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Case Study of EA Global Rejection + Criticisms/Solutions
28 min readSep 23, 2022
I am the person rejected from EA Global who was anonymously featured in the Scott Alexander post about Opening EAG.
I have decided to publicly identify myself and offer my story as an in-depth case study on the EAG admissions process. I’ve dedicated much of my life to EA principles since 2010 and yet I kept getting rejected from attending EAG. This experience brought up a lot of sadness and frustration as I felt like I was being pushed out of a community that I had always closely identified with. It also led to me to question if the admission committee was accurately accounting for the "cost of rejection" in their decision-making process. In the process of creating this post, I had a lot of time to reflect on EA as a personal identity vs a philosophy vs a community vs organizations. They are distinct from one another and yet are still tangled together. I will share many criticisms about the admissions process and will also be proposing some solutions to improving it. By posting my story, I hope to lower the barrier for an honest discussion about EAG Admissions, EA disillusionment, gatekeeping, community building, and solutions for improving EA communities and organizational processes.
This is my first forum post.
Since I know this post could potentially come across as bitter, I want to say upfront that it’s always easy to criticize the actions of others and imagine that one could do things better. I make no claim about being able to do a better job at conference admissions. Through sharing my perspective, I hope to contribute to a discussion that helps everyone create a better event.
Please feel free to skip to the “Criticisms and Proposed Solutions” section if you want to skip my lengthy personal story. To optimize for both transparency and brevity, I have also created an appendix which I will link to throughout this post.
Purpose: To provide context so readers can understand why I felt so strongly when I said what I said in my my post
2001-2010 - Before I found EA:
I first became vegetarian when I was 12 after learning about the enormous scale of animal suffering in factory farms. My choice was quite atypical among my peers and they would often mock me by doing things like eating hamburgers in my presence and declaring, “mmmm… this cow is sooo delicious.” I read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer in highschool and tried to argue with my peers about the ethics of eating meat, but it was exhaustive and I saw no behavioral changes as a result of these interactions. I tried a couple other interventions like a protest against KFC when I was 14 and starting an Animal Rights club in high school, which my advisor convinced me to change to the Ecology Club to be more tractable.
2010-2021 - After I found EA:
When I found out that Peter Singer was coming to my University in 2010 to give the kickoff speech for some group called Giving What We Can, I excitedly went.
Effective Animal Advocacy:
After the event, I became very involved with this small EA community which was led by philosophy grad students Nick Beckstead, Tim Campbell, and Mark Lee. Around this time, I also started studying communication because I wanted to better understand how to have effective conversations with others. In 2012, I attended the Ivy League Vegan Conference in Boston where Will MacAskill was giving the keynote speech. There, I met many people who would become influential figures in my life including members of The Humane League (back when they only had 6 employees), Sam Bankman-Fried, Eitan Fisher (Founder of what is now Animal Charity Evaluators), and many others. I have a cherished memory of many of us sleeping on the floor of an off-campus living room because it seemed unethical and unnecessary to spend money on hotels. Many of these people helped me as I ran the Rutgers cage-free egg campaign which has so far resulted in over 2 million dollars diverted to purchasing only cage-free eggs for the entire university. I was finally in a community that had a strong action-oriented, cost-efficient attitude towards helping non-human animals. Feeling eager to do whatever it took for the greater good, I made a major career decision based on the top EA recommendation at the time, Earning to Give. I then pivoted my career path from veterinarian to physician.
I incorporated an EA mindset into my Animal Advocacy and was in good company
Medical School:
During medical school, I didn’t have the time to be in any EA or Animal Advocacy organizations. Instead, I leaned into my new position as a future doctor and founded the Medical Vegetarian Society (MedVeg). It was a highly active student group which influenced fellow med students to change their perspectives on plant-based diets through biweekly potlucks, a collectivist garden, group trips, free food, exciting events, and a celebrity doctor! I specifically targeted my club activities to prioritize building a healthy community because I knew applied social norms were highly effective for behavior change. In the 4 years of med school, students only have one free summer and I spent mine interning with two plant-based nutrition organizations in DC, nutritionfacts.org and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
I applied effective strategies to build a healthy community of med students that supported plant-based diets
Upon graduation, I received a very ironic superlative that is still my proudest award to this day.
Residency:
During residency, I found myself very time and location constrained. I maintained a low cost of living and continued to donate to effective organizations. I still identified as an EA and this self-sacrifice (being in a high-stress environment that I had little control over) was for the greater good! For my altruism outlet, I did the most readily accessible intervention available, Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) for stray cats in my neighborhood. I managed to help grow our group, Northwest Philly Cat Squad, from 5 to over 30 members and we spayed/neutered hundreds of cats. I saw that TNR mirrored the classic example of the parable about the babies being thrown down the river. My fellow cat trappers and I all had limited time and resources so maximizing our efficiency was an intoxicating exercise. We would prioritize female cats in high concentration areas with cooperative colony feeders in partnership with efficient nonprofit sponsors and often discussed addressing systemic issues like bottlenecks in the rescue/adoption chain. Working on the ground while also co-directing the group’s activities produced very tight feedback loops, which I came to appreciate even more as essential to maximizing one’s impact.
As a thank you for getting this far, please enjoy all these pictures of cats I’ve caught!
Rejoining the EA Community (Fall 2021)
In Fall 2021 after I graduated residency, I was figuring out how to start up my medical practice 20% of the time and trapping cats 80% of the time. It was then that I saw the invite to EAGxVirtual and figured I would go since it was a low barrier opportunity for me to re-integrate with the greater EA community. During the conference, I made many meaningful connections through 1:1 interactions. Afterwards, I felt very optimistic about the utility of rejoining the greater EA community. I knew I had to move on from the cats to finally start earning to give, so I made the difficult choice of gradually setting up boundaries for my time.
First Rejection from EAG (Winter 2021)
After EAGxVirtual, I started connecting with people in EA Philly and applied to EAG London. I had never heard of a conference that required an application before, so I naively assumed it was more of a formality and didn’t put too much effort into it. I was rejected. One of my friends from EA Philly, who was an undergrad at UPenn at the time, told me that their application was accepted quite readily and expressed surprise that mine got rejected. They skipped happily away to London while I tried to brush the sting of it off.
Second Attempt at EAG (April 2022)
I applied again to EAG DC and didn’t hear anything back for months and just figured I was rejected and they neglected to tell me. At this point, I had relocated to New Jersey to live with my parents because I’m still in that frugal early EA mindset.
Entrepreneurship and Upskilling: (Winter 2021 - ongoing)
After my second application, my business started picking up steam. I trialed through many different practices including doing independent COVID testing, working for other practices, contracting with hospitals, doing home musculoskeletal ultrasounds, etc. Through this process, I finally found a good model which was tractable, profitable, and prosocial. I then focused all my attention into process improvement and upskilling in marketing, customer service, managing staff, bookkeeping/accounting, etc. Owning and operating my own business led to a lot more reflection about process improvement. During this time, I again didn’t have the capacity to be an active part of the EA community and didn’t directly engage much besides listening to the 80k or Clearer Thinking podcasts.
Purpose: To explain the situational context behind my original post.
Deciding to Make the Post (July 2022)
I was scrolling through facebook when I found an EA forum post about EA Disillusionment on Ruairí Donnelly’s facebook page. I had never read any EA forum posts before. Intrigued by this title, I read the post and felt like the content of it rang true to my own feelings. I proceeded to comment with my own story as a reply to the facebook post. I didn’t think much more about it and was unaware my casual comment was later turned into an anonymous “EA Blackpill” tweet that was later widely shared and used in Scott Alexander’s EA Forum post.
Purpose: To give context as to why I am writing this current forum post
Conversation with Concerned CEA Staff Member (August 2022)
After seeing my comment on facebook, a concerned CEA staff member, who I will refer to as “X” going forward for privacy, reached out to me. On August 15th, we connected on video chat for over an hour and they gave me some helpful tips to re-engage with the EA community such as getting more involved with the nearby EA NYC group and amending/re-submitting my application to EAG DC. This conversation turned my attitude around enough to the point that I decided to re-engage in the community by going to my first EA event since moving away from Philly.
My First EA NYC Event (August 18, 2022)
I went to an EA NYC event, which was a talk on Population Ethics by my old friend Tim Campbell, who co-founded the Rutgers GWWC group with Nick. The event went amazingly well and I again felt a strong sense of community unified by purpose that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was so touched that I sent X quite a long appreciation voice message at 1am. A couple days later, I received rejection #2. I felt a little sad, but I had a consolation prize in finding the EA NYC community so that lessened the sting. From my conversation with X, I now understood exactly how competitive EAG was and realized I didn’t apply enough effort into my applications up to this point.
Continued Involvement in EA NYC (Aug - September, 2022)
Over the next month, I continued to keep participating in the EA NYC community. I went to many of their official events as well as some adjacent social events. I felt quite accepted by the EA NYC community and no longer felt disillusioned.
Re-applying to EAG DC (August 22, 2022)
Finally feeling determined, financially equipped, and integrated enough with the EA community, I re-applied to EAG DC. I spent 2 hours working on a stronger amended application. I made sure to do my research and based my amended application on CEA’s published EAG 2022 application information and careful consideration of the insider insight about the process I got from X.
I decided to pull out ALL THE STOPS because I really, really wanted to go and knew I had to meet a high bar.
General Highlights:
A note: I didn’t resort to any name-dropping in my first 2 applications to EAG, but I did for this 3rd one because I know that personal connections often have a hand in these sorts of decisions. I was fairly confident that, if asked directly, these two hard-hitters of EA would remember me and speak of my intentional work ethic positively.
Highlights According to CEA’s Published Criteria for EAG 2022 Admission:
I stated I became a physician based on the EA dogma of “Earning to Give” (ETG) the time, which took 9 years of my life to see to completion. I didn’t elaborate more because I figured that would be sufficient for this criteria.
While I didn’t volunteer for any sanctioned (funded) EA projects, I did give multiple examples of starting organizations and leading interventions which were highly effective. I think it can be understood that my time was unpaid for these and thus I was a volunteer.
I said that I have so far paid myself $0 from my business and planned to focus my resources to execute effective interventions aimed at reducing animal suffering. I gave a couple concrete examples of interventions I was considering and remained open to others by mentioning I was in scout mode for cost-effective opportunities and underutilized talent. I mentioned that I was no longer on the ETG track because I believed more in my own ability to effect change. (I didn’t include another important reason I had for this, but you can read about that here.)
Providing more detail about my actions and the ways in which ideas in EA influenced my decisions: My entire application took 2 hours to complete and was incredibly detailed. Keywords that I mentioned throughout my application when describing different actions included scout-mode, cost-effectiveness, tight feedback loops, taking advantage of neglected interventions, leaning into my most valuable assets, reducing future animal suffering, and longtermist frameworks etc.
Job Opportunities: I stated that I wanted to transition my business to a form of passive income/funding so that I could focus on more direct EA work through hiring 1-2 people for effective interventions that I would fund. I figured I would be adding value by creating more opportunities for the community rather than taking them away.
Free Medical Advice: I am a physical medicine and rehab physician, which is a broadly applicable and useful speciality. In my application, I stated that I could offer useful and free medical advice and ultrasound scanning for other EA’s during the conference. I want to help reduce chronic discomfort/pain for other EA’s so they could go on to be more effective in achieving their altruism goals. Plus, I also really enjoy being of service to others and find it particularly useful in making connections.
Connection Facilitation: I included a link to my google reviews to demonstrate “my general likeability and professionalism.” I figured I could utilize my prosocial extroversion and affinity for group dynamics to increase the number of connections made at EAG, one of the metrics that I found that CEA uses to measure the success of their conferences.
