User Comment Replies

Hi Eli, thanks for this update.

On the particular point of cutting the number of sessions you record, I wanted to quickly mention:

1. You say that the videos have few views, but maybe that is also due to a lack of advertisement? I recall finding the Youtube channel after having been involved in EA for quite a bit -- nobody had ever mentioned it to me as a good source of info. Now I'm a regular viewer (see also point 2).
2. I have the cached heuristic that you record most of the content on the primary+secondary stages, which I believe reduces quite a bit... (read more)

Eli_Nathan

8mo

Thanks for your thoughts here! It is true that we haven't advertised our content much and could possibly get more views if we did. We are planning to do more here, but we estimated that we'd have to really get a lot more views for it to be worth it (recording each stage costs ~$50k) and we expect we won't succeed in getting the videos that much exposure. And we considered your second (and third to some extent) points when making a decision here but still concluded we should cut back at this time. Re the printing and signage — I'll note that EAG London was something of an outlier here because the venue we used is a Grade I listed building (i.e. a building designated of architectural/historical interest and hence worthy of protection). This meant that we couldn't stick anything on any of the walls and so we had to spend more money on other types of free-standing signage.

__nobody

8mo

Coming from the "Chaos", the recording quality on media.ccc.de for bigger events is often higher than that of EAG(x) recordings. (E.g. small details like normalizing / boosting audio levels.) That makes a large difference in the "watchability" of recordings. I agree that the talks being recorded has a huge impact on my behavior during events – e.g. at CCC events, if a talk is being recorded I generally don't bother trying to go there in person unless I'm really interested. Watching it later at home is easy / possibly more convenient than at the event (no standing in line, no crowd noise in the room, known good recording quality), while talking to the people at the con can't really happen later. (E.g. at the last Chaos Communication Camp just a few weeks ago, I checked the schedule ahead of time, picked 4 events for "maybe live attendance", then went to none. By my current estimate, I'll probably watch about 20-30% of the recordings over the next weeks / months at least partially – don't have to stay / keep watching if I'm not interested.)

Apply to join SHELTER Weekend this August

SeLo2y18

I think this event is valuable from multiple perspectives:
(1) I'm generally excited for more longtermist phase 2 work, since I think establishing such a track record has multiple benefits, such as signaling effects for implementation-focused people, moving us forward on the implementation learning curve for building real-world things, simply being more “believable” by putting skin in the game as opposed to theorizing, etc.

(2) On an object level, I believe shelters may turn out to be an important element in our portfolio to reduce existential risk, potentia... (read more)

Don’t think, just apply! (usually)

SeLo2y4

I like this advice and plan to follow it myself.

I'd like to note though, that one part of my brain insists that this approach increases "false positive hires", where there is some probability for every application of the employer selecting me for a role someone else would be more suitable for, reducing counterfactual impact.

Spending time to figure out if I consider myself suitable instead of just applying would reduce this probability.

"Just applying" is likely still be the optimum default for the community as a whole by reducing false negatives... (read more)

Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

All of SeLo's Comments + Replies