Running EA Oxford Socials: What Worked (and What Didn't)

After someone reached out to me about my experience running EA socials for the Oxford group, I shared my experience and was encouraged to share what I sent him more widely. As such, here's a brief summary of what I found from a few terms of hosting EA Oxford socials.

The Power of Consistency

Every week at the same time, we would host an event. I strongly recommend this, or having some kind of strong schedule, as it lets people form a routine around your events and can help create EA aligned friend-groups. Regardless of the event we were hosting, we had a solid 5ish person core who were there basically every week, which was very helpful. We tended to have 15 to 20 people per event, with fewer at the end of the term as people got busy with finishing tutorials.

Board Game Socials

Board game socials tended to work the best of the types of socials I tried. No real structure was necessary, just have a few strong EAs to set the tone, so it really feels like "EA boardgames," and then just let people play. Having the games acts as a natural conversation starter. Casual games especially are recommended, "Codenames" and "Coup" were favorites in particular at my socials but I can imagine many others working too. Deeper games have a place too, but they generally weren't primary. In the first two terms, we would just hold one of these every week. They felt like ways for people to just talk about EA stuff in a more casual environment than the discussion groups or fellowships.

"Lightning Talks"

We also pretty effectively did "Lightning Talks," basically EA powerpoint nights. As this was in Oxford, we could typically get at least one EA-aligned researcher or worker there every week we did it (which was every other week), and the rest of the time would be filled with community member presentations (typically between 5-10 minutes). These seemed to be best at re-engaging people who signed up once but had lost contact with EA, my guess is primarily because EA-inclined people tend to have joined partially because of that lecture-appreciating personality. In the third term, we ended up alternating weeks between the lightning talks and board game socials.

Other Formats

Other formats, including pub socials and one-off games (like the estimation game, or speed updating) seemed less effective, possibly just due to lower name recognition. Everyone knows what they're getting with board games, and they can figure out lightning talks, but getting too creative seemed to result in lower turnout.

Execution Above All

Probably more important than what event we did was doing what we did well. We found that having (vegan) pizza and drinks ready before the social, and arriving 20 minutes early to set things up, dramatically improved retention. People really like well-run events; it helps them relax and enjoy rather than wondering when the pizza will arrive, and I think that's especially true of student clubs where that organizational competence is never guaranteed.

I’ve been considering writing something similar for a while, so I’m really glad you posted this (I honestly lacked the courage to do it myself).
My own experience aligns with your altruism-first approach. I got involved with EA Oxford through that route, and when I took over organizing our socials (initially just out of willingness and due to my college’s booking policy), our primary organizer noted how surprisingly effective they were at engaging people.

I’d been planning to bring this social-first model back to my home university, but I’ve been hesitant to buck the conventional wisdom about what works for EA groups. Despite some current issues with my school’s activities council, I was defaulting to running an intro fellowship. Your post makes me reconsider - having evidence from different EA group models could be really valuable.

On pitching EA: I completely agree about reorienting our pitches. At this year’s activities fair, I essentially A/B tested different approaches. The most effective ones focused on “helping people do as much good as possible, whatever that ends up meaning to them,” then describing areas others have found effective through their own frameworks.

On “fellowships”: The term itself reinforces the exclusivity and hierarchy issues you mention. It positions itself as the path into EA, but I don’t think it’s particularly good at that role. We should be introducing ideas and encouraging exploration and sharing, not gatekeeping.

On philosophical grounding: EA often gets bogged down in philosophical prerequisites when our core appeal is simple: people want to do good effectively. We don’t need everyone to choose a philosophical framework first. The desire to save lives can come from virtue ethics, deontology, or just basic human compassion.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a food service worker at Mission Burrito last year. He was drawn to GiveDirectly as an alternative to what he saw as a corrupt charity world. His entry point was completely different from the typical EA pathway, and it made me realize how many people we might be missing by not meeting them where they are.

I agree that the timing is to some extent a coincidence, especially considering that the TIME piece followed an Anthropic board appointment which would have to have been months in the making, but I'm also fairly confident that your piece shaped at least part of the TIME article. As far as I can tell, you were the first person to bring up the concern that large shareholders, in particular potentially Amazon and Google, could end up overruling the LTBT and annulling it. The TIME piece quite directly addressed that concern, saying,

The Amazon and Google question

According to Anthropic’s incorporation documents, there is a caveat to the agreement governing the Long Term Benefit Trust. If a supermajority of shareholders votes to do so, they can rewrite the rules that govern the LTBT without the consent of its five members. This mechanism was designed as a “failsafe” to account for the possibility of the structure being flawed in unexpected ways, Anthropic says. But it also raises the specter that Google and Amazon could force a change to Anthropic’s corporate governance.

