All of IrenaK's Comments + Replies

That seems fair, but I don't have any other concrete information, so for now, that's my position based on the information I have. It may change on whatever else becomes available but I am skeptical of the value of any additional material that Nonlinear present because it seems that they covered all their main concerns already during their call with Ben and because this attempt to "provide evidence" backfired and in my opinion gives more credibility to Alice, not less. If this is an example of a "100% provable false claim" and a reason to call Alice a "bald-faced liar", then the letter was absolutely disproportionate.

Since this is now a standalone post, I'm reposting my comment from the subthread of Ben's post:

I think it's telling, that Kat thinks that the texts speak in their favor. Reading them was quite triggering for me because I see a scared person, who asks for basic things, from the only people she has around her, to help her in a really difficult situation, and is made to feel like she is asking for too much, has to repeatedly advocate for herself (while sick) and still doesn't get her needs met. On one hand, she is encouraged by Kat to ask for help but practic... (read more)

I can't speak for Elliot but happy to help you dig that hole for yourself. Did she eat on the 15th? Or rather, did any of you help her eat proper nutritious meals that are appropriate for a sick vegan? On the 15, or the 16? 

Again, it's rediculous to keep discussing this as it seems not to be a crux for people but it's so revealing that you think you are in the right here. 

I think it's telling, that Kat thinks that the texts speak in their favor. Reading them was quite triggering for me because I see a scared person, who asks for basic things, from the only people she has around her, to help her in a really difficult situation, and is made to feel like she is asking for too much, has to repeatedly advocate for herself (while sick) and still doesn't get her needs met. On one hand, she is encouraged by Kat to ask for help but practically it's not happening. Especially Emerson and Drew in that second thread sounded like she is ... (read more)

To me, this is the biggest red flag in this whole situation. My work has been written about by journalists, with both negative spins and actual factual inaccuracies and whenever this happens, my first response is: here is where you are wrong, and here is the truth. Which, I know, because it's about me and I know what happened (at least according to me). 

If someone doesn't believe me and they want the "receipts", I can provide these later, but I don't need them to dispute the claim in the first place. I understand this piece has a lot of information an... (read more)

I appreciate the overall style and tone of the piece. I believe Ben is trying to figure out what happened. With the material he had, he could easily write a much more damaging hit piece (as has been the case with some traditional investigative journalist in the past).

I appreciate the style and authenticity in this post. Would love to see more of this both from you and on the forum in general!

What do you mean by "not picking up"? As in registering after being accepted? It is certainly the case that some people think the way you do. Also, many people procrastinate on finalizing their registration. Now, how much of which is in your "unclaimed tickets" pool is an open question. For EAGxPrague quite close to the application/registration deadline we had maybe up to 150 people who were accepted but haven't registered (and I had roughly 500 capacity). Not knowing if they are not coming or may just all register on the last day made it harder to accept ... (read more)

This is consistent with my experience. I agree these norms are good and make organizer's lives easier, but there is always a drop out rate and it is possible to plan for that. Did Berkeley have an unusually high number of noshows? For EAGxPrague we worked with an estimate of about 10% which ended up being quite accurate. I don't remember the exact number but I think we had about 450 registered and about 410 showed up (this does not include the people who actually canceled since they no longer show up as registered in the system). I think it would be possible to do a more detailed analysis of the drop out rate in time and the final number of noshows in case it's useful for future organizers.

To give people some idea about the cost of EAGX's: for Prague, where we had about 400 attendees, the cost was roughly £270 per person, and out of that, £120 was for food. Our venue didn't have its own catering so we could arrange what we wanted on whatever scale we wanted. We could easily just do lunch and snacks.

Since I’m running the project in question (not Wytham Abbey), I would like to share my perspective as well.  (I reached out to the author of the comment, Bob, in a DM asking him to remove the previously posted addresses and we chatted briefly about some of these points privately but I also want to share my answers publicly.)

1. ESPR can't return the property or the money at the moment because there is currently no mechanism that we are aware of that would make it possible to legally send money "back to FTX" such that it would reliably make its way back to

Could I record the audio of my own post?

I'd like to make a brief note on the importance of translating EA content because I've often encountered a general idea which is something like "as a movement, we are basically mainly interested in people who already speak English so they'd just read the original and the translation wouldn't bring any additional benefit". 

