Naomi from CHERI here. First, thank you for picking up this idea and running the survey!
You write in the post: “The CHERI fellows seem to be both less committed to x-risk careers overall (just about one standard deviation below CERI/SERI fellows), and to see larger changes over the course of the program.” And later you discuss a potential reason why (smaller number of applicants).
I think this could be a potential explanation but we also selected a part of our applicants on the basis of being less familiar with x-risks/EA. We believed these might be the high-risk/high-reward applicants, creating more counterfactual impact than when we would have chosen somebody who was already relatively committed and who had a higher chance of being accepted into a similar opportunity.
And a small addition to the post as you write: “Note that, apart from Facebook advertising, CHERI did use fairly targeted advertising methods, like EA Slacks, personal messages, and the 2022 SERI conference.” Additionally to this, we also used the Swiss university newsletters to advertise the program. We got the majority of applicants that were not familiar with x-risks research through these newsletters. We did not use FB advertising.
Hi,
Naomi from CHERI here. First, thank you for picking up this idea and running the survey!
You write in the post: “The CHERI fellows seem to be both less committed to x-risk careers overall (just about one standard deviation below CERI/SERI fellows), and to see larger changes over the course of the program.” And later you discuss a potential reason why (smaller number of applicants).
I think this could be a potential explanation but we also selected a part of our applicants on the basis of being less familiar with x-risks/EA. We believed these might be the high-risk/high-reward applicants, creating more counterfactual impact than when we would have chosen somebody who was already relatively committed and who had a higher chance of being accepted into a similar opportunity.
And a small addition to the post as you write:
“Note that, apart from Facebook advertising, CHERI did use fairly targeted advertising methods, like EA Slacks, personal messages, and the 2022 SERI conference.”
Additionally to this, we also used the Swiss university newsletters to advertise the program. We got the majority of applicants that were not familiar with x-risks research through these newsletters. We did not use FB advertising.