But according to Israel, this would be impossible. Amazon and Google, he says, do not own voting shares in Anthropic, meaning they cannot elect board members and their votes would not be counted in any supermajority required to rewrite the rules governing the LTBT. (Holders of Anthropic’s Series B stock, much of which was initially bought by the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, also do not have voting rights, Israel says.)  

To me, it would be surprising if this section was added without your post in mind. Again, your post is the only time prior to the publication of this article (AFAICT) that this concern was raised.

On May 27, 2024, Zach Stein-Perlman argued on here that Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT) might be toothless, pointing to unclear voting thresholds and the potential for large shareholder dominance, such as from Amazon and Google.

On May 30, 2024 TIME ran a deeply reported piece confirming key governance details, e.g., that a shareholder supermajority can rewrite LTBT rules but (per Anthropic’s GC) Amazon/Google don’t hold voting shares, speaking directly to the concerns raised three days earlier. It also specifically reviewed incorporation documents via permission granted by Anthropic and interviewed experts about them, confirming some details about when exactly the LTBT would gain control of board seats.

I don't claim that this is causal, but the addressing of the specific points raised by Stein-Perlman's post which weren't previously widely examined and the timeline of the two articles implies some degree of conversation between them to me. It points toward this being an example of how EA forum posts can shape discourse around AI safety. It also seems to encourage the idea that if you see addressable concerns for Anthropic in particular and AI safety companies in general, posting them here could be a way influencing the conversation.

We should slow AI down

I think anywhere between 9 (8?) and 15 is acceptable. To me, AI seems to have tremendous potential to alleviate suffering if used properly. At the same time, basically every sign you could possibly look at tells us we're dealing with something that's potentially immensely dangerous. If you buy into longtermist philosophy whatsoever, as I do, that means a certain duty to ensure safety. I kinda don't like going above 11, as it starts to feel authoritarian, which I have a very strong aversion to, but it seems non-deontologicaclly correct.

If you're in EA in California or Delaware and believe OpenAI has a significant chance of achieving AGI first and there being a takeoff, it's probably time-effective to write a letter to your AG encouraging them to pursue action against OpenAI. OpenAI's nonprofit structure isn't perfect, but it's infinitely better than a purely private company would be.

Absolutely agreed that factor 2 that I mentioned might be insubstantial, but I felt the need to mention it just in case it ended up being greater than I expected. My intuition on this issue is somewhat different than yours, and my guess is that the two largest factors (remittances and direct effects on Nigeria through less nurses) are going to roughly balance out, and that it's going to depend on the other issues which I placed under factor 4. 

You mention two of the indirect (factor 4) impacts I was thinking of, but there's definitely a lot of that kind of impact which is difficult to measure.

On its own terms as you discuss it, I absolutely agree that the original article is flawed. It's certainly the case that the issue nowhere near as straightforward as the paper's authors would have you believe. However, the question of the overall cost-benefit is also an important one, and also worth examining. I'm going to start working on a basic model, and I'll post here (and maybe in a separate post as well) once I've completed it to a level I'm content with. The overall issue at work here, of brain drain vs. remittances appears to me to be a very important issue in  global development, with this being an example where the costs of brain drain appears higher than usual. If the effect of remittances is powerful enough to outweigh brain drain even in this case, it could have broader impacts in terms of immigration as a net QALY increase. 

There already does appear to be some evidence towards an effect of "brain gain" where even medical immigration appears to improve net wellbeing through remittances, as seen in the example of the Philippines here, but it's a complex issue, and the medical situation in the Philippines is different from the situation in Nigeria.

This is a good point about the CGD paper I believe, though to some extent it's based on whether to look at overall flows rather than flows specifically to the UK. I think you make a strong case that it's best to look at overall flows, and show issues with the WHO per capita data. However, I don't think this gets anywhere near actually solving whether or not this can be a "win-win" for both countries. It is easily possible that nurse emigration, despite lowering the supply of nurses in Nigeria, can still be a win-win due to remittances. There is abundant evidence that remittances promote financial development and long-term economic growth. In order to determine whether or not this emmigration is a net benefit for both countries, one would have to take into account:

1. The benefit that the nurse gives in Nigeria.
2. The benefit the nurse gives in the UK.
3. The benefit to Nigeria from remittances the nurse sends back.
4. Any long-term effects that might come from having talented Nigerians leave for the 
   UK, and long-term effects a nurse shortage could have in Nigeria. 

To me, this seems like a complicated question that would take many hours of research to reach a  satisfactory conclusion to.

How do you square this with the experience of J.C. Penney, who, after eliminating sales and instead choosing to offer "everyday low prices", experienced a 20% drop in sales? It's certainly tempting to believe that discounts and other such unnecessary promotions don't work, but it seems that sales do to some extent stimulate, well, sales.

See https://hbr.org/2012/05/can-there-ever-be-a-fair-price.