Akash

• Akash 27 Jan 2022 17:49 UTC

  9 points

  on: Writ­ing about my job: Oper­a­tions Manager

  “Service/​support mindset” reminds me of healers in role-playing games. You don’t show up on the damage charts, but you kept everyone alive (and allowed them to optimize their builds for damage)!

• Akash 27 Jan 2022 17:43 UTC

  9 points

  on: Writ­ing about my job: Oper­a­tions Manager

  Thank you, Joy! “How do I know if I’m a good fit for X?” is a question that I commonly hear. I’ll be sending this post along to people who are asking about ops!

  Two specific things I liked:

  1. You mentioned several specific examples of things you’ve done, and I felt like I could visualize some of the hours of your day.

  2. The questions at the end (the italicized sections) seem quite useful and balanced. I sometimes see lists of questions that feel pretty unhelpful (e.g., “are you ambitious? Are you a team player?”). I appreciate that your list includes several questions that many EAs could actually say “no” to, which is super useful information (and also makes “yes” answers a stronger and more trustworthy signal).

• Akash 24 Jan 2022 11:52 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: vaidehi_agarwalla’s comment on: Ad­vice I’ve Found Helpful as I Ap­ply to EA Jobs

  Thank you, Vaidehi! I think your post is great; I have been encouraging myself & others to lower our bars for applying to things, and I love your points about testing personal fit & gaining information. I’ve linked your post at the end of mine.

  Also, it seems that we posted within the same hour… neat that we were reflecting on similar topics at a similar time!

Ad­vice I’ve Found Helpful as I Ap­ply to EA Jobs

• Akash 18 Jan 2022 17:21 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Anna_Gajdova’s comment on: PIBBSS Fel­low­ship: Bounty for Refer­rals & Dead­line Extension

  Excellent— thank you for clarifying!

• Akash 18 Jan 2022 8:36 UTC

  9 points

  on: PIBBSS Fel­low­ship: Bounty for Refer­rals & Dead­line Extension

  I’m curious about why the deadline was extended. I can think of two possible reasons:

  1. Not enough applicants

  2. Applicants rarely had the required skills/​interests/​qualifications

  It seems like either would be great information value. (#1 might imply that interest in this kind of program is lower than expected for some reason. #2 helps people improve the quality of their referrals).

  Also, thank you for doing this! Even if #1 is true, this seems like a valuable experiment, and I’m grateful to you for running it.

We Should Run More EA Contests

• Akash 25 Dec 2021 17:58 UTC

  12 points

  on: We should be pay­ing In­tro Fellows

  Penn EA organizer here! Thanks for raising this discussion, Aaron. Penn EA paid intro fellows $500 this semester, and we plan to write-up a reflection soon. For now, though, I have a few quick thoughts on the points you raised:

  1.1-- This seems quite reasonable. Does this require paying everyone, or just having an optional financial aid policy? I suppose people might feel bad applying for financial aid, especially from a group focused on altruism.

  1.2-- I actually see this as an argument against paying fellows. I think one common failure mode of fellowships is that you end up with groups where like 1 person is engaged and 3-5 people are clearly not engaged. After week 2 or 3, I would love it if we just said “hey, if you’re not super interested in these ideas, no worries, you can stop coming.” Paying people (for completion) increases the likelihood that people will stay out of a sense of commitment/​obligation, even if they have no plans to take EA ideas seriously. I think this is quite harmful. It makes fellowship discussions less interesting/​engaging. It makes going to the fellowship meetings feel more like a chore than something that feels really special/​exciting. And I think it makes the experience worse for the fellows who are really committed.

  1.3-- I think this is mostly a naming thing. It’s completely normal for “weekly reading groups” to be unpaid. I think the term “fellowship” usually implies a much more involved experience (e.g., a 40hr/​week 8-week research fellowship), which is why we associate the term “fellowship” with “paid.”

  1.4-- Agreed. Again, though, I worry about the concern I expressed in 1.2. I want people to spend time on these ideas because they’re important, serious, inspiring, etc.

  1.5-- Same thoughts as 1.2 and 1.4.

  2.1-- Agreed. I think there’s probably two things going on here: a) people who come for the money and b) people who stay out of a feeling of commitment/​obligation that is reinforced by the money. I’m more worried about B than A. If we were offering stipends of, say, $5000, then I would become more worried about A.

