances being ‘unique to EA’, that would be news to any biologist who studies courtship in any of the 60,000 species of sexually reproducing vertebrates.
“People saying things that are mildly offensive but not worth risking an argument by calling out, and get tiring after repeated exposure” is just obviously a type of comment that exists, and is what most people mean when they say microaggression. Your paper debunking it alternates between much stricter definitions and claiming an absence of evidence for something that very clearly is going to be extremely hard to measure rigorously.
I should point out that I unfortunately misquoted the sexual advances part, it should be “inappropriate sexual advances”. I agree that we cannot expect no romantic relationships to take place in one form or another during conferences. But hopefully we can agree that such activities should not be significantly upsetting to attendees, and perhaps even have an ambition that everyone should feel safe from inappropriate behaviour.
Hi Felix, I think from the perspective of those suffering from micro-aggressions they expect (perhaps naively, the Catholic church is also supposedly very moral) that a space dedicated to altruism and the removal of bias (rationality) would be generally safer than e.g. a tech conference (I have been to many wind energy conferences with “booth babes”). I agree, maybe I am stretching the definition of “unique” somewhat, but I think there is something to it. But I am by no means an expert on this, and being white and male I am very open especially to feedback from those suffering from microaggressions that I am mistaken. If you clarify your question further, I might be able to provide more details. That said, I am uncertain about whether I am striking the balance right between taking up space in D&I conversation vs trying to take a tiny bit of the burden of working on D&I off those suffering from micro-aggressions etc. Let me know if you would be up for setting up a reading group on gender and/or race for EA purposes—I am keen to have a wide range of perspectives in such a group.
Hi Ulrik, if you’re anyplace else than Germany, try to reach out to (ideally) your National organizing team if you have one. I’ve talked to a lot of them in the last weeks, and the question of how to make EA spaces more inclusive and welcoming for people is on most people’s mind. Sometimes they don’t have the time to start a project on that, but maybe you can kickstart something like it in your region, or even internationally :)
In Germany, we have a diversity group with meetings every two weeks, but I think it is limited to folks living in the region. If you are interested in joining, I’ll ask them.
Good point, as stated in my other comments, I probably stretched the definition of “unique” while being a bit vague as to what exactly I meant. I think the difference between expectations from minorities vs reality is unique to EA. This is both due to very high expectations of a community of altruistic and bias-eliminating people as well as the current state of EA which I think demonstrably has room for improvement. So I guess neither of the two suggestions you make is exactly what I mean. I think I might want to rephrase as “I would add that the difference in expectations vs reality regarding micro-aggressions and sexual advances is uniquely large in EA.” This was hastily worded—I am sure there is a better way to put this.
the difference in expectations vs reality regarding micro-aggressions and sexual advances is uniquely large in EA.
Weak agree vote! I definitely expect more ethical behaviour irl from EAs than I expect from other people. But I also get the good behaviour that I expect from almost every EA that I’ve interacted with in Vancouver and briefly in SF.
It’s more distressing for me to hear reports of micro-aggressions and inappropriate sexual behaviour from people in EA than to hear similar reports in my other communities, because it’s more unpleasantly surprising and comes apart more from my expectations.
Amber—thanks for sharing these candid reactions to EAG. I suspect they’re fairly common reactions among many attendees.
I would just contextualize your reactions by pointing out that these reactions are very common in many young people attending conferences in any scientific field! I don’t think most of them are unique to EA. Most are generic to almost any kind of intellectually focused conference.
When I was in grad school and in my early academic career, I attended a wide variety of conferences in cognitive science, machine learning, genetics, decision theory, evolutionary psychology, primatology, etc. Across all these fields, many young researchers had similar reactions to the conferences, concerning the reactions you mentioned—high career stakes, imposter syndrome, confronting one’s limitations, everything being busy and frantic, having some bad interactions, etc. The social challenges of conferences are especially acute for people (like me) with Aspergers, introversion, and/or social awkwardness.
So I think EAs need to be careful about a couple of things.
First, it’s important for EAs to attend a variety of non-EA conferences, so we realize that a lot of the challenges of EA conferences aren’t unique to EA, but are just generic to what happens when you put hundreds of smart, motivated, ambitious young adults together in the same space and time, jostling for status, opportunities, recognition, and connections.
Second, it’s important for EAs not to over-correct our conference structures in reaction to these fairly common ‘conference blues’. If there were easy ways to make conferences less demanding, stressful, and exhausting, other sciences would probably have already discovered and implemented them. EAs aren’t likely to solve conference-planning problems that have eluded the best other sciences for decades. (Maybe we can, but I’m being Bayesian here.)
Having said that, EA conference do have one unusual challenge, as you mentioned: ‘you spend a lot of time talking about depressing things’. That really is a unique part of EA. Many behavioral sciences conferences do spend a lot of time talking about ‘social problems’ that loom large within current political narratives, such as prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, inequality, etc. But none of these are existential risks, so it’s easy to act like they’re Very Important Problems Indeed during the conference talks (e.g. at a typical social psychology conference), but to set them aside during evening socializing (since everybody knows they’re not actually massive risks to our entire species and civilization.) By contrast, EA deliberately seek out large-scale, neglected, tractable problems, and this can impose unique emotional challenges during conferences.
