Hey! I got an exclusive invitation to this off-the-record conference . . . but I think I’ll take 3515 Jamaican beef patties instead.

I received the following in the inbox:

Andrew –

You have been invited to Dialog 2022—an off-the-record retreat for global leaders. See below for a list of confirmed participants. . . .

There are no speeches or panels—only many moderated breakout discussions for 8-12 participants. Everything is 100% off-the-record. The agenda is curated based on your interests. (And, we optimize for introverts—no small talk.)

Click here to register. Registration closes on March 16. Your registration has been highly discounted. Use discount code INSIGHT22.

Dialog Retreat 2022
When: December 1 – 4, 2022
Where: The Ritz Carlton, Bacara | Santa Barbara, CA
This invitation is only for Andrew Gelman and is non-transferable.

Partial List of Dialog 2022 Participants
Susan Athey – Professor of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Board Director, Expedia Group, LendingClub. [Palo Alto, CA]
Pierpaolo Barbieri – Founder, Ualá. Executive Director, Greenmantle. [Buenos Aires / New York]
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin – CEO, Optus. [Sydney]
Henning Beck – Neuroscientist & Author. [Frankfurt]
Piraye Beim – Founder & CEO, Celmatix. [New York]
Sarah Bond – Corporate VP, Xbox, Microsoft. [Seattle]
Peter Brown – CEO, Renaissance Technologies. [Washington, D.C.]
Martin Chavez – Vice Chairman & Partner, Sixth Street Partner. Fmr. CFO and CIO, Goldman Sachs. [New York]
Stephanie Cohen – Global Co-Head, Consumer & Wealth Management Division , Goldman Sachs. [Dallas / New York]
Stephen Cohen – Co-Founder & EVP, Palantir Technologies. [San Francisco]
Tyler Cowen – Chair of Economics & General Director, Mercatus Center, George Mason University. Author, Marginal Revolution. [Washington, D.C.]
Lee Cronin – Founder & CEO, Chemify. Regius Professor, Chemistry, University of Glasgow. [Glasgow]
Gray Davis – Of Counsel, Loeb & Loeb. Fmr. Governor, California. [Los Angeles]
Daniel Diermeier – Chancellor, Vanderbilt University. [Nashville]
Jorge Elorza – Mayor, Providence, RI. [Providence, RI]
Oren Etzioni – CEO, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. [Seattle]
Kristen Fortney – CEO, BIOAGE. [San Francisco]
Tulsi Gabbard – Lieutenant Colonel, US Army Reserves. Fmr. Congresswoman (D-HI), U.S. House of Representatives. [Honolulu]
Matthew Gentzkow – Professor of Economics, Stanford University. Awardee, John Bates Clark Medal. [San Francisco]
Lisa Gevelber – CMO, Google. [San Francisco]
Anneka Gupta – Chief Product Officer, Rubrik. Board Member, Tinuiti. [San Francisco, CA]
Richard Haass – President, Council on Foreign Relations. Fmr. Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State. [New York]
Peggy Hamburg – VP, Bio Program and Policy, Nuclear Threat Initiative. Fmr. President, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fmr. Commissioner, U.S. Food & Drug Administration. [Washington, D.C.]
Auren Hoffman – CEO, SafeGraph. Founder & Fmr. CEO, LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP). Chairman, Dialog. [San Francisco]
Bob Jain – CIO, Millennium Management. Founder, Jain Family Institute. [New York]
David Kamenetzky – Investor, K4 Family Investments, Founding Chairman, Alfred Landecker Foundation. [Washington, D.C.]
Neal Katyal – Partner & Supreme Court Practice Leader, Hogan Lovells. Professor of National Security Law, Georgetown University. Fmr. Acting U.S. Solicitor General. [Washington, D.C.]
Tarō Kōno – Minister of Administrative Reform and Regulatory Reform, Japan. Fmr. Minister of Defense, Japan. [Tokyo]
Eliot Lee – President, KGMLab. Fmr. Member of Congress, National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. [Seoul]
Lisa Lewin – CEO, General Assembly. [New York]
Harald Mahrer – President, Austrian Federal Economic Chamber & the Austrian National Bank. [Vienna]
