I am not saying it wasn’t a worthwhile effort (and I agreed to help look into this data, right?) I am just saying if your definition of “resounding success” is one that cannot be used to market this workshop in the future, that definition is a little peculiar...
In general, it’s hard to find effects of anything in the data.
And, FWIW, I would also consider anything that spends less than $100k causing a small number of top-caliber researchers to become full-time AI safety researchers to be extremely “effective”.
[This is in fact a surprisingly difficult problem to solve. Aside from personal experience seeing the difficulty of causing people to become safety researchers, I have also been told by some rich, successful AI companies earnestly trying to set up safety research divisions (yay!) that they are unable to hire appropriately skilled people to work full-time on safety.]
I am not saying it wasn’t a worthwhile effort (and I agreed to help look into this data, right?) I am just saying if your definition of “resounding success” is one that cannot be used to market this workshop in the future, that definition is a little peculiar...
In general, it’s hard to find effects of anything in the data.
The value of running a workshop and the things you can use to market a workshop are distinct, and that seems to explain it.
The fact that a workshop is in a lovely venue is a good thing for marketing, and irrelevant to the value of running it. That is not confusing.
Sure, but for example things used to market a charity and effectiveness of charity are distinct.
People worry about “effectiveness.” Is that going out the window in this case?
See Nate’s comment above:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/n39/why_cfar_the_view_from_2015/cz99
And, FWIW, I would also consider anything that spends less than $100k causing a small number of top-caliber researchers to become full-time AI safety researchers to be extremely “effective”.
[This is in fact a surprisingly difficult problem to solve. Aside from personal experience seeing the difficulty of causing people to become safety researchers, I have also been told by some rich, successful AI companies earnestly trying to set up safety research divisions (yay!) that they are unable to hire appropriately skilled people to work full-time on safety.]