  2.2-2.5-- Pretty much agree with these risks and your ideas for managing them. The reputational risks in 2.3 seem especially important. The tail risk here seems pretty bad (e.g., media coverage that frames paying fellows in an uncharitable light). I believe CEA has talked about how tech companies and management consulting companies spend a lot of money on recruiting/​outreach at universities. And there’s no equivalent for high-impact work, which is a shame. So perhaps this can be framed as “we need to be competitive with these other organizations that are trying to attract top talent.” I’m not sure how well this would work, though, since tech companies and management consultancies generally don’t have super altruistic/​feel-good/​admirable reputations.

  Final thought—you claim:

  I believe that the arguments for [paying fellows] are significantly more compelling than
  the arguments against.

  I think this is a pretty strong statement, and I currently don’t agree with it. Even if the benefits outweighed the costs on average, I think there would be substantial variability across groups. At some universities, this may cause more reputational risk; at others, the added value from prestige might be especially high.

  Thank you for raising this discussion! Excited to say more once the Penn EA reflection is out.

• Akash 25 Dec 2021 17:27 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: michaelchen’s comment on: We should be pay­ing In­tro Fellows

  Great points, Michael! Some of these questions (e.g., why does it make sense to pay people for learning about EA?) came up during Penn EA’s fellowships this year.

  In my experience as a facilitator, these conversations were almost always productive. I would generally use these moments as opportunities to explain why careers in high-impact cause areas are so valuable. I’d say something like “EA is willing to invest resources into student groups because they’ve seen that student groups (and intro fellowships) can help people apply EA principles in their careers, which is ultimately worth the financial investment. People who resonate with these ideas & take them seriously often go on to have really important careers in AI alignment, biosecurity, animal welfare, and other really important areas.”

  This explanation generally seemed persuasive (or at least helped people understand this perspective).

  *Also quick note of clarification: Penn EA experimented with $500 stipends this semester. Just to be clear, I don’t believe this is something that Penn EA has ever done in the past, and it might not be something we do in the future.

• Akash 21 Dec 2021 15:33 UTC

  12 points

  on: Helping new­com­ers be more ob­jec­tive with ca­reer choice

  Some of the comments point out ways that career conversations can go wrong (e.g., people see this as manipulative, people get turned off to EA if someone is telling them they need to change their career). Some comments also point out alternative strategies that would be helpful (e.g., asking people open-ended questions about their career, talking about personal fit/​happiness in addition to impact).

  With that in mind, I just want to express support for the original strategies endorsed by Nikola and Daniel.

  • having facilitators in intro fellowships share their own motivated reasoning upon discovering EA,

  • adding readings about changes in career plan (for instance, the part in Strangers Drowning that talks about Julia Wise or the piece On Saving the World, but the latter doesn’t seem newcomer-friendly).

  Both of these strategies seem clever, useful, practical, and unlikely to backfire if implemented well. And both of these seem quite compatible with other techniques (e.g., asking questions, discussing personal fit).

  Quick Example of a Strawman and a Steelman of These Strategies

  If someone says “well, you just want to be a doctor because of motivated reasoning! I had motivated reasoning too. And you should read this post about other people who had motivated reasoning until they found EA, and then they decided to give up their childhood dreams to do something that was actually impactful.” --> This is probably bad

  If someone says, “I find thinking about careers really difficult and messy sometimes. I think for a long time, I was set on a particular path, and it took a lot for me to let go of that path. There are also several examples of this happening in the EA community, and I’d be happy to share some of those narratives if you’d find it interesting.” --> This is probably good

• Akash 21 Dec 2021 15:20 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Nikola’s comment on: Helping new­com­ers be more ob­jec­tive with ca­reer choice

  I think the new title is better. To nit-pick, “more objective” might imply a sense of “we’re right and they’re wrong”.

  Maybe an alternative could be something like “Helping newcomers feel more comfortable considering new career paths.”

  (I don’t think you actually need to change the title again—just throwing this out there because I see how discussions around these kinds of strategies can be perceived as manipulative, and I think the wording/​framing we use in group discussions can matter).

• Akash 20 Dec 2021 5:22 UTC

  16 points

  on: An or­ganic pitch for un­der­grads: do it when peo­ple ask what your ma­jor is

  I don’t have anything useful to say, except that I’ve appreciated your recent posts & I hope to keep seeing more from you. Thank you for sharing, Nikola!

• Akash 20 Dec 2021 4:42 UTC

  20 points

  on: Pilot study re­sults: Cost-effec­tive­ness in­for­ma­tion did not in­crease in­ter­est in EA

  Thanks for sharing this, Aaron! Really interesting pilot work.