Finding Out About Rejection #3 (September 12, 2022)
One of my well-connected friends from EA NYC offered to give a personal recommendation for me directly to the admissions team. I was overjoyed to have a community endorsement to add to my “EA Resume.” However, the response my friend received from the admission lead was that my application would likely be rejected again. No explanation was provided so my mind suddenly went to the worst possible scenario
“OMG! It’s because my main cause area is reducing animal suffering and EA doesn’t care about that anymore!”
….It’s easy to let insecurities take over the narrative when there is no explanation to fill in the unknown gap. This horrifying thought was already one of the main bases of my disillusionment when I made my original post.
The following include my personal thoughts about CEA’s communications. They are discussed further in the “Hypotheses for Rejection” and “Criticisms/Solutions” sections.
I messaged X to give them an update about rejection #3:
Soon afterwards, I received this email:
I replied to the email containing rejection #3:
I received a reply which really rubbed me the wrong way:
I replied with mildly sassy response when it was confirmed there would be no feedback:
It was shortly after this that I found out about the Scott Alexander post, which was an interesting story, but unecessary for this post. Interested folks can read about if they want.
These are meant to be examples of bad epistemics (I couldn’t fact-check)
After getting comments from reviewers for this post, I did see many potential red flags in my application that I didn’t initially consider. I have included them in this list.
Perhaps the admissions team…
I spent many hours thinking in circles through these various hypotheses…
I think that everything in the list (with the exception of the first 3) could have been resolved by redirecting me to resources to better understand the expected norms of the conference so I could update my priors. One of my priors when I wrote my amended application was that EA’s appreciate things that are weird and honest. I had openly done or talked about all of the things in my application around other EA’s without having received any significant feedback that they were inappropriate. For this reason, I found them less compelling as a basis for rejection unless the reviewer made the assumption that I wasn’t someone who could be redirected. I hope that wasn’t the case because I also said,
“I have been in scout mode to identify both opportunities and underutilized talent. I have many ideas for projects that take advantage of neglected interventions for reducing animal suffering and need to find people with similar enthusiasm and availability to help develop them.”
I thought this statement would be sufficient to communicate that my ideas were still in early stages and that, while I was passionate about my end goal, I was still open to changing my approach and thought EAG could help me meet people who could challenge my epistemics and improve my process. I did use the term “future projects I am planning” later on so I could see how that might give the impression to the reviewer that I was rigidly set on doing all of those interventions (I’ve already given up on one of them due to new information).
I also initially considered capacity limits as a possible reason, but later came to find out that they are not a factor in admissions.
TLDR; When there is a gaping hole of nothingness, the brain has the uncanny ability to fill it with all sorts of possible hypothetical explanations. Mixing in strong emotions and insecurity (often the case with rejections) places people at even higher risk for cognitive distortion and reactionary behavior. I was already worried that non-human animals would not have a place at the new longtermist table in the EA community. That is why my mind immediately grabbed onto that when reaching for an explanation.
As much as we aspire to be perfectly rational, we are still human in the end.
Because I heard EAs love criticism!
All my rejection hypotheses boiled down to the CEA’s admissions judgment on whether I was good enough of an EA to get into EAG. In the admissions lead’s own words, “We simply have a specific bar for admissions and everyone above that bar gets admitted.” Therefore, it is implied that if you didn’t get in, then you are below that bar. This is especially demoralizing because there is then the tendency to start comparing yourself to accepted applicants.
Proposed Solution: Not sure
This is a difficult problem to solve because it involves each applicant's personal sense of identity. This forum post is my small contribution to addressing this problem. There seems to be a taboo about people sharing personal stories of rejection. Some possible explanations could be feelings of shame or risk of personal reputation. Hopefully as you read on in the criticisms, you will realize how much room for improvement there is in the admissions system for EAG. It’s relatively easy to mistake their control of conference admissions with an authoritative judgment of how fit you are to be in the greater EA community, but... it definitely is not!!
I see evidence of many different iterations of CEA communications (FAQ, Google Doc, Forum Post, Email, and most recently comments in the EA Forum) that contain various messages that try to broadly address the need applicants have for feedback and clarity. But are these needs being met? It seems like many people have serious questions about their application decisions and are being denied feedback. A common explanation for this is that staff do not have the capacity to handle all the feedback demanded. As I discuss later on, much of this problem could be addressed with automated systems and a good process improvement cycle.
Proposed Solution: Instead of coming up with better explanations, consider a different strategy to address the emotional and epistemic needs of rejected applicants. I will address these in criticisms 3-5.
Feedback… It’s what EA’s Crave! When people do not have a clear and actionable reason for their rejection, their minds can spiral and often come to the conclusion that either they are unworthy, which poses a risk for declining individual mental and community health. People who apply to EAG are already self-selecting as highly motivated members of the community and this energy could be channeled into a growth mindset to create something productive. Seems like giving feedback to EAG applicants is something that could be an opportunity to direct them in a more effective direction. Perhaps a volunteer could even do this after an automated system is set up.
Proposed solution: Create an automated system for feedback and optimize for applicant satisfaction and engagement.
Categorize rejected applicants according to concerns about their application that could be improved upon and create a triage system to provide actionable feedback. Once some templates and a system is set up, I imagine it can be pretty efficient. Here is one way it could be done - the admissions team labels each rejected application in their inbox with colored flags corresponding to different reasons for rejection and then a remote assistant can just fire off the pre-templated emails. There is also room here for more targeted triage using spreadsheets and customizable templates according to characteristics of applicants such as location, earning potential, cause area, stage of career, etc. An added bonus is that all this work can just become data points to feed into your process improvement cycle which I describe in #4.
Here are some simple examples:
The best examples of industries that have gained success through process improvement are the car industry, the airline industry, and more recently, the healthcare industry. It seems natural that EA would implement these models as well. The admissions team states that they have thought carefully about the question of “how costly is rejection” and determined that there is a “relatively small discouragement effect” because rejection did not have a great effect on the likelihood of applicants to apply/reapply (a proxy outcome measure for discouragement) for future conferences. This is the only example I could find.
If CEA has other measures they use to assess how costly rejection is, then it would be beneficial to building community trust if they published them. For now, I will explain why I think this choice for a proxy outcome measure is likely a poor correlate for actual discouragement.
As I said in my correspondence with X, it is so easy to autofill the applications with prior answers again and again. Rejected applicants can still be measured as being “not discouraged” every time they apply even if they are feeling progressively more discouraged or disillusioned with each rejection. There are a lot of other costs to rejection that cannot be captured with this statistic too. Examples of other outcomes to consider include aspects of mental health, individual productivity, and community participation/epistemological integrity/diversity.
Ultimately, the "cost of rejection" is just one factor to calculate when considering the overall impact of the admissions process.
"EAG exists to make the world a better place, rather than serve the EA community or make EAs happy. This unfortunately sometimes means EAs will be sad due to decisions we’ve made — though if this results in the world being a worse place overall, then we’ve clearly made a mistake."
It is really hard when an applicant, who wants to contribute to the greater good and believes that EAG will serve them well in that goal, gets rejected and is told that the reason is that the admissions team does not think their attendance would have made the world a better place. There seems to be something intuitively wrong with this, but it's hard to know what that is because of how opaque the admissions process is, which I discuss in #6.
Proposed Solution: Continue to update the process improvement model
It’s really hard to have a good process improvement model for “cost of rejection” without directly surveying the rejected applicants. Complaints are a gift! A humble place to start is with good qualitative feedback surveys - don't make rejected applicants resort to writing a whole forum post on their frustrations.
Here are some suggestions for qualitative questions:
Hone in on what people complain about the most and then develop quantitative ways to measure that.
Here are some suggestions for quantitative (0-10) questions:
Create a list of possible interventions to optimize for these desired outcomes, pick the best one, implement it, and measure it. Use that information to refine your model and repeat the process. As anyone who has gone through a process improvement model can attest to, it is an overwhelming task to find the best way to go about measuring these things. It's much easier to use a readily available statistic like "likelihood of applicants to apply/reapply." EA is about doing the most good though so we need to put in the work to measuring costs and benefits accurates.
Good communication is a skill. It takes concentrated effort and lots of feedback to develop, but once you get good at it, it doesn’t take much more time or effort to word things more considerately. There were many points in my correspondence with X and the Admissions Team regarding my rejected application that could have been handled better. I wrote some specific comments regarding opportunities for improvement in wording choice. However, I think the most glaring example of poorly considered/coordinated communication can be seen in the contrast between In the admissions lead’s comments about having a specific bar for admissions and “everyone above that bar [getting] admitted” and X saying ”please don’t take our judgment personally.”
Proposed Solution #1- Include plausible reasons for the rejection decision in the default email
One simple way to do this could be to include a link to a list of plausible and sensitively-written explanations for an EAG rejection such as Julia Wise’s 2019 EA forum post. Rejected applicants could substitute these explanations in place of potentially more detrimental explanations that could be based in insecurity. However this leads down the rabbit hole to criticism #2 (better explanations don’t solve the underlying problem). Also, the plausibility of any alternate explanations would now be dubious given the explicit “pass the bar” criteria.
Proposed Solution #2- Equip staff with the tools to better relate to rejected applicants
CEA staff involved in communicating about rejections can be trained on authentic relating or nonviolent communication methods. These are incredibly impactful communication methods that place an emphasis on listening and considering the emotional needs of others before responding. When people feel understood, they are much more likely to extend the same courtesy back and then communicating becomes easier and more productive.
In general, there seems to be a lot of power concentrated in CEA and when you mix that with an opaque selection process, this tends to engender distrust. This is unfavorable to building a unified movement. As I discussed earlier in this post, there are very few metrics that CEA makes publicly available that help with understanding the reasoning for their admissions process. I believe there are many more that can be published without giving away the "teacher's password."
Proposed Solution: Make it more transparent!
Even if the CEA admissions team states they are going by some thoughtful, well-researched algorithm, there is still the problem of the perception of gatekeeping. It seems natural for people to feel that way when a small committee, which can easily be subject to personal bias, has the power to deny access to a highly anticipated event.
Proposed Solutions:
In the end, I still have the feeling that I did in my original post that I don’t really fit into this newer brand of EA… and CEA doesn’t really recognize me as “EAG” worthy. Nonetheless, I can still personally identify as an EA doing impactful work and feel like I fit into parts of the EA community.
I have accepted that I am unlikely to ever get a satisfactory answer to support that the current admission process serves to optimize for the greatest good. It's really hard to accept any claims about this without seeing all the proxy metrics used for it, including how they are measuring "cost of rejection" without sending out any surveys to the rejected applicants.
Working on this post, telling my story, and hearing others along the way has been a catharsis. I recognize I’m in a particularly privileged position. I live near a large EA hub, am financially well-resourced, and am capable of creating my own career opportunities. Others I have talked to have not had these advantages. They rely on EA grants for their projects or EA organizations for obtaining jobs and therefore may be more hesitant to directly and publicly criticize authoritative organizations like CEA.
I would like to invite anyone who has a story to tell to share it in the comments, privately message me, or just jump onto EA Gather Town anytime to talk to another EA about it. It is a wholesome EA community where anyone is welcome and there is no application. The people there have given me good company and conversation as I wrote this post. I had many interesting conversations such as how essential omega-3’s are (not very), the value of street epistemology, and the complicated dating lives of EA’s.
Let’s create a warmer community and be present for one another. There are many out there that have the capacity to listen and appreciate your unique talents. EA is a huge global community with different niches. Don’t leave just because one part of the community couldn’t/wouldn’t accept you.
Altruists, we are all in this together for the greater good!
I’d like to extend my deepest gratitude to the reviewers for this post:
Scott Alexander, Aaron Gertler, Cornelis Dirk, Jonathan Yan, Annabel Luketic, and Emrik Garden
Update May 30, 2023:
Since this post was made, I've heard from a lot of animal EA folks that they have felt similarly marginalized or looked down upon for having a "lower priority" cause area. (though no one says it explicitly... it's all implicit and reflected in ~vibes~ and noticing where the money and attention goes). So I've been on a mission to bring more EA into animal advocacy and more animal advocacy into EA. I'll be at EAGxNYC 2023 (Aug 18 - 20) so if you are there, come say hi!
