On “attracting rent-seekers” and “be careful how you advertise EAGs”: for some reason the rent-seekers seem particularly attracted to the conferences, rather than e.g. free food, etc. This is somewhat interesting because if you were totally uninterested in EA, it would obviously be costlier to go to a conference than to get free food at weekly meetings or something, but I guess it’s also the career connections (albeit in sub-spaces that fake-EAs are unlikely to actually want to go into?) and feeling of status that you’re getting flown places. I also think it’s (maybe obviously) much more damaging for rent-seekers to attend conferences and take up the time of professional EAs who could be meeting non-rent-seekers.
For these reasons, I think EAG’s bar for accepting students has gotten a bit too low; specifically, I think they should ask university group leaders for guidance on which group members are high-priority and which shouldn’t be accepted. (I know they’re capacity-constrained, but this might be worth an additional staff member or something.)
On “Don’t advertise ‘EA has money’”: I endorse your framing throughout this post as “EA doesn’t want a lack of money to stop [impactful thing from happening]” rather than “we have all this money, take some and do something with it.” I think this both directly attracts rent-seekers and signals that we’re in it for the money (both of which probably repel altruists). I totally get why people have the instinct to talk about it, especially mid-funnel people who are just realizing how much there is but don’t quite get the nuances and problems described in this post, so it’s worth having this conversation with anyone who does community-building in your group.
On humor and talking about EA money in general: In a broad range of IRL social settings, I personally find it very hard not to joke about things. I just naturally gravitate towards observing ironies, referencing memes, and phrasing points in a way that lands on a surprising/humorous beat; when I try to turn this off, e.g. in serious class discussions about heavy topics, I usually fail and have to clarify that I’m not trying to make light of the thing and just go for a tone of “dark irony” instead.
Money in EA is extremely ironic, and it produces lots of opportunities to note surprising results and connections between concepts. When longtime EAs hang out, talking about various funny ways to spend money can be a fun way to push various theories (or maybe brainstorm good galaxy-brain ideas!). But I think it is a very bad look to joke about it in semi-public contexts, and I’ve worked hard to just not say the things that come to mind because I know it will sound like I’m trivializing suffering, or finding glee in the ridiculous inequality of this situation, or “here for the wrong reasons.” Weak anecdotal/subjective evidence: when a top/mid-funnel person has joked about money, it’s usually when I’m already smiling/laughing, and when I react with a polite nod but wind down the smile, this seems to actually convey a seriousness/sensitivity that I think is the right vibe. So I’ve also tried to institute an informal rule of “no jokes about money” and (non-confidently) recommend other group organizers do the same.
+1 to the comment here about humour. I’m someone who loves a good laugh and has a pretty dry sense of humour but am particularly wary about it when talking about money and suffering (I’ve seen it go pretty badly in several EA or EA-adjacent contexts).
It’s also very important to think about humour in non-EA social contexts where there are a lot of people within the EA community alongside those who aren’t. Someones first exposure to the community might be somewhere like an informal party and first impressions really count.
On “attracting rent-seekers” and “be careful how you advertise EAGs”: for some reason the rent-seekers seem particularly attracted to the conferences, rather than e.g. free food, etc. This is somewhat interesting because if you were totally uninterested in EA, it would obviously be costlier to go to a conference than to get free food at weekly meetings or something, but I guess it’s also the career connections (albeit in sub-spaces that fake-EAs are unlikely to actually want to go into?) and feeling of status that you’re getting flown places. I also think it’s (maybe obviously) much more damaging for rent-seekers to attend conferences and take up the time of professional EAs who could be meeting non-rent-seekers.
For these reasons, I think EAG’s bar for accepting students has gotten a bit too low; specifically, I think they should ask university group leaders for guidance on which group members are high-priority and which shouldn’t be accepted. (I know they’re capacity-constrained, but this might be worth an additional staff member or something.)
On “Don’t advertise ‘EA has money’”: I endorse your framing throughout this post as “EA doesn’t want a lack of money to stop [impactful thing from happening]” rather than “we have all this money, take some and do something with it.” I think this both directly attracts rent-seekers and signals that we’re in it for the money (both of which probably repel altruists). I totally get why people have the instinct to talk about it, especially mid-funnel people who are just realizing how much there is but don’t quite get the nuances and problems described in this post, so it’s worth having this conversation with anyone who does community-building in your group.
On humor and talking about EA money in general: In a broad range of IRL social settings, I personally find it very hard not to joke about things. I just naturally gravitate towards observing ironies, referencing memes, and phrasing points in a way that lands on a surprising/humorous beat; when I try to turn this off, e.g. in serious class discussions about heavy topics, I usually fail and have to clarify that I’m not trying to make light of the thing and just go for a tone of “dark irony” instead.
Money in EA is extremely ironic, and it produces lots of opportunities to note surprising results and connections between concepts. When longtime EAs hang out, talking about various funny ways to spend money can be a fun way to push various theories (or maybe brainstorm good galaxy-brain ideas!). But I think it is a very bad look to joke about it in semi-public contexts, and I’ve worked hard to just not say the things that come to mind because I know it will sound like I’m trivializing suffering, or finding glee in the ridiculous inequality of this situation, or “here for the wrong reasons.” Weak anecdotal/subjective evidence: when a top/mid-funnel person has joked about money, it’s usually when I’m already smiling/laughing, and when I react with a polite nod but wind down the smile, this seems to actually convey a seriousness/sensitivity that I think is the right vibe. So I’ve also tried to institute an informal rule of “no jokes about money” and (non-confidently) recommend other group organizers do the same.
+1 to the comment here about humour. I’m someone who loves a good laugh and has a pretty dry sense of humour but am particularly wary about it when talking about money and suffering (I’ve seen it go pretty badly in several EA or EA-adjacent contexts).
It’s also very important to think about humour in non-EA social contexts where there are a lot of people within the EA community alongside those who aren’t. Someones first exposure to the community might be somewhere like an informal party and first impressions really count.