This comment sounds qualitatively reasonable, but it needs a quantitative complement - it could have been made virtually verbatim had the cost been £1.5m or £150m. I would like to hear the case for why it was actually worth £15m.

Also, a lot of people are talking about 'optics', with the implication that the irrational public will misunderstand the +EV of such a decision. But 'bad optics' don't come from nowhere - they come from a very reasonable worry that over time, people who influence a lot of money have some risk of, if not becoming corrupt, at least getting carried away with that influence and rationalising away things like this. 

I think we should always take such possibilities seriously, not to imply anyone has actually done anything wildly irresponsible, but to insure against anyone doing so - and to keep grey areas as thin as possible. And I'm increasingly worried that CEA are seriously undertransparent in ways that suggest they don't think such risks could materialise - which increases my credence that they could. So while I could be convinced this was a reasonable use of funds, I think the decision not to 'hype' it builds a dangerous precedent. 

Can you say who funded the dedicated grant? 

Owen - this sounds totally reasonable to me. 

Max Planck Institutes had a dedicated conference center in the Alps (Schloss Ringberg) that is hugely inspirational, and that promotes intensive collaboration, brain-storming, and discussion very effectively.

Likewise for the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford -- the panoramic views over the San Francisco Bay, the ease of both formal and informal interaction, and the optimal degree of proximity to the main campus (near, but not too near), promote very good high-level thinking and exchange of ideas.

I've been to about 70 conferences in my academic career, and I'm noticed that the aesthetics, antiquity, and uniqueness of the venue can have a significant effect on the seriousness with which people take ideas and conversations, and the creativity of their thinking. And, of course, it's much easier to attract great talent and busy thinkers to attractive venues. Moreover, I suspect that meeting in a building constructed in 1480 might help promote long-termism and multi-century thinking.

It's hard to quantify the effects that an uplifting, distinctive, and beautiful venue can have on the quality and depth of intellectual and moral collaboration. But I think it's a real effect. And Wytham Abbey seems, IMHO, to be an excellent choice to capitalize on that effect.

First of all - I'm really glad you wrote this comment. This is exactly the kind of transparency I want to see from EA orgs.

On the other hand, I want to push back against your now last paragraph (on why you didn't write about this before). I strongly think that it's wrong to wait for criticism before you explain big and important decisions (like spending 15 million pounds on a castle). The fact that criticism arose here is basically random, and is a result of outside critics looking in. In a better state of affairs, you want the EA community to know about the things they need to look at and maybe criticise. Otherwise there's a big chance they'll miss things.

In other words, I think it's very important that major EA orgs proactively share the information and reasoning about big decisions.

Can we all just agree that if you’re gonna make some funding decision with horrendous optics, you should be expected to justify the decision with actual numbers and plans?

Would be nice if we actually knew how many conferences/retreats were going to be held at the EA castle.

It might be justifiable (I got a tremendous amount of value being in Berkeley and London offices for 2 month stints), but now we’re here talking about it, and it obviously looks bad to anyone skeptical about EA. Some will take it badly regardless, but come on. Even if other movements/institutions way overspend on bad stuff, let’s not use that as an excuse in EA.

The “EA will justify any purchase for the good of humanity” argument will just continue to pop up. I know many EAs who are aware of this and constantly concerned about overspending and rationalizing a purchase. As much as critics act like this is never a consideration and EAs are just naively self-rationalizing any purchase, it’s certainly not the case for most EAs I’ve met. It’s just that an EA castle with very little communication is easy ammo for critics when it comes to rationalizing purchases.

One failed/bad project is mostly bad for the people involved, but reputational risk is bad for the entire movement. We should not take this lightly.

Thanks for sharing your detailed thought process Owen, and I definitely appreciate the penultimate paragraph. 

In general I would agree that it's better to do what is good rather than what looks good. However, when you are the face of a global movement, optics have a meaningful financial implication. Imagine if this bad press made 1 billionaire 0.1% less likely to get involved with EA. That calculation would dominate any potential efficiency savings from insourcing a service provider.

I did feel a little nervous about the optical effects, but think it’s better to let decisions be guided less by what we think looks good, and more by what we think is good — ultimately this was a decision I felt happy to defend.

While I understand this sentiment, optics can sometimes matter much more than you may at first expect. In this specific case, the kneejerk response of many people on social media of this seeming  incongruity (a seemingly extravagant purchase by a main EA org) can potentially cement negative sentiment. By itself, maybe it's not that bad. But in combination with the other previous bad press we have from the FTX debacle, people will get in their heads that "EA = BAD". I'm literally seeing major philosophers who might otherwise be receptive to EA being completely turned off because of tweets about Wytham Abbey.

This isn't to say that the purchase shouldn't have been made. But you specifically said that you think the general rule should be that we make decisions about what we think is good rather than by what looks good. While technically I agree with this, I think that blindly following such a rule puts us in a state of mind where we are at risk of underestimating just how bad optics can become.

"I did feel a little nervous about the optical effects"

Was there no less-extravagant-looking conference space for sale?