I also did go to the Animal Vegan Advocacy Summit of 2022 where I was a speaker and organized a subgroup meetup for EA's:
The AVA Summit is a fantastic event for those interested in getting actively involved with animal advocacy. I highly encourage EA's interested in animal welfare to go. There is a huge international presence and many newer, smaller organizations connected with their funders there. This year, I'll be facilitating a workshop on leveraging AI to accelerate progress for animals. I want to see more animal advocates working smarter, not harder.
My vision is that animal advocates become cyborgs.
And if you want to get more involved with animal welfare right now, please join the Impactful Animal Advocacy Slack group where dedicated advocates are collaborating every day.
With lots of love,
Constance
I haven't read the comments and this has probably been said many times already, but it doesn't hurt saying it again:
From what I understand, you've taken significant action to make the world a better place. You work in a job that does considerable good directly, and you donate your large income to help animals. That makes you a total hero in my book :-)
Thank you for those kind words! I plan to continue taking significant action to help the world become a better place. While I was hoping that attending EAG could help me in that journey, I've come to learn that there are many other avenues available.
I have a similar-ish story. I became an EA (and a longtermist, though I think that word did not exist back then) as a high school junior, after debating a lot of people online about ethics and binge-reading works from Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Brian Tomasik. At the time, being an EA felt so philosophically right and exhilaratingly consistent with my ethical intuitions. Since then I have almost only had friends that considered themselves EAs.
For three years (2017, 2018 and 2019) my friends recommended I apply to EA Global. I didn’t apply in 2017 because I was underage and my parents didn’t let me go, and didn’t apply in the next two years because I didn’t feel psychologically ready for a lot of social interaction (I’m extremely introverted).
Then I excitedly applied for EAG SF 2020, and got promptly rejected. And that was extremely, extremely discouraging, and played an important role in the major depressive episode I was in for two and a half years after the rejection. (Other EA-related rejections also played a role.)
I started recovering from depression after I decided to distance myself from EA. I think that was the only correct choice for me. I still care a lot about making the future go well, but have resigned to the fact that the only thing I can realistically do to achieve that goal is donate to longtermist charities.
I am really sorry to hear about your experience. I know how devastating rejection can feel, especially when it comes from an organization you so much admire and identify with.
I can imagine the decision felt like a judgement of who you are as a person and of your worthiness as a 'real' Effective Altruist. I can tell how important effective altruism and the EA movement are to your identity and sense of yourself and your purpose, and I am sure you put so much of yourself into your application. How could the decision not feel personal?
I hope you know that EA Global's (or any other EA origination's) decision not to accept your application to their conference is NOT a judgement of who you are as a person, or your intelligence, competency, or ability to do good in the world. It is especially not a judgement of your moral worth. It is not even a true judgement of your dedication to EA causes or your value as a member of the EA movement. EA Global, despite sharing the underlying mission of all things EA, to do significant good, is also just an institution, comprised of a whole bunch of employees, with all the institutional priorities, institutional constraints, and institutional complexities of any institution. It is not a god, it does not see you or know you, and it does not have the authority to make any ruling regarding your true worth or value. The decision-making process is both bureaucratic and human. A binary decision from an impenetrable institution conceals all elements of randomness, arbitrariness, and human best-guessedness that goes into all human decision making processes.
No institution can be an arbiter of your worth or your value.[1] I really hope that you can internalize this. You know what your values are. You identify with the EA movement because your values are so strong and you feel so intensely driven by them. Remember that effective altruism is a philosophy and a movement, not a club.
Being an effective altruist means living your life in a way that aims to promote good in the world/universe to the extent that you are able. Qualification entails the dedication of one's time and resources to this goal, not an invitation or acceptance letter or membership card or special club jacket. I am sure you are doing good, and I hope you can continue to do so with confidence in your worth, importance and total validity.
As a note, I am a total outsider here and can presume neither any insider knowledge to the workings of EAG nor the authority from which to be dispensing advice or telling anyone what to do, but it made me very sad to read your account and that of Constance, and this feels right. It didn't feel right to me that this kind of institutional decision can make such good people feel so bad and demotivated, and i just wanted to offer my personal take by way of explanation for why that is, and with hope that it might make your or someone in your situation feel a tiny bit better.
Besides possibly the Catholic Church or other intensely hierarchical religious institution, if you subscribe to that sort of thing. )
Data point: in the three cases I know of, undergraduates with around 30–40 hours of engagement with EA ideas were accepted to EAG London 2022.
I don't think much can be said from a small number of data points. The admissions strategy could very well be "Get a lot of super early career people together with some really experienced EAs so they can provide mentoring", for example. And this would be a valid decision, that we could debate the merits of, and maybe find good or bad. But there'd not be an obvious "mistake" about accepting undergrads and rejecting specific other people.
Disclosure: I also got rejected from EAG London this year, but did attend the one before and an EAGx.
(This is the "pro CEA" part of my opinion - see my top level comment for the other side)
I didn't say that CEA's admissions process was mistaken or bad. (In fact, I don't believe that it's bad!) I'm just sharing what may be relevant context for others' thought and discussion on EA conference admissions.
Sorry that your experience of this has been rough.
Some quick thoughts I had whilst reading:
Sorry that the tone of the above is harsh -- I'm unsure if it's too harsh or whether this is the appropriate space for this comment.
I've err-ed on the side of posting because it feels relevant and important.
I could be wrong, but I have a pretty strong sense that nearly everyone I know with EA funding would be willing to criticise CEA if they had a good reason to. I'd be surprised if {being EA funded} decreased willingness to criticise EA orgs. I even expect the opposite to be true.
I disagree, I know several people who fit this description (5 off the top of my head) who would find this very hard. I think it very much depends on factors like how well networked you are, where you live, how much funding you've received and for how long, and whether you think you could work for and org in the future.
Here's an anonymous form where people can criticize us, in case that helps.
When people already well-respected in the community criticise something in EA, it can often be a source of prestige and a display of their own ability to think independently. But if a relative newcomer were to suggest the very same criticisms, it will often be interpreted very differently. Other aspiring EAs might intuitively classify them as "normie" rather than "EA above the pack".
So depending on where in the local status hierarchy you find yourself, you might have very different perceptions on how risky it is for community members in general to voice contrarian opinions.
The part about newcomers doesn't reflect my experience FWIW, though my sample size is small. I published a major criticism while a relative newcomer (knew a handful of EAs, mostly online, was working as a teacher, certainly felt like I had no idea what I was doing). Though it wasn't the goal of doing so, I think that criticism ended causing me to gain status, possibly (though it's hard to assess accurately) more status that I think I "deserved" for writing it.
[I no longer feel like a newcomer so this is a cached impression from a couple of years ago and should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt]
I disagree. If anything EA has a problem that Alexrjl hinted at that you gain too much status for criticising EA. Scott Alexander's recent post made me update in that direction.
(Sidenote: I gave your comment an upvote because I appreciate it, but an agreement downvote since I disagree. And it is just making me happy right now to see how useful explicitly seperating these two voting systems can be)
There was a vague tone of "the goal is to get accepted to EAG" instead of "the goal is to make the world better," which I felt a bit uneasy about when reading the post. EAGs are only useful in so far as they let community members to better work in the real world.
Hm, I understand why you say that, and you might be right (e.g., I see some signs of the OP that are compatible with this interpretation). Still, I want to point out that there's a risk of being a bit uncharitable. It seems worth saying that anyone who cares a lot about having a lot of impact should naturally try hard to get accepted to EAG (assuming that they see concrete ways to benefit from it). Therefore, the fact that someone seems to be trying hard can also be evidence that EA is very important to them. Especially when you're working on a cause area that is under-represented among EAG-attending EAs, like animal welfare, it might matter more (based on your personal moral and empirical views) to get invited.[1]
Compare the following two scenarios. If you're the 130th applicant focused on trying out AI safety research and the conference committee decides that they think the AI safety conversations at the conference will be more productive without you in expectation because they think other candidates are better suited, you might react to these news in a saint-like way. You might think: "Okay, at least this means others get to reduce AI safety effectively, which benefits my understanding of doing the most good." By contrast, imagine you get rejected as an advocate for animal welfare. In that situation, you might legitimately worry that your cause area – which you naturally could think is especially important at least according to your moral views and empirical views – ends up neglected. Accordingly, the saint-like reaction of "at least the conference will be impactful without me" doesn't feel as appropriate (it might be more impactful based on other people's moral and empirical views, but not necessarily yours). (That doesn't mean that people from under-represented cause areas should be included just for the sake of better representation, nor that everyone with an empirical view that differs from what's common in EA is entitled to have their perspective validated. I'm just pointing out that we can't fault people from under-represented cause areas for thinking that it's altruistically important for them to get invited – that's what's rational when you worry that the conference wouldn't represent your cause area all that well otherwise. [Even so, I also think it's important for everyone to be understanding of others' perspectives on this. E.g., if lots of people don't share your views, you simply can't be too entitled about getting representation because a norm that gave all rare views a lot of representation would lead to a chaotic and scattered and low-quality conference. Besides, if your views or cause area are too uncommon, you may not benefit from the conference as much, anyway.]
I strongly agree with this. And your footnote example is also excellent-excellent. I don't see why it isn't obvious that Constance's goal of getting into EAG is merely intrumental to her larger goal of making the world a better place (primarily for animal suffering since that is what she currently seems to believe is the world's most pressing issue).
nearly everyone I know with EA funding would be willing to criticise CEA if they had a good reason to.
I have received EA funding in multiple capacities, and feel quite constrained in my ability to criticise CEA publicly.
I'm sorry to hear that. Here's an anonymous form, in case that helps.
I'm aware of the form, and trying to think honestly about why I haven't used it/don't feel very motivated to. I think there's a few reasons:
I realise this isn't helpful on an object level, but perhaps it's useful meta-feedback. The last point gives me an idea: large EA orgs could seek out feedback actively, by eg posting discussion threads on their best guess about 'things people in the community might feel bad about re us' with minimal commentary, at least in the OPs, and see if anyone takes the bait. Many of the above concerns would disappear or at least alleviate if it felt like I was just agreeing with a statement rather than submitting multiple whinges.
(ETA: I didn't give you the agreement downvote, fwiw)
Thanks for sharing your reasons here! I definitely don't think that this problem fully fixes this problem, and it's helpful to hear how it's falling short. Some reactions to your points:
Thanks for the idea about writing comments that help people share their thoughts without getting into details.
Wow, thanks so much for sharing this publicly!
I also wanna give general encouragement for sharing a difficult rejection story.
Hi Evie,
I appreciate that you decided to post this.
It seems to me to be completely valid to acknowledge that there is a real cost to rejection that is felt by individuals at a very personal level. Part of this cost will be the utilitarian frustration of being thwarted from taking advantage of what one imagines could be a highly effective means of furthering one's goals (i.e. doing good), but part of this cost for many people will be the very personal hurt of rejection, and that both can felt at the same time. We are social beings with identities and values that are rooted in and affirmed by community. This is the reason the philosophy of effective altruism has gained traction in calling itself a community and building institutions around that. Community is important to who we are, what we beleive, and what we do. If doing good is central to one's sense of purpose and identity, and one has found in the EA community an identity and moral framework that provides a means through which one can live out one's values, than a rejection handed down by the highly respected leaders of this community will be incredibly painful on a personal level. Our goals and values are inextricably tied up with our identities and relationships.
The psychological cost of rejection is real and i think potentially detrimental to the greater purpose of the organization in so far as it discourages and demotivates people who are driven by a common altruistic purpose, and contributes to a wider sense of the EA community as gated and exclusionary. To the extent that one cares about these costs, I do not see the gain in refusing to acknowledge that the psychological toll of rejection is real, is valid, and is intrinsically bound up with any more purely instrumental costs.
