Ideas for Future Effective Altruism Conferences: Open Thread

Hi Kerry! Congratulations again for the exceptional conference, and thanks for adding detail.

Updates I've made:

• while in my tiny sample of 13 the emails with 'from' names like 'Kit Surname via EAG' worked out badly, it looks like you produced the most reasonable emails of that form possible without the benefit of hindsight. In answer to your question, I call this dishonest primarily because it gives the appearance of endorsement of content which I do not endorse. I would still not do this.

• the deadlines at first appeared to be mainly to generate haste, but some or all had operational function. My blanket terming 'fake deadlines' was therefore wrong.

• aside from 'we trust Kit's judgement', I see that most/all other statements made in the campaign were true in a technical sense. However, I maintain that this is insufficient. 'I was looking through our attendee database' is a great example, precisely because the whole message implies specificity to the recipient, while it appears that the looking could have been replaced by a single filter for people who hadn't bought tickets. Likewise for 'ideal participant'. At the very least, I'd bin these along with the "you're a cool person, come to EA" emails Michael mentioned.

Additional arguments against my position:

• if CEA has standards substantially above average for its reference class, people might still not trust EAs to the extent I would like

• maybe we don't particularly need highly involved EAs to trust each other more, and this kind of marketing won't materially affect what less involved people think.

I had also suspected that my concerns put me in a niche group which holds a small proportion of total relevance. I have updated away from this suspicion because the ratio of people who at the present time register a desire for greater honesty (17-27, probably nearer 17) to those who register no concern (3-5) is much higher than I had anticipated, and I suspect that forum participants are a highly relevant class for cooperation considerations.

To the other 16+ of those 17+ people: if my views are not representative of yours, it could be valuable for you to say so.

Really appreciate the response here, Kerry. Adding some extra feedback for calibration. Apologies in advance that I'm realizing I'm struggling to balance the strength of my opinion with my knowledge that this was well-intended. Just to be clear, my views only here, not my employer's.

I didn't end up nominating anybody because I'd rather reach out to people myself. The "via EAG" thing makes me really relieved that I made this choice and will prevent me from nominating people in the future. I'm actually a bit surprised at the strength of my reaction but this would've felt like a major violation to me. I really dislike the idea of feeling accountable for words that I didn't endorse. Just for example, I could plausibly have invited work contacts who I'm not super close with and whom I would be very sensitive to being perceived as spamming.

After your explanation the practice still does seem (very) deceptive to me. At the very least, I'd expect a lot of people to click on the email because they think it's coming from me and then to realize that it came from someone else. If I received this email, I'm sure I'd eventually figure out it wasn't from the person in the "from" line but I'd be confused for a bit and might assume that they approved it even if they didn't write it.

Moreover, if I wanted to not only nominate someone but also send them an email advising them to attend, I could easily do so. Some people may even have done that so their nominees would have felt like they received multiple unsolicited pings from the same person. I know it would have a lower yield but I feel like EAG should have emailed [Firstname at Lastname] and asked them to ping their nominee instead of spoofing their identity in the "from" line and taking this decision out of their hands.

I'd acknowledge that most of the other practices on this thread seem like basically standard marketing techniques. They seem off-putting according to my personal taste and I'd guess they're counter-productive but because they're so standard it also seems likely that I'm just being biased against them because I find marketing distasteful. I want to make clear that I'd put the "via EAG" thing in another category - substantially worse than I'd expect from a typical sales email.

Lower priority stuff:

Deadlines I don't have a problem with rolling deadlines if it's clear that's what they are. I didn't pay a ton of attention to this so I don't have a strong take. It did seem like discounts went up as it got closer to the actual date and I think that did feel a bit like taking advantage of the people who helped out by signing up early.

Looking through the attendee database This language feels off-putting and slightly deceptive to me. As Kit says, it's intended to make it sound like you were thinking of that specific person when it wasn't the case. Unlike the "via EAG," I think this practice is basically standard but I still really dislike it. Kit's comment that "my vanity fooled me for a solid few seconds, by the way!" strikes me as a really good reason to discontinue this practice. I think it's a bad experience and kind of embarrassing to feel like you're getting a personal compliment and then realize it's a form email.

I feel similarly about some other language Kit mentioned.

[Edited for some corrections and conciseness.]

I was unfortunately unable to go to EAG this year due to work commitments. By all accounts I missed out - additionally, I had less exposure to the EAG marketing than others - I mostly ignored the promotional material as I knew I was unavailable.

I confess I find these practices pretty shady, and I am unpleasantly surprised that EAG made what I view to be a fairly large error of judgement on appropriate marketing tactics. (I am pleasantly unsurprised in the straightforward and open manner with which this criticism has been received). On the issues raised by Kit above.

If I recommended (e.g.) Kit to EAG and he doesn't reply a couple of times, he gets an email 'from Greg via EAG', despite: 1) I'm not sending it, 2) none of the content is written by me, 3) I'm not asked whether I consent to this message being sent 'on my behalf', and 4) I'm not told it happens unless the recipient gets back to me.

Although uncharitable, this looks like ventriloquism or arrogation - and such an impression may well occur in cases where do not read the body of the message. Perhaps the most accurate account is: 'Greg's social tie with Kit is leveraged (without Greg's knowledge and consent) in a misleading subject line to get Kit to click on the last ditch sales pitch', which I think should be avoided.