An answer to this could be a standalone forum post, but in short:

• There are in fact, very talented people who could make great contributions to the movement who for a number of reasons don't communicate in English that well. If our ou

Hi Gregory, I will be running these workshops together with John, so I'd like to respond to your comments. 

I think that it is fair for you to post your warning/recommendation but as far as I can tell, today's CFAR is quite different from the organization that you say demonstrated "gross negligence and utter corporate incompetence" in the past. You say that the evidence is sparse that anything has changed and I'm not sure about that but I'm also not the person to make that case because I'm not CFAR - I'm a CFAR developer running a p... (read more)

Hi Brian,  I hope that you'll eventually be able to make it to the workshops, we certainly hope that there will be more next year.

Eventually, we would like to update the website but we have limited capacity and we were focused on getting the dates and applications out there as early as we knew they were happening so people could pencil in the dates. Now we are also running admissions, coordinating staff, working on content and logistics etc. Given all of this,  it will likely take us a couple of more weeks to update.

I know you explain it later in the post, but I would prefer that the phrase "tell the person what you think their problems are" not be used to describe people offering doom. IMHO it's very bad if people think about it this way.

The framing that seems more accurate to me is something like "why will this person have failed in their efforts?" Basically, how do you think they are doomed, hence the doom circle. You are trying to see how things are going to play out for them and should they not succeed, what happened?

My two cents about why people may be concerned about the decision-making process without having concrete details:
For instance, the initially advertised decision timeline of 2 weeks. While I appreciate the fast pace and the benefits that come with it, a complex system of review and decision-making is almost impossible to achieve at that timeline, especially given the interest in the program. 

Moreover, that deadline was not met for all projects which is both good because clearly more time was needed and also bad because applicants' expectations were not... (read more)

I'm not aware of anything, in particular, happening in Prague that weekend that would explain the hotels in the downtown area being full. Prague is a very popular city that is coming back from two bad winters with COVID so it seems that people are simply eager to visit.

We did put together a guide on public transportation so people are comfortable booking outside of the city center and also had a couchsurfing table for people to advertise and look for spare accommodation.

We decided to do the conference in the city center because we think it is a beautiful a... (read more)

You pay for the ticket at the registration stage depending on what you can afford. The baseline price is 50 EUR and then you can apply a 25%, 50%, or 75% discount. You can also ask for financial assistance to be able to attend the conference.

Ha, amusing indeed! Fixed now. :) 

This is a great initiative! I just want to point out that if this is aimed at international students, it is quite difficult to accurately estimate their GPA. Also, they would not need to do for UK applications. You will be able to understand their academic performance from the transcript but requiring a GPA may not give you the information you are looking for.

Hi Lewis, since this is AMA, this one is not EA related.

I've spend most of my teenage and college years as a competitive international debater. How do you look back at your debate experience? The good and the bad. Would you recommend that EAs (and more people in general) take up debate? Or would you rather see it be replaced with some other form of structured discussion?

Also, the WUDC finals are one of my favorite competitive debates of all time, I would often use it when coaching my teams. I'd love to hear your take on it. What was it like for you to prop... (read more)

In my experience is not so much that they person does not grasp the ethical argument through empathy, many people do. The reason they do not change their behaviour is mostly because it is normalized in society. People do not usually realize it in the moment and so it is not what you would often hear as an answer but uppon reflection, that is what many vegetarians realize - they did understand they were acting wrong but it seemed like it was not a big deal because everyone was doing it.

I do not have experience with WSDNs but based on your description, the Czech Association for EA seems to have this model. The structure is such that people sign up to be members, members elect leadership and leadership reports back to the members.

The biggest difference seems to be that our members are not only employees but volunteers or general supporters.

I do not know this article but here are my thoughts on this problem, having worked at a private foundation myself.

The amount of money awarded per staff lies on a scale. On one end a foundation could just make 1 massive grant a year to one organization. On the other end, make millions of super small grants. As organizations navigate this scale from one extreme to the other, in my experience these are some of their considerations:

• Diversifying the portfolio of grants - if one does not succeed, there are still many to possibly have high impact
• Limited expertis

Thank you for putting all of this together, I think it is a very useful post. I spent many years career coaching and advising people who were applying for jobs and I always stress this:

If you are not landing the job you want it is because of two main reasons:

a) You are not applying for the right jobs for you (you may be underqualified, overqualified, transitioning fields etc.)

b) Or you are in fact very well qualified but you are not good at presenting those qualifications to others, especially in a limited time and space.

Have you received any kind of feedb... (read more)