- There was a vague tone of "the goal is to get accepted to EAG" instead of "the goal is to make the world better," which I felt a bit uneasy about when reading the post. EAGs are only useful in so far as they let community members to better work in the real world.
- Because of this, I don't feel strongly about the EAG team providing feedback to people on why they were rejected. The EAG team's goals isn't to advise on how applicants can fill up their "EA resume." It's to facilitate impactful work in the world.
- I remembered a comment that I really liked from Eli: "EAG exists to make the world a better place, rather than serve the EA community or make EAs happy."
I roughly agree with these.
- You say"[others] rely on EA grants for their projects or EA organizations for obtaining jobs and therefore may be more hesitant to directly and publicly criticize authoritative organizations like CEA." I could be wrong, but I have a pretty strong sense that nearly everyone I know with EA funding would be willing to criticise CEA if they had a good reason to. I'd be surprised if {being EA funded} decreased willingness to criticise EA orgs. I even expect the opposite to be true.
- (Disclaimer that I've received funding from EA orgs)
I'm not sure about this. I expect people relying on EA grants are reluctant to criticize authoritative orgs like CEA, particularly publicly and non-anonymously. I'd guess that they're more reluctant than people not on EA grants, relative to the amount of useful criticism they could provide.
I think the first point is subtly wrong in an important way.
EAGs are not only useful in so far as they let community members do better work in the real world. EAGs are useful insofar as they result in a better world coming to be.
One way in which EAGs might make the world better is by fostering a sense of community, validation, and inclusion among those who have committed themselves to EA, thus motivating people to so commit themselves and to maintain such commitments. This function doesn't bare on "letting" people do better work per se.
Insofar as this goal is an important component of EAG's impact, it should be prioritized alongside more direct effects of the conference. EAG obviously exists to make the world a better place, but serving the EA community and making EAs happy is an important way in which EAG accomplishes this goal.
EDIT: Lukas Gloor does a much better job than me at getting across everything I wanted to in this comment here
There was a vague tone of "the goal is to get accepted to EAG" instead of "the goal is to make the world better," which I felt a bit uneasy about when reading the post. EAGs are only useful in so far as they let community members to better work in the real world.
From my reading her goals are not simply get into EAG. It seems obvious to me that her goal to get into EAG is instrumental to the end of making the world a better place. The crux is not "Constance just wants to get into EAG." The crux I think is Constance believes she can help make the world a better place much more through connecting with people at EAG. The CEA does not appear to believe this to be the case.
The crux should be the focus. Focusing on how badly she wants to get into EAG is a distraction.
"EAG exists to make the world a better place, rather than serve the EA community or make EAs happy."
For many EAs you cannot have a well-run conference that makes the world a better place without it also being a place that makes many EAs very happy. I'd think the two goals are synonymous for a great many EAs.
In their comment Eli says:
This unfortunately sometimes means EAs will be sad due to decisions we’ve made — though if this results in the world being a worse place overall, then we’ve clearly made a mistake.
Let's also remember that EAs that get rejected from EAG that believe their rejection resulted in the world being a worse place overall will also be sad - probably moreso because they get both the FOMO but also a deeper moral sting. In fact, they might be so sad it motivates them to write an EA Forum post about it in the hopes of making sure that the CEA didn't make a mistake.
I like Eli's comment. It captures something important. But I also don't like it because it can also provide a false sense of clarity - seperating goals that aren't actually always that seperate - and this false clarity can possibly provide a motivated reasoning basis that can be used to more easily believe the EAG admission process didn't make a mistake and make the world a worse place. Why? Because it makes it easier to dismiss an EA that is very sad about being rejected from EAG as just someone who "wants to get into EAG."
"EAG exists to make the world a better place, rather than serve the EA community or make EAs happy."
I'm wary of this claim. Obviously in some top level sense it's true, but it seems reminiscent of the paradox of hedonism, in that I can easily believe that if you consciously optimise events for abstract good-maximisation, you end up maximising good less than if you optimise them for the health of a community of do-gooders.
(I'm not saying this is a case for or against admitting the OP - it's just my reaction to your reaction)
Thank you for sharing a very personal story, I think it will lead to even more improvements to the overall process and community health.
As someone that was accepted to EAG with basically no EA accomplishments, I do strongly believe that admissions are not about "worthiness" but about "how much would going to EAG help you or others do the most good".
Looking at the application, as a random nobody, I personally agree with the CEA decision (even ignoring the fact that they probably have a lot more information).
Not sure about discussing why in a comment, but happy to do it if someone would find it useful.
Edit: I really liked this paragraph
Let’s create a warmer community and be present for one another. There are many out there that have the capacity to listen and appreciate your unique talents. EA is a huge global community with different niches. Don’t leave just because one part of the community couldn’t/wouldn’t accept you.
And the fact that you actually found a solution/improvement (the gather town space) to solve your needs, I wish I had more of this mindset!
A number of people have asked me whether I gave Constance permission to post a selection of my private Facebook communications and my email/the events team’s emails as part of this Forum post. I did not. I felt a bit uncomfortable with this, but I also did not ask her to take them down.
I saw that she had some suggestions for how I could improve my messages and my emails / other events team emails in the redline comments, and I agree some of her suggestions would have been improvements.
Amy, I knew this would be at least a bit uncomfortable for you. I tried to minimize that through anonymizing your identity in the screenshots and sharing the google doc draft with you the night before I posted it.
Ultimately, I was very disappointed in the quality of communication around the application decision making process. When it was made clear that there would be no further ability to discuss the reason for my rejection privately, I decided to make a public post. My primary goal is to increase transparency and reduce the likelihood that other rejected applicants would have a negative experience. I thought the screenshots would be necessary to do that, but didn’t think your identity was necessary for it. I did see that you identified yourself in the comments shortly after the post went up so I appreciate your sense of accountability for what it’s worth.
I'm honestly confused and surprised you got rejected, based on reading your linked application. I would probably have found it valuable to talk to you at a conference like this, for insights into how you do what you do, because you clearly do some of it well.
I just really hope it isn't anti-animal-welfare bias, because I do so hope that EAs with different priorities keep intermingling.
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).
I expect that application evaluators are unconsciously biased against animal welfare as a cause area.
How feasible is it to start collecting data on applicants’ primary cause areas and publishing acceptance ratios for people focused on different areas?
Mh, I'm relieved. ^^
I still feel like it's in the water. But maybe the suspicion and the public speculation is what keeps it there. If everyone openly speculates on whether there's a widespread anti-animal-welfare bias in EA, it fuels distrust and schism and thereby makes it be a bias for the opposing side.
On the other hand, positively speaking about the value of big-tent EA, intermingling, and small-world networks, may make people pay more attention to incipient distrust and try to heal it. We want a world where aspiring EAs can find other EAs to talk to about all potential causes, lest their prioritisation be overly influenced by their arbitrary initial positions on the social graph.
On a much more lighthearted note you:
Can we all just agree this is just (say this in a California Valley Girl accent) "So EA," all these are so much the hallmarks of the EA experience that the Spirit of Gorgeous-Locks William MacAskill may well be bursting from you. So regardless about what any of us think about the EAG admissions process : you clearly belong in this community, lol.
Thanks for sharing your story. I personally found it really inspiring.
Regarding "Gatekeeping by a Small, Elite Group":
Implicitly, you’re suggesting that the appropriate place for discussion of CEA’s governance is in public. In contrast, I think CEA’s board holds that responsibility. Overall, I think that discussion is going to be more productive with a few highly-skilled and high-context individuals rather than a broad discussion. While I agree that getting broad community input into our work is important, I also think that it’s critical that we are held accountable for doing impactful work, which will not always be the same as what pleases community members.
The aim is obviously to prioritise impact over "the community". Which might be fine theoretically - but it is implied that the small, elite group can judge impact better than the community, which I find troubling.
I think it's hard to maintain that you're not trying to represent the movement if you call your event "Effective Altruism Global" and own/run effectivealtruism.com
Good point.
I'm busy with EAG prep, so I can't respond properly right now, but I wanted to note that I think the comment thread above (Guy's original comment + Joshua's) doesn't quite capture how I'm thinking about CEA's relationship to the community or to representativeness, though I can see why you're taking these things from what I wrote.
Coming back to pay off this IOU.
Some points:
Hi, I upvoted because I appreciate that you took the time to give a detailed answer. I'm going to reply more thoroughly, but for now I'll highlight this:
Then we move onto (paraphrasing very slightly) "CEA clearly aren't trying to be representative of the movement". I think that "representative" could mean lots of things here, and again I agree with some versions but not others:
By this I'm referring to the decision-makers in CEA being representative of the community. Not participants of EA events.
I still don't know how exactly you choose participants, and I think the problem there is not necessarily the way you choose, but the fact that nobody seems to know what it is. But this is way less important to me than the general decision-making and transparency in CEA.
Thanks, and to clarify, by decision-makers, do you mean mostly the board or mostly staff? And do you want them to be representative on particular dimensions? Or maybe chosen by a representative process like elections? I expect that we disagree on what the right structure is, but still interested to understand your view.
EAG conference activity has grown dramatically, with EAGs now going over 1,500 people, and more EAG and EAGx conferences. Expenses and staff have all increased to support many more attendees.
The very CEA people who are responding here (and actively recruiting more people to get more/larger conferences), presided over this growth in conferences.
I can imagine that the increased size of EAGs faced some opposition. It's plausible to me that the CEA people here, actively fought for the larger sizes (and increased management/risk).
In at least a few views, this seems opposite to "eliteness" and seems important to notice/mention.
I think the emotional cost of rejection is real and important. I think the post is about feeling like a member of a community, as opposed to acceptance at EAG itself.
It seems the OP didn't want to go to EAGx conferences. This wasn't mentioned in her OP.
Presumably, one reason the OP didn't want to go to EAGx, was that they view these events as diluted, or not having the same value as an EAG[1].
But that view seems contrary to wanting to expand from "elite", highly filtered EAGs. Instead, their choices suggests the issue is a personal one about fairness/meeting the bar for EAG.
The grandparent comment opens a thread criticizing eliteness or filtered EAG/CEA events. But that doesn't seem to be consistent with the above.
BTW, I think views where EAGx are "lesser" are disappointing, because in some ways, EAGx conferences have greater opportunities for counterfactuals (there are more liminal or nascent EAs).
She responded to this concern here. She has been to an EAGx before and was and is open to going to others
When she talked to Amy (which is probably where you are getting the info and drawing conclusion from), it was not because she viewed them as lesser but because she had a scheduling conflict since she was a speaker at the AVA Summit.
Yes, Amy's comment is where I got my information/conclusion from.
Yes, you are right, the OP has commented to say she is open to EAGx, and based on this, my comment above about not liking EAGx does not apply.
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.
Reading the comment you link to, it doesn't indicate having been to an EAGx before [edit: maybe a virtual event was indicated], but does indicate openness to going to others.
Amy gave her impression on the point here.
You are right she doesn't mention it in the comment. But in the OP she mentioned she went to EAGx Virtual. See the "Rejoining the EA Community (Fall 2021)" section.
To be clear, I'm grateful for much of the work done by CEA and I've really enjoyed the conferences I've been to.
I guess here what I mean by "elitist" diverges from what Constance meant. Because indeed you're getting more participants and there's strong pushback against that. On the other hand, decision-makers are still the same small group.
I upvoted this because I think it's well written and valuable information. I don't agree with all the conclusions but I'm glad you posted it.
Thank you!
From an EA policy perspective, I do worry that rejecting what I understand to be something like half of people who want to come to an EAG conference may inspire negative feelings towards EA in ways that are hard to observe because people who experience them or share them disproportionately fall out of the EA community. (I also think exclusivity may create in-group/out-group dynamics that are already inherent to social movements and can be thorny and problematic).