A typical researcher might make £100,000 a year. £15,000,000 is roughly £1,000,000 a year if invested in the stock market. So you could hire 5 researchers to work full-time, in perpetuity.

Conferences are cool, but do you really think they generate as much research as 5 full time researchers would? As a researcher, I can tell you flat-out the answer is no. I could do much more with 5 people working for me than I could by going to even a thousand conferences.

Thanks, this is indeed helpful. I would also like to know though, what made this property “the most appropriate” out of the three in a bit greater detail if possible. How did its cost compare to the others? Its amenities? I think many people in this thread agree that it might have been worth it to buy some center like this, but still question whether this particular property was the most cost effective one.

I think this was a terrible idea

I think you've overestimated the value of a dedicated conference centre. The important ideas in EA so far haven't come from conversations over tea and scones at conference centres but are either common sense ("do the most good", "the future matters") or have come from dedicated field trials and RCTs.

I also think you've underestimated the damage this will do to the EA brand. The hummus and baguettes signal an earnestness. Abbey signals scam.

I'm confident that this will be remembered as one of CEA's worst decisions.

I appreciate the context, thank you. However, two points came to mind:

1. It seems like the purpose is quite different from the medium-sized university department you described, running workshops and retreats vs what standard academic departments do (offices, lecture halls, labs). So I'm not sure how good the comparison is
2. You point out that in the context of university buildings, it's not a lot of money. But in the context of CEA's other spending, it does seem like a lot. CEA received $14 million in funding from FTX^[1], which has been discussed a lot. So it's understandable that spending a supposedly similar amount of money on a single venue without much public explanation will raise some eyebrows.

Either way, I don't think anyone can really judge whether the investment was a good decision based on the currently availabe information. Which is why I'd appreciate a more detailed explanation from CEA.

1. ^{^}

   number taken from the wiki entry on CEA. I chose to use this comparison because I couldn't immediately find recent numbers for how much money CEA is spending in total, but I assume that 15 million is a significant portion of it.

It's not just about the money. The money calculations can make complete sense and everyone still feel uncomfortable going there and people are turned off from EA. 

It's the fact that it's a mansion which has had a bunch of rich people live in it.

If it were a modern conference center which cost 30 million pounds, it wouldn't get as much bad headlines. Consider these two headlines:

"EA group buys a big conference center"

"EA group buys a mansion, the previous residents have included Oliver Cromwell, Elizabeth I, etc."

which looks worse?

edited: I replaced "castle" with "mansion" and replaced "owners" with "residents".

The question here isn’t whether building a new castle from scratch would cost £15,000,000, or whether the real estate is properly valued; I assume it is. The question is whether you need to buy a castle to host yearly or monthly conferences—to which the answer is clearly not.

Investing £15,000,000 would yield roughly £1,000,000 a year on the stock market. If you are spending a million pounds on the venue for a conference, you are not doing it right. A convention hall runs in the tens of thousands of dollars, not the millions. This is a 10-100x markup.

£15,000,000 sounds like a lot to a researcher because it is.

While those are reasonable comparisons it rather raises the question of why you are buying a venue in one of the most expensive areas of the UK to begin with.

Were there any business cases made comparing this to other cheaper venues in different locations? That's the kind of basic due diligence I'd expect at most organizations I work with in my professional life, and I'm concerned if it's not the case here.

Additionally I would add that it is not a depreciative asset and can be sold again at a later date, returning the money spent. Of course you have to deduct the counterfactual returns of investing that money, but my intuition is generally that owning land is a fine investment if it saves you from paying rent.

I also think people likely significantly underestimate the costs of running conferences. From what I understand, $2000 per person is a pretty standard number even for a 3-day conference, if hosted in a standard hotel convention center. I'm not claiming that EA should host many conferences which are that expensive - just that buying a property to host them could relatively quickly become cost-effective.

Others have commented that you could get a much cheaper venue. I'm skeptical, though. For external-facing events you want a hotel-quality venue, and I don't expect that getting one with 30 rooms anywhere near a major city is going to be much cheaper.

Reasonable criticism from Keith 

Do people think it's plausible that CEA (and affiliates) will run 100 x 30-person events per year in Oxford alone? Doing one every 3.5 days seems unlikely and I expect the real number to be much closer to 50 or less.

Edit: I actually realise it will have to be 50 x 30-person retreats, assuming  each workshop/event/retreat lasts 2 days. So it would be 2 days per week for basically all 52 weeks, which I still think is on the high side.

Judging from similar estates in the area, the Abbey must've cost at least $10,000,000 [EDIT: from other comments it cost 15,000,000 pounds (~$21 million at time of purchase)]. A 30 person conference could easily be held in an office. Regardless, no way CEA hosts 100 of them near Oxford every year. I'm guessing the upkeep costs of the Abbey alone cost more than rent for a generous office.

Besides, if they did want to buy a venue, they could have found one for much cheaper.

This is a luxury purchase. It's made to make visitors feel important and prestigious. It is rightly being criticized and mocked by those outside CEA. WTF were they thinking?