Especially given in this case Kit is receiving emails he did not solicit on Greg's say so. I might think Kit might value knowing about the opportunity, but I might also have a sufficiently high view of his powers of judgement that he can decide after the first email whether he's interested or not. When he gets a third such email, ostensibly with my approbation and/or involvement, he might start feeling irritation towards me. If I really want Kit to attend EAG so much I'd send him multiple emails, I can send these myself; if instead I think the costs of 'pushing it' to whatever social tie we have outweigh the increased likelihood of another email prodding him to EAG, I definitely do not want it being done ostensibly 'on my behalf' without asking - and especially without telling - me. (The same concerns apply to my implicit endorsement of whatever this email actually says).

[This paragraph is mistaken, and remains just so people can follow the thread of discussion] The worry with 'rolling deadlines' is if the deadline isn't really a deadline for those in the earlier waves. The threat of missing out is scares them to commit early to help you, but after the 'sham deadline' passes, the mask drops, and you are happy for them to confirm etc. Although often just akrasia or poor organisation, people may have good reason for waiting if they are weighing up other ways to spend their time, and there's an (admittedly remote) risk getting them to commit to tickets earlier than they need to deprives them of other opportunities. I confess I'm still not entirely clear what the rolling deadlines entailed, so please disregard if it is inapposite to what EAG's deadlines represented.

I think the 'looking through the attendee database' also sails too close to the wind. I think the impression that evokes is something like, "I was checking our list of attendees, and I suddenly realised you hadn't got a ticket (!) Given your high status and reputation, I realised your non-attendance would be a great shame, so I thought I'd take the trouble to reach our personally". What actually happened, I assume, is the list of non-ticket buying attendees are pulled via a query on 1-2 Booleans from the database, a stock email is constructed, and a mail merge is performed.

These less than wholly candid approaches weren't necessary: one could have sent a final reminder without anyone's name - if one thought social proof was really key, one could have asked the nominators if they were happy for this email to be sent, or prodded the nominators to reach out to the nominees, module suggestions or even an email template. One could genuinely pre-commit to treating early deadlines as deadlines and making this clear, or simply urge people to sign up earlier to help the logistics. "Our records show" or similar is strictly more accurate than "I was looking through our database".

I agree there is likely a trade off between candour and efficacy: the alternatives are probably less persuasive, entail more overhead, or both. I think this should be unsurprising on reflection - to whatever degree marketing is subterfuge, or trying to encourage as much 'buying' as possible, good marketing strategies can be hindered by frank honesty of the objective merits. Yet I aver one should take candour as all-but-lexically prior to efficacy concerns, as this is much consonant with EA norms (whatever exactly they are).

It is a common refrain to object to overblown empirical claims about (e.g.) how many lives you can save for a dollar, and to insist it is important to see how the world really works to understand how to best improve it. I think the sample principles should apply to our interactions with one another: groups shouldn't 'oversell' their impact, and we should not mislead other EAs into our own designs. We should counter-signal many marketing gimmicks in the same way we (try to) countersignal shoddy empirical work.

There is both a commons problem and an increasingly common problem. The costs of increasing marketing and other behaviours (one of the other commonly remarked upon is how frequently EAG posts were shared to all EA related fb groups) are external to the group itself, who are likely much more sensitive to their own efficacy. They will have a skewed impression of the true exchange between these goods: I got the impression - correct me if I'm wrong - that EAG was at times struggling to secure the anticipated attendance, and in such situations high-handed and often unobserved restraint are unappealing. There have also been deeply regrettable behaviours of a particular EA org which will likely be described on this forum soon. Although I stress these are far, far more egregious, they are not a million miles away from stuff mentioned by Kit above.

Relying on all officers for EA orgs to have the resilience of Penelope refuting endless suitors in fealty to the ideal of extremely honest communication is perhaps utopian. Inculcating a general norm across the community to view this stuff poorly may work better. I'd suggest that marketing techniques mentioned by Kit are not used in future by anyone (plus maybe other behaviours - Kit mentioned these were 'highlights'). I would also recommend caution and circumspection before adopting anything that even treads into the penumbra of the duplicitous - Caesar's wife principles would be good to internalize. I hope to encourage the wider EA ecosystem to uphold an ethos along these lines, and robustly challenge mistakes - as, happily, Kit exemplified above.

Hey HowieL and Kit,

I find it difficult to think about this issue in a principled way. Not using standard marketing tactics is not costless. We used the language we used because it was the most effective. Using different language would have caused a decrease in EAG attendees and a decrease in the total value of the conference.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that some kinds of off-putting language are more effective at getting people to attend. How would you model the tradeoff between generating extra value at EA Global on the one hand and the harm of off-putting language on the other?

Suppose the off-putting but more effective language causes an additional 100 people to attend EA Global. Suppose also that in expectation a marginal EAG attendee is worth $4,200 in donations to effective charities. Would you be willing to use off-putting but more effective language if it generated $420,000 in donations to effective charities? If not, is there a different number where you'd be willing to switch?

This discussion is really valuable by the way and I appreciate the time you've both put into it.