Maybe a constructive step would be some sort of data collection and dissemination about who applies and is accepted/rejected for EA Global events? It feels like we're steering kind of blindly but maybe that's a misapprehension on my part.
I agree. This could start off with a simple statistic like rejection rate and then also be subdivided into comparison of accepted/rejected applicants in terms of location, experience, favored cause areas, race, citizenship, age, etc. It could raise some pretty important questions that could then be discussed rationally. More transparency can help balance out the tendency towards in-group/out-group dynamics.
Hey Constance! Thank you for writing this. I am sorry to hear that this has been stressful. I have had several similar experiences where I felt that I was rejected or treated poorly by CEA or EA funders. Sometimes it really upset me and reduced my motivation for a period.
However, I also believe that the people at such orgs are generally very competent and good-natured, that there are things I don't know/consider which they account for. They have to do difficult work when filtering applications and leave themselves open for public criticism that is hard to defend against. I know that I would find that last part to be very difficult.
Overall, I feel that mistakes are inevitable in these sorts of application processes - especially in assessments of more unusual or novel people/projects. However, I also feel that if you work hard and keeping having good impacts, you will usually get the deserved resources and opportunities.
For what it is worth, I scanned your application, and I admire and appreciate your work. I hope you persevere, and that I see you at a future conference!
Hi Peter,
Throughout making this post (especially when writing the criticisms/solutions section) I did experience an expansion of my circle of compassion towards large organizations. It can be really difficult to make everyone happy when the scale of an event is so large. However, I still think that "customer service" has been undervalued and the downstream consequences of rejection have not adequately been taken into account. EA's expect to rely on CEA as a central organization (and other large EA orgs) in a way that is tied into their identity, career, funding, community, etc. How they interact with individual EA's really matters.
While I have weighed the pros and cons of posting this, I think ultimately it was a net pro to increase accountability, transparency, and help other rejected applicants not feel so upset. The tradeoff is that the CEA staff involved can experience some discomfort from being publicly criticized despite trying their best to do a good job. I have tried to minimize through not mentioning names directly in my post. I've also considered that others may view me in a more negative light for saying something controversial, but I do have to accept that as a potential consequence of my decision.
And thank you for your appreciation of my work! I do plan to keep on going and developing my projects. Hopefully we get a chance to meet in the future!
Thanks a lot for sharing a rejection story and for all of the effort you've put into making the world a better place! I would have really appreciated meeting you at EAG.
One thing I was surprised to read in the comments on Scott Alexander's post is this description of EAG:
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.
I can second the vibe of Zach's 'Data point' comment. I know/met a few (<5 but I suspect more were there based on my sampling) students at EAG SF who had only recently engaged with EA ideas and had not (yet) taken any 'significant action' based on them. This isn't their fault, they're young! I enjoyed meeting these people and remain glad they were there.
My sense was that the admissions committee wanted to connect bright, prospective EAs with direct work employers. That could be a reasonable goal, but it doesn't track the above description which sounds like its about experience acting on EA principles.
After going through my first EAG this past weekend, I am left pretty confused about the rationale for the competitive application process.
I know of two main categories of people who seem to have applied and gotten rejected — people very personally invested in EA as a cause but deemed unworthy of networking opportunities, and semi-important DC types who are maybe EA-curious but were deemed insufficiently committed to EA. But I don’t know that I really understand why the event would have been worse if it had featured more people from both of those categories. To CEA’s enormous credit they have a really good system in place of one-on-one meetings, formal office hours, and informal hangouts and there was plenty of stuff happening both formally and informally on the fringes of the event. It all seemed really thoughtful and well-designed. So thoughtful and well-designed that it wouldn’t have in any way been undermined by having more merely curious or somehow low powered people around.
I sort of get the idea of doing a light basic screening before you let people in — make sure they’re not scammers or wreckers or what have you. But rejecting people who are totally sincere in their desire to attend an EA conference seems potentially very costly. Is it just a question of money? The food was maybe nicer and more plentiful than it needed to be. In the limit, people needing to buy their own lunch seems like a much less damaging possibility than making people feel rejected.
From my understanding, it is almost certainly not a question of money. They have the option of making admissions less competitive but increasing the ticket price and then having a competitive process for financial aid, but they do not think that that is a good option.
CEA's concern with allowing a wider range of people into the conference seems to be that they'd take up the time of the people CEA most wants to be at an EAG.
That's coherent; I guess I just disagree with the calculus.
"most prestigious" seems like unfair wording, prestigious != people that CEA most wants to be at an EAG
Edited.
I too find money being an issue very unlikely. They rented out a government venue for the weekend with staff serving vegan food and cleaning up after you as if you were royalty. Maybe I'm just not used to this kind of lifestyle due to me a couple of years ago having to be a busser for similar venues, but I still found it odd how an organization that is meant to be about using our 'limited resources to do the most good’ must've spent big bucks on this venue.
Do you think it would have been bad if the "semi-important DC types who are maybe EA-curious" had had a bad time at the conference? Perhaps because it was weirder than they expected, or had interactions with different norms than they expected?
Perhaps if the norms were posted somewhere upfront, then the EA curious types could self select for attendance. I’m still not sure what the norms are after doing all the research for this post. A video of the conference with narration of the setup/interviews with attendees or just a list of norms on the EAG information page would be helpful to understand what the conference is like.
I would advise you to shorten the length of the total application to around one fourth of what it is currently. Focus on your strong points (running a growing business, strong animal welfare profile) and leave out the rest. The weaker parts of your application water down the parts which are the strongest.
Admissions are always a messy process and good people get rejected often. A friend of mine who I'm sure will go on to become a top-tier ai safety engineer, got rejected from eag, because there isn't a great way to convey this information through an application form. Vetting people at scale is just really difficult.
Thanks. I think I erred on the side of providing more information than needed to show enthusiasm and commitment. Perhaps I’ll try your suggestion next time and hope for a different result.
As someone new to EA myself, hearing about EAG conferences left me feeling uneasy and I didn't even know they vetted people this way. I have since been convinced by fellow EA colleagues and friends that it is beneficial due to networking possibilities. Now learning about this is once again making me feel uneasy.
I understand for conferences there are specific requirements one must meet to attend (in academia for example) but I don't see any transparency here regarding their decision making process (which seems like a big problem).
In summary:
1) This is going to make many people feel alienated from the EA community (which might counter the benefits of networking and community building that seems to rationalize even having these conferences in the first place)
2) At this point, I don't see a clear method for determining who should be allowed to attend these conferences (would love to hear and discuss these methods if they actually exist somewhere)
I want to offer my own perspective, from when I first applied to an EAG. I don't mean it to invalidate other people's perspectives and feelings about this, but for me it has helped to not give that much importance to those application results.
My perspective is that conferences are a limited resource, that the organizers are trying to distribute in an impactful way. This means choosing a group of participants who are, together, most likely to help each other gain positive impact. So being rejected doesn't mean I'm unworthy - it means that the organizers think others can gain more from the conference than I can. Which for me is basically fine.
Is it actually the case? It's hard to tell, since indeed there's no transparency, which is a problem. But at least assuming for myself that it's true has helped me personally.
Hi Lauren,
I've also heard some off-putting anecdotes about the internal operations of the conference. One example is the presence of staff that monitor all interactions in order to enforce certain norms. I've heard that they can seem a bit intimidating at times. Of course, I've never been to an EAG conference and cannot corroborate that first hand so please factor that in.
I agree that transparency to the public is really lacking. I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness, but still believe that there are a lot more details they could be making public without jeopardizing their objectives. I'd love to see some metrics on this and some feedback surveys for rejected applicants to ensure they are making an effort to measure the "cost of rejection."
One example is the presence of staff that monitor all interactions in order to enforce certain norms. I've heard that they can seem a bit intimidating at times.
I agree that transparency to the public is really lacking. I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness, but still believe that there are a lot more details they could be making public without jeopardizing their objectives.
The content in this comment seem really false to me, both in the actual statement and the "color" this comment has. It seems like it could mislead others who are less familiar with actual EAG events and other EA activities.
Below is object level content pushing back on the above thoughts.
Basically, it's almost physically impossible to monitor a large number of interactions, much less all interactions at EAG:
While less direct, here are anecdotes about EAG or CEA that seems to suggest an open, normal culture, or something:
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.
Hi Amy,
I participated in a recent EAGx, and I felt intimidated by the community health staff present onsite. Below I explain why I felt that way:
1) Context: I'm a non-native English speaker who grew up in Asia. There are social norms that are widely acceptable in the region I live but considered objectionable in the West. And I am deeply aware that I am UNAWARE of a lot of these social norms.
For example, in a normal EA meetup, I ran into a long-time EA friend of mine, and I referred to her appearance as "pretty" when I greeted her, which was very common in the city I live. I was later pointed out that this was considered offensive by another EA who grew up in a Western English-speaking country.
2) I spoke with the community health staff present at the conference I was in, nothing was off during the conversation, but I learned that he grew up in the West and likely would not know the differences of norms between his and my cultures. But this EAGx conference was set in Asia.
3) He walked around the venue again and again looking at the participants, apparently making sure he is available for assistance. In several of my 1-1s and group meetings, I observed his presence nearby. I understand he was very dedicated to his duty and had all the good intentions. But I was extremely anxious worrying that my behavior could be interpreted as inappropriate by him or someone nearby who would let him notice. I know there could be consequences if I was reported, so I went through all my conversations trying to behave like a model student in class. Fortunately there was no incident related to me, but the quality of my interactions with other participants deteriorated significantly because of this community health effort.
Going back to Constance's comments, I get that it's difficult to imagine how a few staff members can "monitor all interactions", but I hope it's clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored. Now when I think of my conference experience, I cannot shake off the image of a panopticon. If I will go to another EA event in the future, I hope I can feel much more safe and secure.
Hi Jonathan!
I'm Dion from EAGxSingapore, one of the two community contact people for the event. I'm sorry you felt this way during the conference and wanted to clarify some points.
Happy to discuss any other feedback that you have about the conference!
I couldn't help laughing at myself after reading your comment as it seemed that I connected two unrelated dots: the presence of community health, and staff looking around for trash.
Thank you for the clarifications, Dion, and for the terrific job you did organizing EAGxSingapore! I wish I could say this in person while I was at the conference, but I saw you were constantly in a "socially exhausted" mode, so I kept my mouth shut. It's great to e-meet you here and finally get this chance :)
Hi Jonathan,
I’m Catherine from CEA’s Community Health team. Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and I'm so sorry you felt uncomfortable.
A minor clarification: Each EAG or EAGx conference has a community contact person (or two). They are sometimes members of CEA's community health team, but often they are either members of the local EA community or are members of CEA's events team. It is not our intention for people to feel that they are being monitored.
I believe the person you are referring to is Ollie from CEA’s events team, whose role is to support the local organisers of EAGx events. He was walking around the venue to ensure the event was running smoothly and help out when needed.
Ollie was one of the two community contact people for EAGxSingapore, and a Singaporean organiser was the other contact person. This contact person role was a minor part of both of their roles that weekend. It is plausible that we should have had two locals as community contact people - we have done this in some EAGx conferences before. We will consider how we can communicate the roles of the organisers and contact people more effectively so others don't feel that the role involves monitoring interactions.
Happy to talk more about any suggestions you have.
Hi Catherine,
Thank you for reading my comment!
I understand the difficulty of running events, and it's not clear to me how EAGxSingapore could be done better. Looking at the suggestions you gave, for example:
1) Local community contact: I can see that they likely understand local customs and norms better. But I also see that EA is a global community of a unique culture that is much closer to the West.
2) Clearer communication of the roles. It would've been a big reliever for ME if I knew that community health contact was just a minor part of Ollie's roles. And as Dion explained in her response above, now I understand he walked around not to monitor us, but on the lookout for trash. Not only now I feel stupid, but also that I underappreciated Ollie's efforts. But I digress. In a large event like EAGx, many details have impacts on the participants' experiences, including the length of the communication of these details. I am not sure whether it is worth making the point of "community health staff usually have other more important roles".