Sigal Mandelker – General Partner, Ribbit Capital. Advisor, Chainalysis. Fmr. Under Secretary, Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, U.S. Department of Treasury. [New York City]
Travis May – Co-Founder & CEO, Datavant. Fmr. CEO, LiveRamp. [San Francisco]
Johnnie Moore – Founder & CEO, The KAIROS Company. President, The Congress of Christian Leaders. [Washington, D.C.]
Pete Muller – Founder & CEO, PDT Partners. Singer-Songwriter. [Santa Barbara]
Robert Nelsen – Co-Founder & Managing Director, ARCH Venture Partners. [San Francisco]
Grover Norquist – President, Americans for Tax Reform. [Washington, D.C.]
Şafak Pavey – Senior Advisor, UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Fmr. Member & Deputy Speaker of Turkish Parliament. [Geneva]
Zach Perret – Co-Founder & CEO, Plaid. [San Francisco]
Steve Pinker – Professor, Psychology, Harvard University. Author, Enlightenment Now, The Better Angels of Our Nature. [Boston]
Michelle Rempel Garner – Member of Parliament & Shadow Minister, Natural Resources, Canada. Vice-Chair, Standing Committee on Natural Resources. [Ottawa]
Helen Riley – CFO & COO, X. [Palo Alto]
Bob Rubin – Senior Counselor, Centerview Partners. Chairman Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations. Fmr. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. [New York]
Gretchen Rubin – Podcaster & Author, The Happiness Project [New York]
Tod Sacerdoti – Founder & CEO, Pipedream. General Partner, Flex Capital. [San Francisco]
Gustavo Sapoznik – Founder & CEO, ASAPP. [Bozeman, MT]
Jessica Schell – Executive Vice President & General Manager, Film, Warner Bros. [Los Angeles]
Tara Schuster – Author, Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, From Someone Who’s Been There. Fmr. VP, Talent and Development, Comedy Central. [Los Angeles]
Alexander Schütz – Principal Partner, Freie Internationale Sparkasse S.A. Founder & CEO, C-Quadrat Investment Group. [Vienna]
Jessica Scorpio – Co-Founder & Chairman, Getaround. [San Francisco]
Ali Siddiqui – Ambassador at Large for Foreign Investment, Pakistan. Fmr. Ambassador to the United States, Pakistan. [Islamabad / London]
Anne-Marie Slaughter – CEO, New America. Professor, Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University. [Washington, D.C.]
Jens Spahn – Federal Minister of Health, Germany. Member, German Bundestag. [Berlin]
Bret Stephens – Opinion Columnist & Associate Editor, The New York Times. [New York]
Lord Simon Stevens – CEO, National Health Service, England. Fmr. President & EVP, UnitedHealth Group. [London]
Nicholas Thompson – CEO, The Atlantic. [New York]
Tom Tugendhat – Member of Parliament, United Kingdom. Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons. [London]
Sunayna Tuteja – Chief Innovation Officer, Federal Reserve System. [Washington, D.C.]
David Wallerstein – Chief eXploration Officer, Tencent. [Palo Alto]
David Wolpe – Rabbi, Sinai Temple. [Los Angeles]
Jake Wood – Co-Founder & CEO, Team Rubicon. [Los Angeles / New York]
Luhan Yang – CEO, Qihan Biotech. Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, eGenesis. [Boston]
Marco Zappacosta – Co-Founder & CEO, Thumbtack. [San Francisco]

_____________________________
**
Managing Director | Dialog
+1 703.***.*** | ***@**.org

An interesting list of people. It includes some academics who I know personally, some business executives who I’ve never heard of, some politicos, and . . . a rabbi? What’s he doing there???

But, to meet Grover Norquist in the flesh, that would be something. Or maybe it would be a letdown. I was once at a conference and met Freeman Dyson, and I was thinking, hey, you’re a major physicist! I babbled something to him about my research. There was really no point. I’d have more to say to Norquist than to Dyson, but, really, what am we gonna do—share insights on public opinion? Probably not.