I think if EAs are concerned about making EA conferences more pleasant and rewarding, we should focus a fair amount of attention on this last issue—how to stay positive, social, and motivated even when the intellectual and emotional content of EA talks and discussion is uniquely alarming, and/or uniquely likely to induce ‘empathy fatique’.
The thing that is quite unique about EAG compared to other conferences is the strong reliance on one-on-ones planned through the app. I think this comes with some advantages, but also downsides.
In ‘normal’ scientific conferences, one would approach people in a less planned, more organic way. Discussions would usually involve more than two people. The recent EAG London conference felt like it was so dominated by pre-planned one-on-ones that these other ways of interaction suffered.
Yeah, I think you’re right that this might be a general ‘conferences’ phenomenon (mostly), rather than an EA-specific one.
I would add that micro-aggressions and sexual advances are also unique to EA. This is not because they do not happen in other places, but because there is probably, and justifiably an expectation that a community of altruists would behave better in this regard, especially when there is a screening process to attend this conference. To illustrate: I would expect less micro-aggressions if I was attending a UN conference than a paintballing (random example) conference in the US south.
‘Micro-aggressions’ aren’t a thing. Psychology research debunked this strange, unempirical, activist concept years ago, e.g. this paper. The fact that the DEI industry continues to promote the concept of ‘microaggressions’ shows that they can profit from it, not that it is empirically grounded.
As for sexual advances being ‘unique to EA’, that would be news to any biologist who studies courtship in any of the 60,000 species of sexually reproducing vertebrates.
“People saying things that are mildly offensive but not worth risking an argument by calling out, and get tiring after repeated exposure” is just obviously a type of comment that exists, and is what most people mean when they say microaggression. Your paper debunking it alternates between much stricter definitions and claiming an absence of evidence for something that very clearly is going to be extremely hard to measure rigorously.
I should point out that I unfortunately misquoted the sexual advances part, it should be “inappropriate sexual advances”. I agree that we cannot expect no romantic relationships to take place in one form or another during conferences. But hopefully we can agree that such activities should not be significantly upsetting to attendees, and perhaps even have an ambition that everyone should feel safe from inappropriate behaviour.
If they are happening elsewhere too, why is it unique to EA?
Hi Felix, I think from the perspective of those suffering from micro-aggressions they expect (perhaps naively, the Catholic church is also supposedly very moral) that a space dedicated to altruism and the removal of bias (rationality) would be generally safer than e.g. a tech conference (I have been to many wind energy conferences with “booth babes”). I agree, maybe I am stretching the definition of “unique” somewhat, but I think there is something to it. But I am by no means an expert on this, and being white and male I am very open especially to feedback from those suffering from microaggressions that I am mistaken. If you clarify your question further, I might be able to provide more details. That said, I am uncertain about whether I am striking the balance right between taking up space in D&I conversation vs trying to take a tiny bit of the burden of working on D&I off those suffering from micro-aggressions etc. Let me know if you would be up for setting up a reading group on gender and/or race for EA purposes—I am keen to have a wide range of perspectives in such a group.
Hi Ulrik, if you’re anyplace else than Germany, try to reach out to (ideally) your National organizing team if you have one. I’ve talked to a lot of them in the last weeks, and the question of how to make EA spaces more inclusive and welcoming for people is on most people’s mind. Sometimes they don’t have the time to start a project on that, but maybe you can kickstart something like it in your region, or even internationally :)
Hi Ulrik,
I think I understand what you mean. :)
In Germany, we have a diversity group with meetings every two weeks, but I think it is limited to folks living in the region. If you are interested in joining, I’ll ask them.
Do you mean to say they’re “unique to” EA, or that they “feel uniquely bad in” EA?
Good point, as stated in my other comments, I probably stretched the definition of “unique” while being a bit vague as to what exactly I meant. I think the difference between expectations from minorities vs reality is unique to EA. This is both due to very high expectations of a community of altruistic and bias-eliminating people as well as the current state of EA which I think demonstrably has room for improvement. So I guess neither of the two suggestions you make is exactly what I mean. I think I might want to rephrase as “I would add that the difference in expectations vs reality regarding micro-aggressions and sexual advances is uniquely large in EA.” This was hastily worded—I am sure there is a better way to put this.
Weak agree vote! I definitely expect more ethical behaviour irl from EAs than I expect from other people. But I also get the good behaviour that I expect from almost every EA that I’ve interacted with in Vancouver and briefly in SF.
It’s more distressing for me to hear reports of micro-aggressions and inappropriate sexual behaviour from people in EA than to hear similar reports in my other communities, because it’s more unpleasantly surprising and comes apart more from my expectations.