Most measures I can imagine right now, are like the two above where the choice is not clear, but an intricate balance of various considerations. Therefore I have to admit that even if I had a somewhat negative experience myself, I don't have any good suggestions for improvement.
Finally let me mention that I am positively surprised to see your response to my rant deeply buried in a thread of 100+ comments. I am confident that with this level of care and dedication, EA events can only better and will have increasingly larger impacts for the good of the participants!
Thanks so much for your kind response Jonathan!
I'll be discussing ways to explain the role better with the next community contact people . I hope we can prevent future attendees from experiencing the discomfort you felt.
I have a suggestion for you guys: be more transparent. Thanks.
What concrete improvements would you suggest that would help make you safer at events like these?
To be honest, in situations like this my normal course of action is to not suggest anything and just deal with my feelings.
To me, community health is an unusual function. Although I fail to appreciate why it should be there, I am also convinced that there are good reasons. This thinking applies more generally: since I have zero experience organizing in-person networking events, I have very little chance of coming up with sensible suggestions of improvement unless I spend substantial time in this field.
But I could spend much less time to get over my own feeling of anxiety and insecurity. I also get better at this by repeated practices, so I can deal with future episodes more easily.
How about help the event organizers do better job, you might ask? But I'd rather spend serious time in AI safety, which ranks higher on the pressing issues list than building the EA community.
So sorry Jonathan I don't have anything valuable to add re your prompt of concrete improvement suggestions. Hope I have explained this clearly in my reasoning above. I think the organizers have done a great job, and given how responsive they're in this thread, I'm also confident that their best event will always be the next one :)
I’d say that in general in the West, if you as a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive (bc it’s often a precursor to/intended as unwanted sexual attention, rather than just being an arbitrary social norm). But it’s not in itself offensive: if it’s a friend that you have a level of trust with such that she can believe there’s no unwanted sexual attention behind the comment, I don’t think it’s considered offensive. Perhaps the person who told you this didn’t realise you were friends with the person you complemented? Or perhaps they didn’t realise that by calling something ‘offensive’ you would think it was a transgression rather than just a faux pas?Like I’m pretty confident that overhearing someone calling another person ‘pretty’ is not a red flag that would enter on a community health person’s radar.
Basically my read of the situation is that you were spooked due to miscommunication from one person, and understandably extrapolated an inaccurate belief from that. But given how specific this interaction was, I don’t think it’s fair to say that in general people would easily feel like all their interactions are being monitored.
It also seems like there was some information lost in this anecdote being relayed to Constance - ie she believed that monitoring had taken place, rather than it being likely for people to believe monitoring was taking place (if I’m correct in understanding that you were the person she got the anecdote from).
This is always the danger with information being relayed 2nd and 3rd hand - e.g. I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
Hi Rebecca,
Yes I can confirm that I was the person Constance got the anecdote from. It was also my belief at the conference and at the time I spoke with Constance that participants were monitored for community health, because I understood that community health 1) had an objective of making sure the event is welcoming and considerate, 2) had power to not admit participants to future events, and 3) had staff walking around the venue looking for something. From other commenters I learned that 3) was false (they were looking for trash, not monitoring interactions).
So re information lost, I want to be clear that nothing was lost when it's relayed to Constance. I wrongly believed monitoring had taken place and told her just that in our chat.
Re your comment about calling someone pretty: it was meant to be an example of how cross-cultural understanding was difficult. It was the first example that came to mind when I wrote my comment, but certainly not the only example. I thought it was a good example to make the point that normal social interactions in one culture could be considered deeply inappropriate or offensive in a different culture.
Coming back to your comment that "a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive". I'd like to refer you to this blog post (may not be the best source, I just Googled it) where it is mentioned that "people in China often address women who they don’t know" "beautiful woman" or "beautiful girl" to create connections and make the person being addressed to feel good. So in the example I gave, whether the person was a good friend of mine would not have mattered.
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your response.
Just to clarify, my point was that the ‘whether the person was a good friend’ part mattered for the question of whether you were told an accurate statement about what’s ‘offensive’ in the West. This question doesn’t rely on anything that’s true of any other culture, so I’m a bit confused why you mentioned the China example?
Re the communication between you and Constance, that’s my bad. I had understood your comment of “but I hope it's clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored [emphasis mine]” (in your initial comment before the clarification from others about the trash issue etc) to mean that you were already aware from not long after the experience that monitoring hadn’t actually taken place. ie that the issue you wanted to raise was about CEA staff was that they didn’t consider how easily others would perceive their actions as monitoring.
Hi Rebecca,
The point of the example in my original comment is to demonstrate that well-accepted social norms in one culture can be deemed offensive in another.
Your counterargument is that 1) the conclusion is drawn from only one example, and 2) even that example could be due to the person who gave me the feedback misunderstood the situation, ie my example was bad luck and not generally applicable.
In my reply to your counterargument, my claim of this being just one but not the only example is the response to 1). And the China example is the response to 2), that is, even if she were a new EA I just met for the first time, I could still have remarked on her good appearance, a polite and friendly gesture in my local culture, and be correctly deemed offensive by someone from the West. Therefore the main story line in my example still holds and is representative of difficult multi-cultural situations.
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
This is a minor point, but I did notice Constance's revised application had long answers with lots of content, and as she said she spent two hours on it. Is this usual/expected?
I usually just write a few sentences for each question, and I don't believe I've ever spent more than an hour on one.
I'm interested to discuss this, but am slightly confused about your 2nd paragraph haha: are you saying that you’ve never spent more than an hour on one question, or an hour on one application? Just because it reads like you’re saying the former, which obviously with at least 2 questions in the application, is compatible with Constance’s 2 hours on the application overall as well. Or are you interpreting her as saying that she spent 2 hours on each question?
I don't think this assessment is true (see quote below), since Scott's entire post was about opening up EAG to anyone (it seems odd that he would be hyper critical about how much time she spent on an application if this is what he believes).
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
To clarify, my point has nothing to do with being critical of another person. I just think the take that ‘even someone who is so aligned with EA had their application rejected, so clearly there’s something broken in the admissions process’ probably assumes that person was aware that it even was a real application that they were filling out, not just a formality.
Hi Amy,
Thank you for the quick response in clarifying this. If I find out more from the person I got the anecdote from, I can let you know and perhaps it can be looked into more.
To clarify, I felt uneasy because I believed that attending an expensive event (which would cost myself over $3000 to attend coming from Canada) was hard to justify when I could donate that money instead. I had just read "Doing Good Better" and thought the idea that the CEA would spend money to host such an event, as well as even fund college students to attend, was counter to everything I had just read. It seemed obvious that, based on EA principles, the better idea would be to donate all of the money spent hosting that event. I believe, at minimum, this is an optics issue. As I said, I have since been somewhat convinced that EAG can be useful so people who may have never met, can share ideas and collaborate to "make the world a better place". I'm still not fully convinced of this though.
With that said, it makes almost no sense to me, if that was their goal, why someone like you would not have been accepted to attend. From what you said above, you embody everything that EA should represent (in my view)- your commitment to animal welfare and advocacy, and to maximizing your own wealth for the good, is commendable and should be celebrated.
When this post was first shared among the EA community I am part of, I assumed you were rejected as a speaker at EAG. To learn that you were rejected as a participant, is incredibly baffling, when I know first hand of someone being accepted after only learning about EA a month prior.
From the little I understand, they seem to accept attendees who are fit two categories (but I'm happy to get corrected on this if someone with more knowledge can clarify):
1) Young, ambitious college students
2) Mentors who can work with these college students
I can tell you are very busy Constance, but I would like to invite you to speak to the EA group I help run at the University of British Columbia (over zoom of course). Please let me know if you are interested and have the time.
Join us on GatherTown and you can meet Constance! :)
I can confirm she is a lot of fun to talk to.
If you can't this weekend I'll be sure to ask her myself if she can talk to UBC EAs and pass along her details to you.
Corn.
Edit: he has responded
I was in the same conversation. It was at an EAGx conference, not EAG. I've pinged the person who shared the anecdote. They'll respond here soon. Better to get it straight from the source. I don't think they mentioned the staff member enforced any norms - just that their prescence felt kind of odd given they are someone with the power to ban people from the conference (which I guess implicitly enforces norms). They also mentioned that this particular staff member was regardless a lovely person and mentioned how their prescence feeling odd or intimidating may have something to do with a cultural difference since the EAGx was held in Asia.
But let us wait for the anecdote source to respond directly lest we let this hearsay evidence train derail itself.
I'd also like to say as someone who has been to multiple EAGs and even volunteered, I've not experienced there being any intimidating norm-enforcer. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to think of even a single EAG staff member that wasn't incredibly approachable, kind, professional and compassionate. No matter where they were on the implicit status hierarchy - even if they were virtually EA-celebrities - nobody felt intimidating to me.
Hi Constance.
It's interesting that you say this:
I happen to know there is an internal justification for this opaqueness
Could you elaborate on what this internal justification is? (Blink twice if they made you sign an NDA and/or if they revoked your access to the relevant Google-doc).
I was the person at CEA who spoke with Constance. I don’t remember asking her to promise anything, and CEA certainly didn't suggest an NDA. (Though I was surprised to see my private correspondence with her published here, since we didn't discuss publishing it.)
I don’t think I gave Constance additional insights into the admissions process that aren’t already published fairly widely (see here and CEA comments here). I did give her specific feedback on her application and her fit for the event, and other advice about how to get more engaged with the community but I did not ask her to keep that between us. I agree that we could improve communications, and we are reflecting on that.
I agree that we could improve communications, and we are reflecting on that.
That's a good start. But the root of the issue was never communications. The root of the issue is that the CEA has a lot of power, concentrated in the hands of relatively few people, and lacks transparency.
So treating this like a "communications" issue is the wrong approach. Because, for one thing, it's a superficial fix, and does not get at the root of the issue.
And, second, it makes the CEA look bad. For instance, though this is anecdotal, I've already heard people in my university EA group make passing comments about how the CEA's response to this post is reminiscent of a corporation dealing with a PR controversy. So I worry doubling down on improving "communications" will only make these sorts of perceptions more prevalent.
I’m curious if you (or Constance) have any theories about why there’s this differing perception of the conversation. One guess is that perhaps Constance wasn’t (and still isn’t) aware that this information is publicly available?
I’m not sure. She linked to both sources her post, so I don’t think the issue is that she doesn’t know about them.
I did give her quite a bit of feedback on her application and things she might include/ways she might get involved in the future, which would have given her some additional insight into how we think about the process. That might be what she means.
I have the hypothesis that the two of you are just different types of people personality-wise with different communication styles that led to a far larger inferential distance between the two of you than either of you could have anticipated. Possibly also since each of you saw the other as "a fellow EA" this made it even easier for both of you to underestimate how large the inferential distance could be between the two of you.
My understanding is you and Constance only talked for an hour. That doesn't sound like that long and if anything sounds like the perfect amount of time for both parties to come away confidently and incorrectly believing that the object level information had been properly transmitted and understood.
OP links to insider insight in the "Personal Hypotheses for Rejection" section of the post.
The link doesn't seem to be working.
You are right. The bookmark to the relevant section in the Google Doc appears to have been removed. Unsure why.
All I know is that Constance got some insider insight from someone at the CEA and promised she wouldn't share it.
Nice. Nothing like some good ol' fashioned government house utilitarianism to restore your faith in EA.
Though I don't know what the insight was, nor do I know the justification for not revealing it, and even though I currently believe more transparency in the admissions process is probably a good idea given how confused even long-time EAs are - despite all this, I strongly doubt there is anything insidious going on.
