Head of Events at the Centre for Effective Altruism
Amy Labenz
Karma: 3,258
Hi Constance,
Quick point of clarification: I don’t know what the anecdotes are referring to, but for what it’s worth, we have 3.5 CEA FTEs working on EAG along with venue/production staff and volunteers. We do not have the ability to monitor all attendee interactions, nor do we want to.
We do have a community health point of contact onsite at all of our events. This person is available in case anyone experiences harassment, bullying, has a mental health concern, or needs other assistance.
Thanks for the suggestion, Zach!
I did explain to Constance why she was initially rejected as one of the things we discussed on an hour-long call. We also discussed additional information she was considering including, and I told her I thought she was a better fit for EAGx (she said she was not interested). It can be challenging to give a lot of guidance on how to change a specific application, especially in cases where the goal is to “get in”. I worry about providing information that will allow candidates to game the system.
I don’t think this post reflects what I told Constance, perhaps because she disagrees with us. So, I want to stick to the policy for now.
Thanks for flagging this concern. I was worried someone might get the impression that this was related to animal welfare. While we don’t discuss the specifics of people’s applications publicly, that is definitely not the reason: we don’t penalize people for favoring animal welfare, global health, or existential risk reduction (or other prominent EA approaches).
Hi Constance,
I was sad to read your initial post and recognize how disappointed you are about not getting to come to this EAG. And I see you’ve put a lot of work into this post and your application. I’m sorry that the result wasn’t what you were hoping for.
After our call (I’m happy to disclose that I am “X”), I was under the impression that you understood our decision, and I was happy to hear that you started getting involved with the in-person community after we spoke.
As I mentioned to you, I recommend that you apply to an EAGx event, which might be a better fit for you at this stage.
It’s our policy to not discuss the specifics of people’s applications with other people besides them. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to give more detail about why you were rejected publicly, so it is hard to really reply to the substance of this post, and share the other side of this story.
I hope that you continue to find ways to get involved, deepen your EA thinking, and make contributions to EA cause areas. I’m sorry that this has been a disappointing experience for you. At this point, given our limited capacity, and the time we’ve spent engaging on calls, email, and Facebook, I’m going to focus on building up our team in order to run more EAG and EAGx events.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the process more generally. My team is focused on EAG right now, but we plan to reflect on any structural changes after the event.
Here it is! Updated the image in the post too.
Thanks for getting us, Nathan! LFG is the Events Team motto :)
I can see why people are confused by this situation. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to give more detail publicly — it’s our policy to not discuss the specifics of people’s applications with other people besides them.
We do want people who aren’t sure if they’ll get in, including students, to apply! But we suggest they should also consider applying to their nearest EAGx and not only to EAG.
We don’t plan to tell people a recipe for getting accepted beyond the overall info we share with everyone about the event and the application process, and info about getting more involved in events like EAGx and local groups for people who have been away from the community for a while or who aren’t yet that involved.In some cases, the things that would need to change aren’t realistic to change. In other cases, telling people essentially what we want to hear would largely defeat the purpose of those aspects of the application.
We know people are concerned and confused sometimes about EAG rejections. Sometimes there are genuine uncertainties. In our experience, in many of the cases where people have been upset, there were clear reasons to reject them that we cannot share based on background or behavior, and we would recommend keeping that hypothesis in mind.
I’m really sorry to hear this. It is concerning to hear that being rejected from EAG made you feel like you were “turned away from even hanging out with people.” This is not our intention, and I’d be happy to chat with you about other resources and opportunities for in-person meetings with other EAs.
We also get things wrong sometimes so I’m sad to hear you feel like our decision impacted your trajectory away from a highly devoted version of your life. The EAG admissions process is not intended to evaluate you as a person, it is for determining whether you would be a fit for a particular event. It seems possible that you applied at a time when we were experimenting with a policy that prioritized people who were not yet highly engaged but were in a position to become highly engaged (I’m guessing this because you say your “newbie” partner got in). Our admissions process has changed over time and currently we consider things like engagement with EA, epistemics, and ability to gain things from the event or provide mentorship to others (for example, if people are currently making a decision and have a plan to use conversations at the conference to influence them).
As an example of the imperfection of the process, EA Global once rejected an application from someone who then went on to work at Open Philanthropy less than 2 years later. One change we have made since 2020 is to not outright reject sparse applications, but rather send a message saying that we did not have adequate information to approve an application, and suggest the applicant update their application if there is anything more they think we should know.
Thanks for your comment and I’m sorry to hear how our admissions process impacted you.
Thanks for the comment, Hayley! Btw, I loved seeing your dog Maple with the EAG swag in your original post, so cute 🥺 🐶
Thank you! I’m so glad :)
This comment (seen on Kerry Vaughan’s Twitter) hit me hard:
That comment hit me hard too.
In general, it hurts to make people feel bad and if I was optimizing the event for making myself/EAs feel good it would look different.
I had an hour long call with the person who made that post and was able to connect them with resources and explain the admissions process and considerations that go into it in a way that seemed to help. I think we could do a better job of explaining these things publicly and I think we should do that.
I’m not certain of the admissions standard for that particular event, but the description says they “welcome those at all levels of engagement” so my guess is that the admissions process is for screening purposes.
Eli mentioned in his reply to Scott that using an admissions process lets us try to screen out applicants who have caused problems at past events or who seem likely to cause problems. I’d have to check with our Community Events team to be sure that’s the reason here.
It is hard to talk about admissions in too much detail publicly. I agree that we want to make sure attendees have an understanding of EA but we also want to avoid the “guessing the teacher’s password” problem. We also check for reasoning skills/epistemics. In other words, some people don’t know much about EA principles, but manage to exhibit good reasoning skills as they make the case for a clear plan, or by explaining that they are uncertain and laying out which options they are thinking about.
Thanks for the suggestion. We did do a parallel virtual event before and decided against doing it again because virtual underperformed the in-person event and split our attention. We were considering running our own separate virtual event this year, but instead, we are supporting EAGx Virtual next month.
We haven’t tried a fully open event, but our 2016 was closer to open than our more recent events and came with various drawbacks.
Here are some suggestions written by Julia Wise from our Community Health team.
In case you missed it, EAGx Virtual is next month! https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagxvirtual-2022/
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Thanks, Max! I agree that’s confusing.
As Eli said, we are planning to revamp our website.
In the meantime, I’ve edited the homepage to be more accurate / to match the information on our FAQ page and admissions page to say:
”EA Global is designed for people who have a solid understanding of the main concepts of effective altruism, and who are making decisions and taking significant actions based on them.
EA Global conferences are not the only events for people interested in effective altruism! EAGx conferences are locally-organized conferences designed primarily for people:Familiar with the core ideas of effective altruism
Interested in learning more about what to do
From the region or country where the conference is taking place (or living there)
See our FAQ page for more information.”
The edits should show up shortly if they haven’t already.
Quick point of clarification: on the call, I recall Constance saying that her heart was set on EAG and that she was not interested in EAGx. Perhaps there was a miscommunication or I misunderstood, but that is the information I was working with throughout communications.