Why do you think that some of the “spirit” of 2016 was lacking?
How valuable do you think the camp was for EA/rationality given that many of those students had experienced prior exposure? Like do you think that many of those pre-exposured would have ended up being involved anyway?
[Once again, my own thoughts and not CFAR’s/ESPR’s]
1) I think that the simplest answer is that we took on more students from a wider variety of cultures this year. This meant that English was less of a dominant anchor, and everything else which relied on communicating well via English just didn’t come together as smoothly.
2) I think ESPR was potentially more beneficial for those previously involved in the EA/rationality space because it gave them an opportunity to think more about these issues / connect with other peers who also did the same. (This was one big thing for me in 2016.)
Of course, the above is hard to verify and I was probably biased towards people who were ideologically similar to me. So I’m actually quite unsure.
(Information that might change my mind would be if people who were quite removed from the EA/rationality ideas suddenly got super involved, which might indicate that it *would* be better for ESPR to take on more people who haven’t been pre-exposed. It’s not clear that this has happened so far, though.)
My impression is that most of the pre-exposed students we brought on this year would not have become more involved with the community. I think this because it seems like geographical location is a pretty large bottleneck for deeper involvement, and our students came from pockets of places that didn’t have strong existing communities.
(For context, I think one of the main reasons I personally was able to get more involved earlier on had to do with my being in the Bay Area.)
I was a participant this year with prior exposure, and I was already involved and would have kept being involved even if I hadn’t gone to ESPR. No idea whether this applies to other people. There is a pretty good community where I live, but I think I would have been involved even if that wasn’t the case. Couldn’t you run this on a survey, Owen, if the answer is important?
Edit: Actually, that depends on what you’re after. Independent of going to ESPR (and independent of a close community) I would have devoted a significant amount of resources (e.g. time and money) into EA. However, ESPR (and definitely my close community) might end up increasing my interaction with other EAs/rationalists.
Why do you think that some of the “spirit” of 2016 was lacking?
How valuable do you think the camp was for EA/rationality given that many of those students had experienced prior exposure? Like do you think that many of those pre-exposured would have ended up being involved anyway?
[Once again, my own thoughts and not CFAR’s/ESPR’s]
1) I think that the simplest answer is that we took on more students from a wider variety of cultures this year. This meant that English was less of a dominant anchor, and everything else which relied on communicating well via English just didn’t come together as smoothly.
2) I think ESPR was potentially more beneficial for those previously involved in the EA/rationality space because it gave them an opportunity to think more about these issues / connect with other peers who also did the same. (This was one big thing for me in 2016.)
Of course, the above is hard to verify and I was probably biased towards people who were ideologically similar to me. So I’m actually quite unsure.
(Information that might change my mind would be if people who were quite removed from the EA/rationality ideas suddenly got super involved, which might indicate that it *would* be better for ESPR to take on more people who haven’t been pre-exposed. It’s not clear that this has happened so far, though.)
My impression is that most of the pre-exposed students we brought on this year would not have become more involved with the community. I think this because it seems like geographical location is a pretty large bottleneck for deeper involvement, and our students came from pockets of places that didn’t have strong existing communities.
(For context, I think one of the main reasons I personally was able to get more involved earlier on had to do with my being in the Bay Area.)
I was a participant this year with prior exposure, and I was already involved and would have kept being involved even if I hadn’t gone to ESPR. No idea whether this applies to other people. There is a pretty good community where I live, but I think I would have been involved even if that wasn’t the case. Couldn’t you run this on a survey, Owen, if the answer is important?
Edit: Actually, that depends on what you’re after. Independent of going to ESPR (and independent of a close community) I would have devoted a significant amount of resources (e.g. time and money) into EA. However, ESPR (and definitely my close community) might end up increasing my interaction with other EAs/rationalists.