And because I had a hard time finding what "government house utilitarianism" meant without being blocked by the paywall of a scholarly article here is probably the most important part found on Henry Sidgewick's wikipedia article:
Sidgwick is closely, and controversially, associated with esoteric morality: the position that a moral system (such as utilitarianism) may be acceptable, but that it is not acceptable for that moral system to be widely taught or accepted.[17]
Bernard Williams would refer to Sidgwickian esoteric utilitarianism as "Government House Utilitarianism" and claim that it reflects the elite British colonialist setting of Sidgwick's thought.
I strongly doubt there is anything insidious going on.
That's not the issue. The issue is not what the organizers of EAG are doing in secret, but that they are doing stuff in secret.
I had a hard time finding what "government house utilitarianism"
The idea behind government house utilitarianism is that there is stuff that is morally acceptable to do in private that is not morally acceptable to do in public. Because if it was done in public, people would know about it, and that would lead to bad consequences. (See here).
(Currently reading the post and noticing that many of the links go to the top of the same google doc. I assume this isn’t supposed to be the case. This could be because I’m on mobile, but also could be an error with the links.)
(Also congrats on your first forum post! Go you :) )
Thank you! And yeah I noticed one link was broken and fixed that. Otherwise I think I agree with Rebecca that it is probably just a mobile issue unfortunately.
Hi Constance, I'm Jeff, you might've seen me at a couple of EA NYC events. I'm also from NJ and go to Rutgers-Newark, not the New Brunswick campus (sadly due to financial reasons) that has EA faculty.
I wanted to go to the EA NYC population ethics event because I love talks on ethics, but I had deadline(s) for work and/or school that day or weekend. I wish I could've met you that day!
I share a similar sense of alienation from the EA community at times and am often annoyed by the elitism in the EA community If you ever want to talk, feel free to DM me.
Hi Jeff! I am just seeing your comment now and am glad we were able to meet the other day during the EA NYC dinner. I’ll send you a pm and we can talk a little bit more in depth about your experience and what could be done to overcome it.
Now I desperately want to know: Are EA jobs as selective as EAG?
If EA(G) rejects a doctor who tries really really hard to attend (and pay for) a conference, I wonder whether the Rest-of-Us™ are wasting our time by applying for EA jobs/grants.
For now, I have updated towards believing that most EA opportunities (e.g., 80K job board postings) aren't accessible to me. Sad as that is, I now have some explanation for why I have been rejected for jobs that I'm plenty qualified for on paper. The competition must be substantially stiffer than I thought.[1] Good thing I didn't try to apply for start-up grants because those applications are a much larger time investment.[2]
Constance: Yesterday I dug myself a very deep hole of discouragement, and this post helped me climb out. Thank you!
Your question and concerns are really valid.
I think what is missing in this post and the comments is content about individual differences that are hard to observe and deeply private, that have been used to determine admission. Another issue is giving detail about admissions answers.
If this discussion was more candid and complete, these would reduce concerns like yours.
People are unwilling to provide the above, because they both strongly are counter to the narrative of the post (and the highly upvoted SA post) and involve a public criticism of a person.
Also, a more systemic explanation about admissions, would need to describe/imply the quality curve about the supply of candidates (which no one completely is sure of) and is bad optics/implies eliteness/makes everyone rejected feel bad.
Sincere scout mindset here: I'm trying hard to grok your comment, and I don't follow you. Would you mind clarifying a couple things?
Before that, let me restate my concerns. I worry that some folks don't realize what Constance's story might imply for the rest of EA.
First, for other EA's trying to get involved with other EA orgs, the degree of selectivity is unclear, and Constance's story may cause them (like I am doing now) to believe that other EA opportunities are roughly as selective as EAG, which may or may not be correct.
If EA(G) rejects a doctor who tries really really hard to attend (and pay for) a conference, I wonder whether the Rest-of-Us™ are wasting our time by applying for EA jobs/grants.
(Not just EAG: also EA jobs, EA grants, etc. Not just doctors: also engineers, managers, freelance editors, etc.)
Second, though admittedly somewhat off-topic, I do not think EA should be exclusive.
Now, my questions about your comment and some preliminary guesses and responses.
People are unwilling to provide [individual differences used to determine admission][1], because they both strongly are counter to the narrative of the post (and the highly upvoted SA post)[2] and involve a public criticism of a person.
You mean, as a way to clarify Constance's case? If so, I don't see that as the goal of the discussion, so maybe we agree about that part?
Constance is a rare exception of someone who tried really hard to understand why she got rejected and was willing to share heaps of private stuff. I admire her for that, and I agree we don't need more public criticism of her.
The way I see it, Constance's story is the tip of the iceberg, a symptom, if you will, of a bigger problem.[3] Most people are not bold enough to share these details online nor are motivated enough to aggressively pursue an explanation for their rejection. Therefore my comment isn't about whether she, specifically, should qualify for EAG.
If this discussion was more candid and complete, these would reduce concerns like yours.
Maybe, maybe not.
Yes, it would be nice to know why I have been rejected for EA jobs[4] for which I am qualified and deeply passionate. Yes, that might help others who have been rejected by other EA orgs. However, I'm not posting here to learn why I personally was excluded.
Rather, I'm worried that if EAG doesn't accept people like Constance, then the job pool might be similarly exclusive, and thousands of EA's like me are wasting our time applying for jobs. We've been hearing since at least 2015 that there's sufficient funding and a shortage of people with specific skills. When passionate EA's hear that; find job postings for which their skills are relevant; apply; and get rejected for unclear reasons, they're forced to reinterpret EA's message to them:
“We are so talent constraint… (20 applications later) … Yeah, when we said that we need people, we meant capable people. Not you. You suck.”
a more systemic explanation about admissions, would need to describe/imply the quality curve about the supply of candidates (which no one completely is sure of) and is bad optics/implies eliteness/makes everyone rejected feel bad
The optics, implied eliteness, and feelings of rejection are already quite bad. If you're referring to the perceptions of people who haven't YET been rejected, well, those are the people that I most worry about. They deserve reasonable expectations about their chances BEFORE they get their hopes up.
I hope that EA is more accessible than I now believe, and I do NOT believe that 80K and EAG are deliberately signalling more accessibility than actually exists.
I could be wrong about the whole exclusivity thing. In trying to be a scout, I opened my comment as a question: How selective are EA jobs?
Like many others have expressed, I want EA to be much more accessible. I hope I'm wrong about the current level of inaccessibility, but either way hopefully we can clear that up a bit.
I'm sad about the state of things, but please know that I deeply respect and value all of you. We're all just doing our best.
(because I couldn't figure out how to put this in a footnote.)
Here's what I got back from my last EA org rejection:
We’ve reviewed your submission and, unfortunately, won’t be moving forward with your application.
We received a number of very strong applications and are moving forward with a select few candidates to the next stage of the process.
At least the org before that permitted me an interview, though I have no idea why they passed me up either.
I don't hold this against either of them. Hiring is hard; I've been there.
I took a guess as to what "the above" refers to ↩︎
what narrative? that EA/EAG should be more accessible? Or, is this not particularly important to your point? ↩︎
Sorry @ConstanceLi, by "iceberg" and "symptom," I swear I don't mean to imply that you weigh thousands of tons, nor do I mean to put you in the same category as boogery noses and back acne. ↩︎
I couldn't figure out how to put this in a footnote: see post-script at the end for the rejection message I received ↩︎
In your grand parent comment, I interpreted what you said, as that you had beliefs/concerns about exclusivity and competitiveness, driven by the case of one individual.
I wrote suggesting that there were other considerations for this case, and this one case alone shouldn't produce these beliefs.
I think in your new comment you're saying this one individual case wouldn't affect your beliefs. Then, my original comment doesn't apply and I don't have anything useful to say.
That's an incorrect summary of my comments, which is NOT your fault, rather it's my fault for not finding a way to express myself clearly. I know you're just sharing your interpretation of my comments, which is helpful feedback for my writing. I want to correct the record on two things:
you're saying this one individual case wouldn't affect your beliefs.
To the contrary, I have updated my beliefs based on Constance's story, and I believe that others will do similarly, particularly absent an answer to the question about EA job selectivity. From my original comment:
If EA(G) rejects a doctor who tries really really hard to attend (and pay for) a conference, I wonder whether the Rest-of-Us™ are wasting our time by applying for EA jobs/grants... For now, I have updated towards believing that most EA opportunities (e.g., 80K job board postings) aren't accessible to me.
From my second comment:
The way I see it, Constance's story is the tip of the iceberg, a symptom, if you will, of a bigger problem... I'm worried that if EAG doesn't accept people like Constance, then the job pool might be similarly exclusive, and thousands of EA's like me are wasting our time applying for jobs.
you had beliefs/concerns about exclusivity and competitiveness, driven by the case of one individual
I agree that as a general rule one shouldn't update drastically on the basis of a single anecdote. However, the issue of EA exclusivity is not new, so my original point still stands whether or not I was aware of the other data points. Still, FWIW, I did mention more evidence in that original comment:
I now have some explanation for why I have been rejected for jobs that I'm plenty qualified for on paper. The competition must be substantially stiffer than I thought.
N00b question-- why do people have to apply to EAG etc? All of the academic and political conferences I've attended have let anyone attend (with the exception of people who pose a safety risk). What's the role of gatekeeping here?
I think that is discussed in https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dsCTSCbfHWxmAr2ZT/open-ea-global (perhaps more directly in the comments if only indirectly in the main post, I don't quite recall).
I think it's because the conferences are networking-focused and the organizers want the attendees to be likely to have productive meetings (like if you physically bump in to someone, CEA wants high odds that they can help you or you can help them).
(Please correct me if I am wrong.)
I assume the broad categories for rejection from EAG are that CEA doesn't think an individual will increase their personal impact, from having gone, more than someone else they could admit, and similarly won't have as much value as a mentor/good-person-to-run-in-to than someone else they could admit.
more than someone else they could admit
I think this part is wrong.
Eli Nathan has said the following:
We simply have a specific bar for admissions and everyone above that bar gets admitted (though previous comms have unfortunately mentioned or implied capacity limits). This is why the events have been getting larger as the community grows.
So it seems that they do not explicitly compare applicants with each other when making admissions decisions. [1]
Which, unrelatedly, is very confusing. My EAG SF 2020 rejection email said
Due to the large number of applicants, many dedicated community members doing valuable work may not be accepted to EAG this year.
The email also linked to this EA Forum post from December 2019, which says
We think an application process is the best way to allocate the limited spaces to the people who can best use them.
and
Why not make it larger?
The largest EA Global was about 1000 people in 2016, and we got feedback that it was too big and that it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. Our recent events have been between 500 - 650 people including speakers, volunteers, and staff.
Venues above that size tend to be significantly more expensive, or less suited to the event. We already subsidize tickets and provide financial aid to keep prices reasonable, so more attendees cost CEA more
I'm not sure if Eli Nathan's comment is implying that these statements I quoted were false at the time they were made, or if the CEA has changed its mind since EAG SF 2020 about whether to limit the number of attendees or not.
... okay, so I just read a few more of Eli Nathan's comments and I am now really confused. For instance, he's said the following (emphasis mine)
In setting the bar, desired conference size is not really a factor in our decision making, though perhaps it should be (and it possibly will be if the events get much larger) — we mostly just think about what type of applicants would be a good fit for the event. We seem to receive more feedback about the types of attendees that come (or don't come) rather than feedback about the raw size of the conference, and so we mostly action on the former. If we started receiving lots of "this conference felt too big" feedback, then yes we would possibly action on that, but that hasn't really happened yet and I don't expect it to in the near future.
This appears to directly contradict the December 2019 EA Forum post I linked to.
Thanks!
I agree with Kevin. The main goal of EAG is reportedly to "make the world a better place" and they have processes in place to filter out people that they don't think will add to that goal. Other conferences like the academic and political conferences you mentioned may be trying to optimize for other metrics like more exposure, inclusiveness, profit, diversity, etc.