I was curious enough to click on the link, which took me here:

$16,846, huh? For that amount of money I could pay for 6 to 12 years of Wiley Computational Statistics journal, or 5 articles in a Research Media publication. All in all, I’d rather just have 4222 Big Macs.

P.S. I realize I forgot to apply my discount code! I typed it in, and guess what:

A 70% discount! I guess it’ll just be 1266 Big Macs. That’ll still keep me going for quite awhile.

Actually . . . hey! 12 Jamaican beef patties only cost $17.25. So even with the discount, the conference is substitutable with 3515 patties. I know which one I’ll choose. I can eat one a day until my retirement!

Just don’t tell my cardiologist. He’d advise me to hang out with Grover and avoid the heavy food.

P.P.S. I posted this one right away, no 6-month lag, because registration closes on March 16, and some of you might want to do this! Sure, it says, “This invitation is only for Andrew Gelman and is non-transferable,” but I bet they’ll take your $16,846 if you ask really really nicely.

47 thoughts on “Hey! I got an exclusive invitation to this off-the-record conference . . . but I think I’ll take 3515 Jamaican beef patties instead.

  1. As a guy who actually is supposed to be running a consulting business I can’t help thinking this is probably an effective way to drum up business. But I’d rather buy a used and sailboat maybe I could take potential clients out on it. Potential LA area clients take note!

  2. A couple more things to note. They say
    “We’ve seen firsthand the power of gathering similarly-successful peers. If the past 15 years of Dialog retreats are any indication, you will expand your mind in novel ways and get to know at least 50 people quite well.”

    After many years of living, I’m not sure if I know 50 people “quite well.” They’ll do it in 3 days – that efficiency. Did you notice that one of their founders is Peter Thiel? And, Andrew, you forgot to mention that the registration fee includes all meals. So, your allotment for patties or Big Macs is somewhat overstated. One other point: they say that they appeal to introverts – they assign seating and there is dialog, not presentations. I wonder who I would get seated with.

    • > you will expand your mind in novel ways and get to know at least 50 people quite well.
      > they say that they appeal to introverts

      As an introvert, I think that knowing quite well more that three people at the same time is appalling.

  3. I looked up the Rabbi on Wikipedia. He caused a big stir once when he said that the Exodus story might not be entirely factual. Also, he is a vegetarian and almost vegan which, of course, makes Kashrut compliance easy but invalidates the Gelman Big Mac value scale.

  4. Congratulations on being invited to (the vicinity of) such a prestigious list! I just hope all those CEOs and other glad-hander types aren’t disappointed with the cultural “optimization”. They don’t seem like introverts at all!

  5. Quite a mix of people. I’ve met several of those invited. Not clear if they all are going. I’ve met Grover Norquist about 6 times. I didn’t come away with any sustained impression of him.

    In some sense, I’ve gotten over needing to be included in such circles and focusing on what makes me happy. What I’ve hypothesized is that it has become increasingly difficult for many experts to sustain a positive legacy. At least in international relations/foreign policy. Nearly everyone gets a lot of criticism.

    Having been raised in int. relations circles, I’m hard-pressed to say who has sustained or will sustain a stellar legacy b/c the pace of change is now so rapid b/c of technology and machine learning.

    Danny Kahnemann may sustain a remarkable legacy, since his work implicates so many disciplines and domains. Even in international relations. He has a humble demeanor too. Philip Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment was impressive and presented insights into the sociology of expertise that imply that there are so many constraints on good judgment being heeded.

    I’m interested in whom y’all think will garner a positive legacy.

    • Kevin, good idea!

      Or maybe the list changes more each time, as they seek to figure out which list of attendees draws the most $16K … or 30% thereof … registrants. /That/ becomes their list of the most influential people, ’cause they influenced more people to pay up.

      Now if this list has x names, and if the master list has 2x names, design an experiment including a model that will efficiently pick the y most influential people (y < 2x).

      Now they can target them in a marketing campaign.

