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What are the workshops though? Admittedly if this was an org with a different mission it seems like something people would critique as inefficient overhead. But

What are the workshops though? Admittedly if this was an org with a different mission it seems like something people would critique as inefficient overhead. But because its EA its assumed to be efficient? I still prefer the EA mindset to most other mindsets on giving but dont have a lot of faith that this org has produced much value. I think a lot of wealthy people (like Bill Gates) have already been doing this type of giving for years so I'm not sure what they have really invented either.

eddsh1994 4y ago
I assume Introduction to EA Fellowships and their subsequent follow-up Fellowships will be the main ones. They do run AI Safety workshops in Cambridge so maybe they'll move those down there? There will be quite a few both directly related to EA and other topics that they're interested in.
- fasthands9 4y ago
  I guess my point is what efficacy do any of those programs have - especially the AI safety workshop? It seems extremely unproven to me and frankly I'm a bit cynical about it. Even if you do think that's very important, why not just have video lectures on it for the public?
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Video lectures for the public seem like they're trying to do a very different thing than a workshop? In general, the goal in a workshop is to get a group of people together to think about a problem and a collaborative way, while the goal of public lectures is to spread information.
    - fasthands9 4y ago
      That's fair enough. But I'm still having trouble seeing how this would pass the scrutiny of EA's philosophy on good charity other than for the fact its in house. Like there are already hundreds of universities with the abilities to do this or hose a workshop on it. And there's also no special reason to think that the assortment of people they will bring in will do good instead of talk in circles or come to the wrong conclusion. Like - it seems similar to the same thinking a large church does by bringing in religious leaders to talk about stuff?
      - eddsh1994 4y ago
        It's expensive in that part of the country. Say I rent a room at an Oxford college for a conference which is subsidized, I'd be looking at 70 or 80 a night. Say it's five nights, that's 350/400 just on accommodation. Have 30 people and that's 12k per week saved, against a non-depreciating asset in an area that is very unlikely to reduce in value. On top of this you can do what you want with the place and have permanent work spaces etc. Seems sensible to me, even if my first instinct was WTF.
        lazyasciiart 4y ago
        Why would you limit yourself to running events only in one of the most expensive places on earth? Do they not intend to have attendees from elsewhere?
        eddsh1994 4y ago
        CEA is based in Oxford, as is 80,000 hours, the Future of Humanities Institute, and many more orgs. In Cambridge you have similar organizations. At the same time there's transport links to Heathrow. All of this in a property that will appreciate in value due to Oxfordshires zoning laws and the general history of the place. If this was 15m sunk cost I'd agree it's crazy but owning a conference space that's cheaper than you'd find in the cities, close to a lot of the core orgs, and is a nice place that won't depreciate in value (and that was privately funded directly, this isn't using an aggregate of peoples infrastructure funds).
        mcculley 4y ago
        I agree overall with many points you make, but I am not convinced about the property’s immunity to depreciation. Certainly the land can be expected to appreciate in value, but what is the annual upkeep on a historic castle? A castle can easily depreciate, depending on circumstances and maintenance.
        cma 4y ago
        If the property will appreciate in value and they uniquely know about that then: rent out the property to someone else and make even more to spend on malaria bed nets, and have the conference in the cinderblock building or Nissen huts elsewhere. This is the center for effective altruism not center for building nerd Versailles.
  - throwaway1326 4y ago
    Probably the main goal is minting more EAs. If 10% of program participants are convinced to be EAs and 10% of EAs donate 10% of their income[1], every participant is worth 0.1% of the lifetime earnings of the average participant (probably a decently-paid software engineer) in expectation. [1]: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge
    - fasthands9 4y ago
      What's the main difference between when breast cancer awareness spends so much money on advertising to raise more money? In both cases it is true that spending on overhead raises total lifetime donations but ultimately it seems to increase the amount of productive hours spent doing administrative work that means nothing on its own.
      - throwaway1326 4y ago
        I wouldn't argue there's a difference except that "EA" taken as a whole probably has way less overhead than Susan G. Komen (for example). If (if!) a breast cancer charity running ads drastically increases the amount of money they get in donations, that's probably a good thing up until the point that the marginal benefit to breast cancer researchers of the charity running more ads outweighs the marginal benefit to breast cancer researchers of just getting the money. If $1 in ads consistently brought in $2 of donations, it'd seem like the right thing to do to run a ton of ads, even if we agree running ads about breast cancer or AI or malaria nets or tickets to the opera for inner city youth is not intrinsically valuable. I think I can speak for EAs when I say overhead is not the greatest metric by which to judge a charity[1]. I understand why it's an intuitive one, and overhead is probably correlated with measures of effectiveness, but if your targets are concrete enough you can just... actually measure effectiveness. [1]: https://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/01/the-worst-way-to-pick-a-charity/ https://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/01/the-worst-way-to-pick-a...
        Jweb_Guru 4y ago
        All of this sounds, to put it bluntly, like a lot of hemming and hawing to get around the fact that your favorite charity organization just spent $15 million on a castle.
- nradov 4y ago
  But all of that is a complete waste of time, so why bother?
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    Depends I guess! I took the intro course in Oxford and enjoyed it, it definitely influenced how I view charity.
    - fasthands9 4y ago
      To be cynical - how is this meaningfully different than someone running church programs and pointing out that people who attended the church programs state after it influenced how they view giving and charity?
bamboozled 4y ago
Pretty much all not for profits needs to attract and specifically, retain members, the workshops could be about introducing them to the program and the associated benefits with regards to donating.
- fasthands9 4y ago
  But how is that different from the other orgs they criticize? Isnt the end state of this that they realize they can spend $100 and expect to raise $150 from that investment - and this scales to an administrative staff of hundreds of people who spend millions a year advertising? Essentially Susan Komen but for malaria nets and AI research.