I do believe CEA should be more transparent with these processes and try harder to measure the harm that can result from a high rejection rate conference that people's identitites are closely tied to.
I don’t think it’s true that they are trying to filter out people they don’t think will make the world a better place. It’s definitely the case that the same person can be rejected or accepted at different stages, so my impression is that the criteria are more about ‘can attending this conference with the goals they’ve outlined, at this time, significantly help this person, and the others attending, increase their impact?’
So e.g. I was accepted to EAG SF 2019 when I was in the process of deciding on a thesis topic, but rejected from EAGx Singapore 2022, most likely for not having enough relevance to Asia (I live in Australia). I felt sad that I couldn’t go, but I think it’s clear that it’s not got anything to do with a judgement of my likelihood of impact as a person.
Yes that is a good caveat to include. It is deinitely easy to conflate effectiveness of a person vs effectiveness of a person at a given point in time. I think that would be an important point to emphasize in rejection emails.
Such an unreal amount of work just to go to some event! I'm glad you are sticking to your cause area of helping animals. Worst case, we animal advocates can learn from EA how to do effective work and take it into our realm. You story and sacrifice is inspiring, and I'm glad I randomly ran into you at ALC this year!
Hi Constance,
I’m glad that you did end up being able to attend EAG Boston 2024, because it was lovely to have a chance to meet you!
I just want to say that I think the rejection decisions really didn’t make sense to me. After meeting you, I really felt that you were someone I looked up to as a person who follows EA principles, and I really felt like you were an important part of the EA/Animal Advocacy communities. The decision to reject you 3 times, especially after you put so much effort into the applications, took feedback, and mentioned the projects and connections you had, is just downright puzzling to me. Especially since it wasn’t actually due to capacity!
I’m upset both on your behalf that you had to go through this and on the behalf of others who may have faced similar circumstances. This sort of mismanagement and obfuscation is what I would expect from a corporate HR department, not an EA organization. Do better, EA Global.
esp depressing given the ridiculous overrepresentation of white guys at the event who don't have 1/10th the cred/commitment you do
I initially wanted to comment about diversity, but opted not to because it would distract from the overall message of the post.
Seeing the -10 downvotes and -7 agreement just shows how the vast majority of people at EA Conferences are Caucasians from elite, wealthy families, schools, or backgrounds.
I didn't take a vote on Jordan's comment because I feel Constance's post is more about her strong merits and qualifications and not her ethnicity.
Seeing the -10 downvotes and -7 agreement just shows how the vast majority of people at EA Conferences are Caucasians from elite, wealthy families, schools, or backgrounds.
I think the reasoning here is suspect. If I see a lot of agreement upvotes on a comment that says "the vast majority of people at EA Conferences are Caucasians[etc]" I will, under most circumstances, update towards believing that there are more Caucasians[etc] at EA conferences, not less. Presumably you share this belief. However, you then say that seeing downvotes and disagreement is evidence that people in EA conferences are Caucasian[etc]. I think this reasoning is unsound.
FWIW I disagreed with Jordan's comment, and I am not Caucasian. I also do not think of myself as coming from "elite, wealthy families, schools, or backgrounds" by Western standards, though of course this is all relative.
Upvote. My messaging was erroneous. I meant to say that the fact I mentioned the majority demographic possibly made people uncomfortable and then led them to downvote.
Ofc, the downvotes are also because of how my comment came off as aggressive. I appreciate the constructive response though, Linch.
Hi. Thanks for the constructive engagement! In my case I downvoted because of the combination of coming across aggressive and me thinking that this was not an accurate identification of the problem plus being worried it'd promote certain bad discussion norms that are increasingly common in the left-leaning parts of the internet.
I appreciate the constructive engagement and the apology. Thanks.
Yeah I really appreciate you trying to prevent the bad discussion norms and keep good-faith conversations.
I’m left social liberal and very progressive but I often feel aggressive attitudes and whining (which I did) doesn’t solve racial disparities and inequality and often misses the problems. And these are attitudes that I feel are too common among white, rich, liberals. (This isn’t me trying to talk bad about white, rich, liberals or say they all do this. It’s just trends I’ve noticed since joining EA a bit over a year ago.)
Without opining on the actual discussion: I don't think the logic here is sound. The fact that many agreement votes to this can mean one thing, doesn't mean many disagreement votes aren't indicative of a similar thing. You could imagine casual paths leading to each of those outcomes.
Seeing how my comment above has 10 downvotes in karma and 10 downvotes in agreement feels like another example of how the group I mentioned is overrepresented when compared to the general population and how uncomfortable said group is about the truth.
The EA community cannot deny how EAG disproportionately has people from wealthy households and elite academic institutions. This fact shouldn't be controversial, though I admit I could've phrased it in a nicer way.
I wonder how my comment would've faired if I just commented my second part.
While I didn't downvote, I think your interpretation of the reasoning of the downvotes comes across as uncharitable, like they'd be thinking "Hey, my parents are wealthy and Caucasian, and I think it's great that a majority of attendees here have the same background as me". Or later you write as if the downvotes were meant to help with denying the fact of overrepresentation. In reality, I think all EAs I know would all else equal prefer if the broader movement had more diverse backgrounds. And there are people who work on reaching out to people who don't hear about EA through the existing outreach channels, or to people who would become involved with more refined communication and support, e.g. Magnify Mentoring, or translators.
And Jordan's initial comment doesn't contribute so much, imo:
Fair point. Upvote in karma. My comment wasn’t meant to insinuate that the EAs who downvoted would want EA to continue to be a white majority, but that the down votes could demonstrate how they disliked the truth of disparities my comment was stating and how it might’ve made them uncomfortable.
I think the Magnifying Mentor is a great program and am very pleased to have just found out it exists. But it’s meant for women, non-binary, and transgender people. Not people of color. My comments weren’t about gender or sex, although those are disparities that we should aim to lessen.
I did notice a woman at EAG tell her friend of the “20:3” ratio at a workshop. It was also this comment that made me realize how I was the only Hispanic in all the EAG events I attended until my second to last event on Sunday. In fact, Jordan’s reminder of the discrepancy in race and ethnicity was what caused me to make my comments. This is not me putting the blame on him or her. I have bad experiences with Caucasian EAs comments and “solutions” to racial and ethnic disparities and race relation issues.
I apologize for my snarky reaction and miscommunication and will keep it on the thread as a reminder to myself and others as not how to respond.
I appreciate the constructive criticism, Max.
Maybe there’s some backwards reasoning going on of philosophy grads and STEM majors defining priorities around their skill sets…
“the gender ratio of EA is iirc around 70/30. Quick googling tells me that this is the same ratio as in Philosophy graduates and STEM workers, backgrounds that are fairly naturally overrepresented in EA due to the nature of the EA project and the careers the movement is focussing on most strongly. So I wouldn't agree that it's ridiculous.”
Yeah, that's a fair worry and would be worth looking out for, though I spontaneously don't feel like it's among the most significant sources of the skew.
Some evidence that influential EAs have broader and less obviously biased views on what skills are most urgently needed is the career aptitudes advice from Holden Karnovsky, where he encourages EAs to significantly skill up in e.g. communication, politics, founding and running orgs, and community building.
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.
This of course is correct as a default policy. But if Constance explicitly said she wants to have this conversation more publicly, would you comment publicly? Or could you comment in a private message to her, and endorse her sharing the message if she chose to?
(Good luck with EAG DC in the meantime.)
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.
Hi Amy, I think it's hard to justify a policy of never discussing someone's application publicly even when they agree to it and it's in the public interest. This is completely different from protecting people's privacy.
This seems to me to be a recurring theme regarding CEA procedures. I encountered a very similar approach from another CEA staff member regarding a completely different, high profile topic that was discussed on the forum. (This was in a private message, so I won't share it at the moment).
And it's a valid thing to worry about - but it also means trading away accountability. If CEA can't be transparent, how can community members evaluate its impact or feel comfortable relying on support/funding/events that CEA makes available? In this tradeoff, it personally seems to me that CEA is way too far on the opaque side.
If you read Amy's reply carefully, it sounds like she told Constance some of the reasons for rejection in private and then Constance didn't summarize those reasons (accurately, or at all?) in her post. If so, it's understandable why Amy isn't sure whether Constance would be okay having them shared (because if she was okay, she'd have already shared them?). See this part of Amy's reply:
FWIW, based on everything Constance writes, I think she seems like a good fit for EAG to me and, more importantly, can be extremely proud of her altruism and accomplishments (and doesn't need validation from other EAs for that).
I'm just saying that on the particular topic of sharing reasons for the initial rejections, it seems like Amy gave an argument that's more specific than "we never discuss reasons, ever, not even when the person herself is okay with public discussion." And you seem to have missed that in your reply or assumed an uncharitable interpretation.
Amy's comment was in response to Zach asking:
And I was refering to that hypothetical.
Strong agree with all of this. 'Gaming the system' feels like weaksauce - it's not like there's an algorithm evaluators have to agree to in advance, so if CEA feel someone's responded to the letter but not spirit of their feedback, they can just reject and say that in the rejection.
I strongly disagree, [edit: deleted a sentence]. Happy to talk about this via DM, will send you a DM with my thoughts.
edit: DM sent
Please do, I'd be interested to hear your take :)
Hi Amy,
I'm still trying to figure out how to best use the comments on this forum, but I did make a reply with a clarification on what you said about me not being interested in EAGx. I just want to comment it again here to make sure that it is seen.
"I also want to mention that I am actually open to going to EAx conferences and was just talking to Dion today about my desire to go to EAxSingapore next year. I think I might have said I wasn't able to go to EAGxVirtual because it is the same weekend as the AVA Summit, which I am a speaker for. It might also have been that I didn't have a desire to travel so far for a conference at that time and all the EAx conferences that were listed on the events page would have required me to fly since I'm in the US on the east coast. EAxBoston had already passed at that point so the only conference left on the list that would have been readily accessible to me in terms of location was EAG DC. This might have been construed as a lack of interest in attending EAx events in general, but I assure you this is not the case. I do not have an exact memory of what was said, but hopefully, this provides some clarity."
Understandably not comfortable sharing why Constance was rejected yet seemingly not at all uncomfortable with calling her a liar anyway.
Hi Amy,
I appreciate you taking the time to comment. I know you must be really busy with running EAG DC AND taking care of your child. I think it is fair to say from our conversation, I came to understand that there is a distinct reason that could be pointed to for my rejection from EAG. However, I lack the institutional trust to believe this is the only reason or that it is a good reason to support the goal of EAG "to make the world a better place." I have updated my closing thoughts to reflect this better.
I also want to mention that I am actually open to going to EAx conferences and was just talking to Dion today about my desire to go to EAxSingapore next year. I think I might have said I wasn't able to go to EAGxVirtual because it is the same weekend as the AVA Summit, which I am a speaker for. It might also have been that I didn't have a desire to travel so far for a conference at that time and all the EAx conferences that were listed on the events page would have required me to fly since I'm in the US on the east coast. EAxBoston had already passed at that point so the only conference left on the list that would have been readily accessible to me in terms of location was EAG DC. This might have been construed as a lack of interest in attending EAx events in general, but I assure you this is not the case. I do not have an exact memory of what was said, but hopefully, this provides some clarity.
I hope the event goes smoothly and I would be happy to give my input on any discussion around structural changes for the process going for future events!
What was this distinct reason? If this was mentioned in the post, I didn't see it.
If it wasn't mentioned in the post, it feels disingenuous of you to not mention it and give the impression that you were left in the dark and had to come up with your own list of hypotheses. It's quite difficult for a third party to come to any conclusions without this piece of information.
This comment feels unnecessarily combative, even though I agree with the practical point that without this piece of information, 3rd party observers can’t really get an accurate picture of the situation. So I agreed with but downvoted the comment.
I've edited it slightly to work on this, though it is not easy to make this point without appearing slightly callous, I think.