I was also at this event and can confirm everything Ryan said! I had a very similar experience and was a little astonished by how with it the attendees were. The event was under Chatham house rulesbut I will note that the ’we’ve all read LessWrong” speaker is very much a DC native not some random EA person who just happened to be there.
I will also recommend in their workshops or applying for their fellowship (closes Aug 30th, begins Jan) if you have any interest in policy, it can be as short as a six month DC ‘tour of duty’ and I think there’s a lot of benefit in growing the SF/DC style connective tissue.
Otherwise my big takeaway was about the importance of trust and relationships. If you want to enact any sort of law, the message they gave us is that your experience/status/title all matter significantly less than whether the people who would write/vote on it trust you and like you and will let you work on it (or better, come ask you about it). That can come from your pedigree but it’s mostly about relationships. I think this is why DC cares so much about coffee chats and networking; credentials and artifacts are swapped for referrals and relationships as trusted filtering mechanisms.
I was also at this event and can confirm everything Ryan said! I had a very similar experience and was a little astonished by how with it the attendees were. The event was under Chatham house rules but I will note that the ’we’ve all read LessWrong” speaker is very much a DC native not some random EA person who just happened to be there.
I will also recommend in their workshops or applying for their fellowship (closes Aug 30th, begins Jan) if you have any interest in policy, it can be as short as a six month DC ‘tour of duty’ and I think there’s a lot of benefit in growing the SF/DC style connective tissue.
Otherwise my big takeaway was about the importance of trust and relationships. If you want to enact any sort of law, the message they gave us is that your experience/status/title all matter significantly less than whether the people who would write/vote on it trust you and like you and will let you work on it (or better, come ask you about it). That can come from your pedigree but it’s mostly about relationships. I think this is why DC cares so much about coffee chats and networking; credentials and artifacts are swapped for referrals and relationships as trusted filtering mechanisms.