eddsh1994 4y ago

I assume Introduction to EA Fellowships and their subsequent follow-up Fellowships will be the main ones. They do run AI Safety workshops in Cambridge so maybe they'll move those down there? There will be quite a few both directly related to EA and other topics that they're interested in.

fasthands9 4y ago
I guess my point is what efficacy do any of those programs have - especially the AI safety workshop? It seems extremely unproven to me and frankly I'm a bit cynical about it. Even if you do think that's very important, why not just have video lectures on it for the public?
- jefftk 4y ago
  Video lectures for the public seem like they're trying to do a very different thing than a workshop? In general, the goal in a workshop is to get a group of people together to think about a problem and a collaborative way, while the goal of public lectures is to spread information.
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    That's fair enough. But I'm still having trouble seeing how this would pass the scrutiny of EA's philosophy on good charity other than for the fact its in house. Like there are already hundreds of universities with the abilities to do this or hose a workshop on it. And there's also no special reason to think that the assortment of people they will bring in will do good instead of talk in circles or come to the wrong conclusion. Like - it seems similar to the same thinking a large church does by bringing in religious leaders to talk about stuff?
    - eddsh1994 4y ago
      It's expensive in that part of the country. Say I rent a room at an Oxford college for a conference which is subsidized, I'd be looking at 70 or 80 a night. Say it's five nights, that's 350/400 just on accommodation. Have 30 people and that's 12k per week saved, against a non-depreciating asset in an area that is very unlikely to reduce in value. On top of this you can do what you want with the place and have permanent work spaces etc. Seems sensible to me, even if my first instinct was WTF.
      - lazyasciiart 4y ago
        Why would you limit yourself to running events only in one of the most expensive places on earth? Do they not intend to have attendees from elsewhere?
        eddsh1994 4y ago
        CEA is based in Oxford, as is 80,000 hours, the Future of Humanities Institute, and many more orgs. In Cambridge you have similar organizations. At the same time there's transport links to Heathrow. All of this in a property that will appreciate in value due to Oxfordshires zoning laws and the general history of the place. If this was 15m sunk cost I'd agree it's crazy but owning a conference space that's cheaper than you'd find in the cities, close to a lot of the core orgs, and is a nice place that won't depreciate in value (and that was privately funded directly, this isn't using an aggregate of peoples infrastructure funds).
        mcculley 4y ago
        I agree overall with many points you make, but I am not convinced about the property’s immunity to depreciation. Certainly the land can be expected to appreciate in value, but what is the annual upkeep on a historic castle? A castle can easily depreciate, depending on circumstances and maintenance.
        cma 4y ago
        If the property will appreciate in value and they uniquely know about that then: rent out the property to someone else and make even more to spend on malaria bed nets, and have the conference in the cinderblock building or Nissen huts elsewhere. This is the center for effective altruism not center for building nerd Versailles.
- throwaway1326 4y ago
  Probably the main goal is minting more EAs. If 10% of program participants are convinced to be EAs and 10% of EAs donate 10% of their income[1], every participant is worth 0.1% of the lifetime earnings of the average participant (probably a decently-paid software engineer) in expectation. [1]: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    What's the main difference between when breast cancer awareness spends so much money on advertising to raise more money? In both cases it is true that spending on overhead raises total lifetime donations but ultimately it seems to increase the amount of productive hours spent doing administrative work that means nothing on its own.
    - throwaway1326 4y ago
      I wouldn't argue there's a difference except that "EA" taken as a whole probably has way less overhead than Susan G. Komen (for example). If (if!) a breast cancer charity running ads drastically increases the amount of money they get in donations, that's probably a good thing up until the point that the marginal benefit to breast cancer researchers of the charity running more ads outweighs the marginal benefit to breast cancer researchers of just getting the money. If $1 in ads consistently brought in $2 of donations, it'd seem like the right thing to do to run a ton of ads, even if we agree running ads about breast cancer or AI or malaria nets or tickets to the opera for inner city youth is not intrinsically valuable. I think I can speak for EAs when I say overhead is not the greatest metric by which to judge a charity[1]. I understand why it's an intuitive one, and overhead is probably correlated with measures of effectiveness, but if your targets are concrete enough you can just... actually measure effectiveness. [1]: https://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/01/the-worst-way-to-pick-a-charity/ https://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/01/the-worst-way-to-pick-a...
      - Jweb_Guru 4y ago
        All of this sounds, to put it bluntly, like a lot of hemming and hawing to get around the fact that your favorite charity organization just spent $15 million on a castle.
nradov 4y ago
But all of that is a complete waste of time, so why bother?
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  Depends I guess! I took the intro course in Oxford and enjoyed it, it definitely influenced how I view charity.
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    To be cynical - how is this meaningfully different than someone running church programs and pointing out that people who attended the church programs state after it influenced how they view giving and charity?

bamboozled 4y ago

Pretty much all not for profits needs to attract and specifically, retain members, the workshops could be about introducing them to the program and the associated benefits with regards to donating.

fasthands9 4y ago
But how is that different from the other orgs they criticize? Isnt the end state of this that they realize they can spend $100 and expect to raise $150 from that investment - and this scales to an administrative staff of hundreds of people who spend millions a year advertising? Essentially Susan Komen but for malaria nets and AI research.