  One quick thought—I wouldn’t rely too heavily on statistical significance tests, particularly with small sample sizes. P-values are largely a function of sample size, and it’s nearly impossible to get statistical significance with 44 participants (unless your effect size is huge!).

  Speaking of effect sizes, it seems like you powered to detect an effect of d=0.7. For a messaging study with rather subtle manipulations, an effect of d=0.7 seems huge! I would be pretty impressed if giving people CE info resulted in an effect size of d=0.2 or d=0.3, for instance. I’m guessing you were constrained by the # of participants you could recruit (which is quite reasonable—lots of pilot studies are underpowered). But given the low power, I’d be reluctant to draw strong conclusions.

  I also appreciate that you reported the mean scores in the results section of your paper, which allowed me to skim to see if there’s anything interesting. I think there might be!

  There was no significant difference in Effective Donation between the Info (M = 80.21, SD = 18.79) and No Info (M = 71.79, SD = 17.05) conditions, F(1, 34) = 1.85, p = .183, η_p² = .052.

  If this effect is real, I think this is pretty impressive/​interesting. On average, the Effective Donation scores are about 10% higher for the Info Group participants than the No Info group participants (and I didn’t do a formal calculation for Cohen’s d but it looks like it’d be about d=0.5).

  Of course, given the small sample size, it’s hard to draw any definitive conclusions. But it seems quite plausible to me that the Info condition worked—and at the very least, I don’t think these findings provide evidence against the idea that the info condition worked.

  Would be curious to see if you have any thoughts on this. If you end up having an opportunity to test this with a larger sample size, that would be super interesting. Great work & excited to see what you do next!

• Akash 19 Dec 2021 21:20 UTC

  2 points

  on: What are the best (brief) re­sources to in­tro­duce EA & longter­mism?

  As an example, I currently think All Possible Views About Humanity’s Future are Wild would be on my list because it is a) thought-provoking and b) short; only takes 10-15 mins to read.

  In contrast, The Case for Strong Longtermism is thought-provoking but would likely take >1hr to read, so I probably wouldn’t include it on my list. (Though I would certainly recommend it to people who want to learn more.)

What are the best (brief) re­sources to in­tro­duce EA & longter­mism?

• Akash 17 Dec 2021 17:48 UTC

  7 points

  on: EA out­reach to high school competitors

  +1! For debate, I believe the EA Debate Championship and Lecture Series would offer some useful lessons. It was for college debate, and I haven’t heard of anything similar being done for HS debate (but it’s quite possible that I’ve missed something).

  Many top universities in the US host HS debate tournaments (often as a money-making activity for the club). It seems plausible to me that at least one of the major uni debate societies would be open to sponsoring an EA-related tournament (or perhaps have one or two rounds that are focused on EA topics). Has anyone tried this?

  If someone wants to try this: I did HS debate semi-competitively and college debate (American Parliamentary Debate) during my first two years of college [at Harvard]. If anyone is interested in learning more about the debate circuit, feel free to reach out! (I’m sure there are other EAs who were more involved in the HS/​college debate scene, so if one of them comments, reach out to them instead!).

Six Take­aways from EA Global and EA Retreats

• Akash 15 Dec 2021 20:41 UTC

  12 points

  on: A model for en­gage­ment growth in universities

  Thanks, Nikola! +1 on so much of this. A few specific thoughts:

  I often hear people say things like “they’re so cool” or “they’re superhuman” about individuals who are highly engaged with EA. Saying this makes newcomers want to emulate these individuals more and become more engaged to get some of that sweet, sweet status.

  I agree that having high-status role models can be really inspiring/​motivating. At the same time, I think some of these comments can have unintended harmful effects. I’ve seen a few ways this can go wrong:

  1. “I’m not superhuman, so this isn’t for me”—The “some people are super cool/​superhuman” mentality can reinforce the idea that there are “Super Cool/​Smart/​Amazing people” and then “All of the Regular People.” I worry that people—especially newcomers—might assume they’re in the latter category and then get turned off.

  2. “This feels weird—why are they worshipping these people?” I think a lot of people are generally put off by hero-worship/​cults of personality. This is especially true of people with high epistemic standards. I worry that these people will here “X is superhuman”, see a bunch of people nodding along, and then think, “wow, this community is weird and puts people on pedestals. Not for me!”