  6. If the overall list of invites reflects that published list, there’s gonna be a whole lotta “anti-woke” dialog going on there. My guess that will be the topic of about 90% of the convos.

    I say go for the patties and add in some oxtail stew and jerk chicken, stay home, and listen to a couple Rogan pods and learn about how billions of sheeple have been hypnotized in a mass formation psychosis, and how the moon landing was a hoax.

    • Joshua:

      I honestly can’t figure out who would pay $16,846 for this. I mean, sure, I get that there are some rich people out there for whom $16,846 is basically nothing—but, still, people like to get something for their money, right? You pay $16,846, and you get . . . what, exactly? Some political stories from that well-known raconteur Gray Davis? Business insights from the “Co-Founder & CEO, Thumbtack”? I just don’t it. It’s clear that this isn’t a good way for me to spend $16,846—but have no idea how anyone would be interested. But they must get some takers, right? I feel like there’s something here that I’m missing.

      • I used to work regularly with some very highly-paid executives (I assure you I wasn’t one of them) who would spend heaps o’ money for a five week course at a top rated business school.

        I’d question them about why anyone schooled in business would think that spending so much money on a course like that would be getting their money’s worth. They invariably explained that it wasn’t the content of the course that was worth the investment but the opportunity for networking. I wouldn’t be surprised that there’s a similar aspect here. It’s about the networking.

        Another select is probably ego. Being at an event of “important” people make people feel important. That’s with a lot to some people. I’m actually impressed that you’re so out of that line of thinking that it didn’t even occur to you as a value. The whole “special guest invitation, don’t you dare give it to anyone else” reinforces that sense of importance. You’re so important that you get invited to spend to much money to hobnob with important people. Reminds me of “This sale is so great you’ll save tons of money by buying stuff.”

        • Joshua:

          Mingling with Gray Davis etc. didn’t sound very pleasant, exactly, but, yes, I did see the appeal of getting facetime with bigshots. The $16,846 thing, though: that just seems so out of proportion to whatever this event would be offering. I mean, sure, at some level I can see it: for me it could be worth forking over $16,846 on the off chance that I’m chatting with some zillionaire at the bar and convince him to give me 2 million dollars for Stan. And it could be worth $16,846 to the rich guy to get some statistical advice from me. (Actually, I do believe this would be worth $16,846 in some circumstances!) So everybody’s happy. But I keep thinking . . . where’s the $16,846 going, exactly? Something seems fishy. I’m paying $16,846 to have a shot at this zillionaire, the zillionaire is paying $16,846 to get to talk with me, and the $33,692 is going to . . . Gray Davis? Some celebrity rabbi? The expression, “Let’s cut out the middleman,” comes to mind.

        • Andrew –

          I think that your way of thinking is different enough, that you can’t even wrap your mind around it. Sure, part of it is that $16k for some of these people is like $100 for others. Part of it is that it’s a kind of investment that might bring a net positive return in dollars. But that kind of practical utility is only one aspect.

          Maybe part of this is you’re using a different set of values – you have a different concept of utility.

          Imagine that what you really care about is feeling important. Not the utility of providing info to someone or creating a valuable business opportunity. Getting your ego stoked is what’s important.

          So having the opportunity to feel important by being a member of an elite set of people given exclusive invites (don’t pass it on to any less important riff raff) is in itself the utility. Getting the invite itself is part of the utility but even more so, being important enough to trade anti-woke war stories over a beer with Steven Pinker means you’re incredibly important.

          I think about this when I see people flying first class. I mean absolutely, those seats look really, really comfortable compared to where I’m going to sit. And maybe some dude sitting in first class can generate a huge amount of money because he can work more efficiently if he’s not rubbing elbows with shnooks like me. And yeah, people paying for those tickets are probably spending an even lower % of their disposable income than I’m spending for my cheap seats. But is a roomy seat really worth a few thousand dollars for a couple of hours by any meaningfully objective standard?

          I don’t think so. So what gives? I think part of it is that they know they’re going to board first and get to watch the poor shnooks walking past and into the sardine can. I wouldn’t pay for those seats even if I had enough money to do so. I’d rather spend it on something of more value to me, or give it to charity.