  An idea for how to solve this (epistemic status: uncertain and hastily written)-- emphasize the actions that the high-status people are taking. My guess is that it’s generally better for people to tie status to actions rather than people. But talking about people can be a good way to help people see which actions are considered “high-status.”

  Ex: Instead of “X is superhuman”, I currently prefer the framing “I really admire X. X is super agentic and always looking for ways to have a higher impact. As soon as X changed their mind about their cause prioritization, they started thinking seriously about changing their career plan.” I think the latter frame places the emphasis on specific concrete things the person is doing—and ideally these are things that other members could do (i.e., admiring someone for being agentic signals “you should try to be more agentic”, whereas admiring someone for being naturally smart/​talented/​gifted might be less likely to foster motivation to grow/​improve.)

  Would love to know what you think about this! (And to be clear, I don’t think your initial statement was incompatible with any of this. It’s quite possible you agree with everything & didn’t want to use space to go into all of this).

  The second point comes mostly from intuition: If you imagine a highly engaged person surrounded by non-engaged people and a non-engaged person surrounded by highly engaged people, the non-engaged person’s engagement will probably increase faster than the engaged person’s engagement will decrease.

  Agreed. I also think this is one of the biggest flaws of the current fellowship model. At Penn, my estimate is that roughly 20% of fellows were moderately-to-highly engaged (i.e, taking the ideas seriously & considering changes to their studies/​careers).

  In practice, this meant that a given fellowship group often had one promising person, a facilitator, and 3-4 people who weren’t as engaged. I think this had the effect of making the promising person less excited (to borrow your analogy, “few people want to be more Catholic than the other bishops.”)

  A few possible ways to solve this: Filtering more at the beginning (e.g., having 1-on-1s with fellowship applicants and coming up with a good evaluation system) placing people into fellowship groups based on how likely they are to be engaged (I think some other unis do this), or experimenting with alternatives to the intro fellowship. I’d be curious if you have any thoughts on this challenge & these possible solutions.

  A similar thing seems to have happened at UPenn recently when Sydney and Thomas from Stanford EA helped University of Pennsylvania EA get off the ground

  Strong +1 (+2?) on residencies. I think being around Sydney/​Thomas was quite influential for me/​other Penn organizers. My guess is that aggressively tabling (not just at club fairs, but pretty much every day for the first few weeks of the semester) and 1-on-1s (with potential organizers and other people who seemed engaged) were the two most important components of the residency. Would be curious to hear what you think the most important parts of the Cambridge residencies.

Mo­ti­va­tional Re­sources for Longtermists

• Akash 6 Dec 2021 0:26 UTC

  14 points

  on: How To Get an EA-al­igned Job: My Experience

  Thank you for this excellent post! I’m a student group organizer & I’ll be recommending this to other members/​organizers :)

  A few specific thoughts that came up as I read:

  Rather than trying to convince the employer that you have to be chosen, you can flip it and concentrate on helping their employer to find the right fit for the position

  I love this advice, and I think it can have a special implication for EAs. The question flips from “how can I get this job” to “how can I help this employer make an informed assessment of how impactful I will be at this job”.

  A traditional approach to job applications might be something like “I want to impress the interviewer, so I maximize my chance of getting a job offer. Then, I will select the offer that is best for me.”

  An EA alternative to this might be something like “I want to be highly transparent with the interviewer, so I maximize the amount of information they have when determining who would be most impactful for this role. Then, I will compare my options and consider which one generates the most counterfactual impact [alongside other considerations like personal fit].”

  Try and think of the main concerns of the potential employer about your candidacy and use your application to reassure them that the risk of these concerns is low.

  With this “transparency frame” in mind, I’m not sure how I feel about this point. I think this line suggests that people should optimize for “reassuring employers that you are a good hire.” I would rather have people optimize for “being transparent and providing information that helps employers assess whether or not you are a good hire.”

  As a result, I would be inclined to encourage people to explicitly state their key uncertainties about taking the role & be upfront about potential weaknesses/​doubts. (Of course, this is assuming someone is reasonably well-calibrated about their skills/​aptitudes. For people who underestimate themselves, this advice would backfire).

  I also think this is easier said than done—optimizing for transparency inherently means that you might reduce your odds of getting the job. I’d guess that the tradeoff generally isn’t super high, though, and it’s also quite plausible to me that EA employers would be enthusiastic about people who are upfront with their weaknesses/​doubts. It could also help them recommend the applicant for a role that’s more suited to their particular aptitudes.

  What do you think? (I could be very wrong about this, and I’ve never been in a hiring role!)