          But I think part of that money is going to reinforce their sense that they’re more important people. It’s a different kind of utility than what I generally value.

        • Joshua:

          I flew business class to London once! I was invited to speak at a meeting at the Bank of England. The seat really was more comfortable—I slept for just about the whole flight! So I can see how people who could easily afford it, would pay the price.

          Regarding the “feeling important” thing: sure, I get that. As the saying goes, it’s nice to feel nice but it’s important to feel important. But there’s also the “not feeling like a sucker” thing. Forking over $16,846 to pay part of Gray Davis’s appearance fee . . . that would make just about anybody feel like a sucker, no?

        • Andrew –

          I totally get it for a long flight, like to Europe. I mean more for a short flight or a flight with a couple of one or two hour legs.

        • > It’s about the networking.
          Agree and that is the reason for the outrageous fee.

          Many years ago I was consultant working a day a week for one of my former business school faculty members who was trying to set up an executive MBA program. The university president had a problem with the large tuition fee.

          My advice was that they were at risk of firms dropping their problematic executives in their program that they wished to fire but they had too much current knowledge of the company to do that. Or the useless nephew. They spun that concern into a rationale for amount about10 time usual tuition and the president bought it.

          As my personal reward I was the only non-executive MBA alumni that was permitted to attend their reunions and I did once and my wife and got a nice free meal with wine ;-)

      • Andrew,
        1) You aren’t paying 16k, you get a 70% discount. $5k in not so ridiculous.
        2) Not everyone pays the same. Maybe some people really do pay 16K. Others are probably paid to attend. So when you ask where the money goes, that’s where some of it goes.

  7. Andrew, is it possible that, to their target audience, $16,846 isn’t a cost but a sign of value–sort of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval?

    I once met a consultant who spoke about an early gig he got. The CEO sent him to the CEO’s executive assistant to finalize the paperwork. She asked his rate; he wrote down a number. She said that would never do. He worried, for he thought he had already discounted it as much as he could. She doubled (or whatever) it, saying, “No one will ever think you’re adding any value if you charge that little.”

    • Bill:

      That’s a funny story. I must hang out with the wrong class of client. I’ve done lots of consulting, and only once has the client ever asked me to raise my rate! (And that was by less than 1%, so I took it more as a symbolic statement that they valued what I had to offer.)

  8. The mortgage bankers didn’t have an articulate explanation. A group of four of them regularly came to Miami with their boss, George, the founder of the mortgage bank. We would see George and his colleagues at nearby tables at the clubs, where George told me the table rent cost them $30,000 a night. “…

    “$30,000? That’s a lot,” I said. “And what’s that buy you?”

    “The best night of your life,” he said with a sarcastic laugh. “Okay, not really the best night of your life. It buys you some champagne and vodka.” That stuff is relatively cheap, as George knows, before the club adds its markup of 1,000 percent. But there is an experience to be had in these nights that George and his colleagues and Santos and his girls were all seeking.

    From “Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit” by Ashley Mears, which I’m currently in the middle of. (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/48710529-very-important-people) It’s fascinating, documenting the deliberate destruction of wealth and its connections to status games. (Unfortunately, the book is ridiculously repetitive. It could be half its length, or perhaps even 1/3.)

    Your post reminded me of this. I find it uplifting that people with lots more money than me want to spend $17k to mingle with the head of the NHS or the Japanese “Minister of Administrative Reform and Regulatory Reform” rather than blowing thousands on champagne and parties.

  9. Yesterday in class I taught my applied economics students that no matter how you estimate it, every additional year of schooling generates, on average, increased wages on the order of 1,000-2,000 beef patties.

  10. Dialog is completely off the radar but it one of those groups that have extremely high influence on global events. It was founded in 2006 by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Eric Schmidt — all well-known high-tech CEOs working on expanding their influence. Senators Cory Booker and Ted Cruz are active participants.

    Dialog Retreat needs more transparency on what transpires, who attends, and what decisions get made. There is no sunlight on Dialog today. While I don’t think Dialog should be banned completely, government officials that attend should have to publicly disclose who they engaged with and what they talked about. “Off-the-record” sounds nice but it is another way of saying “the public does not need to know.”

    • Anon:

      So the idea is that rich corporate executives would pay $16,846 to sidle up to Grover Norquist, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and a rabbi to get the benefits of their wisdom, and that I’d pay $16,846 to sidle up to those rich guys in the hope that I could convince them to drop a few million for Stan . . . I guess that makes some sense!

      I’m not quite sure what Norquist, Slaughter, and the rabbi get out of it; maybe they get paid to attend?

      • P.S. When I got that invite, part of me wanted to go so I could be a bigshot and hang out with all these important people. But I decided not to, partly because the actual experience sounded like it would be unpleasant and partly because I felt I was being played for a sucker. If any of these business leaders, politicos, academics, and rabbis want to hear what I have to say, they can contact me directly; no need for a middleman to take that $16,846.

  11. ” we optimize for introverts—no small talk” – Guessing they don’t know any introverts. An introvert could attend the whole meeting and come out with no new acquaintances or anything beyond some trivial small talk. A truly weird ‘selling point’ but the whole thing just seems weird.

  12. First of all, I appreciate you publishing this. I happen to be at a resort – right now – where there are “Dialog” signs all over the place but there’s also a lot of hush-hush and quiet tension among the staff. I came out of the gym yesterday and almost walked into the conference covid testing facility – which in normal times is the real estate sales office (I stay here frequently). I googled “Dialog event” to try to figure out what the heck is going on and this post came up.

    I spoke at a similar event quite a few years ago during my “thought leader” days. I still have a copy of the brochure with my picture between Malcolm Gladwell and Mikhail Gorbachev. I recall a tense elevator ride with Benazir Bhutto and her bodyguards and I also recall watching game 7 of the Red Sox/Yankees series (THE series – that one) in the hotel bar alongside a very hammered Mike Eruzione.

    So I appreciate you sharing. I’ll have to pay closer attention to who I wind up riding with in the elevators

  13. I have been to Dialog many times, and a lot of the people on the list that you published are the same people who go every year. A few interesting details:

    As many know, Auren Hoffman is a great networker and a conference organizer – those are his strongest skills. To a degree to which I have never seen before, and to Auren’s credit, he has leveraged his network rather than a high degree of intelligence to start a couple of respectably sized businesses. Auren likes to post about how success is more a result of what you know rather than who you know, and I think that those who know him, even a little, see the irony here.

    Early on (and perhaps still) Auren cold-emailed great numbers of famous people, billionaires and other interesting people asking them consider attending. I’ve seen a number of these emails, and they often would name other attendees to try to entice people to come, a unique strategy, but not one that was appreciated by some of those who were named. Some of the invited guests were not always highly accomplished, and those people would pay a lot more to attend.

    All and all, it’s a fine gathering, but it certainly isn’t the best of its sort, and definintely not the most exclusive (or secretive). The most exclusive similar gatherings do not charge attendees.

  14. I’ve been to 6 or 7 Dialogs in the last few years and I can attest that many of these highly accomplished people not only show up each year but they indeed pay for their ticket instead of getting payed to be there. Prices vary, as someone from academic circles I also get heavily discounted tickets and only the big shots have to pay full price. It is a great opportunity to have great conversations with many attendees, off the records, which makes them more interesting as people really open up. I always learn fascinating new things about different spheres I’m not a part of, be it politics or business or science or make new friends (or see old friends again I’ve made there). It is indeed somewhat introvert friendly. I wouldn’t call it a highlight of my year but it is always worth it and I’m very happy to go each year. You should have just gave it a shot once instead of bitching about on the internet – it is a really missed opportunity imho.

    • Anon:

      “Bitching about on the internet,” huh? That’s a really constructive comment on your part.

      I’d still rather have the 3515 Jamaican beef patties.

      But it’s a free country: I get 3515 Jamaican beef patties, you get to hang out with Grover Norquist and a rabbi from L.A. and learn fascinating new things. We’re both happy!

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