I agree with this, and want to share a concrete proposal that might help that I recently wrote a shortform about. Here’s the content of the shortform:
“On Socioeconomic Diversity:
I want to explain how the discourse on sexual misconduct may be reducing the specific type of socioeconomic diversity I am personally familiar with.
I’m a white female American who worked as an HVAC technician with co-workers mostly from racial minorities before going to college. Most of the sexual misconduct incidents discussed in the Time article have likely differed from standard workplace discussions in my former career only in that the higher status person expressed romantic/sexual attraction, making their statement much more vulnerable than the trash-talk I’m familiar with. In the places most of my workplace experience comes from, people of all genders and statuses make sexual jokes about coworkers of all genders and statuses not only in their field, but while on the clock. I had tremendous fun participating in these conversations. It didn’t feel sexist to me because I gave as good as I got. My experience generalizes well; Even when Donald Trump made a joke about sexual assault that many upper-class Americans believed disqualified him, immediately before the election he won, Republican women were no more likely to think he should drop out of the race than Republican voters in general. Donald Trump has been able to maintain much of his popularity despite denying the legitimacy of a legitimate election in part because he identified the gatekeeping elements of upper-class American norms as classist. I am strongly against Trump, but believe we should note that many female Americans from poorer backgrounds enjoy these conversations, and many more oppose the kind of punishments popular in upper class American communities. This means strongly disliking these conversations is not an intrinsic virtue, but a decision EA culture has made that is about more than simple morality.
When I post about EA on social media, many of my co-workers from my blue-collar days think it sounds really cool. If any of them decided to engage further and made clumsy comments while getting used to EA culture, I would want them to be treated with empathy. Much of the conversation around the Time article (especially the response to Owen Cotton-Barratt’s mistake) has given me the impression that they would not be. We are a left-leaning movement. We need to include more conservative political perspectives to improve our data and get politicians to take our views on the worst catastrophes the world faces seriously. I feel my experience with much more poverty than the average EA has contributed unique insights that have improved our philosophical perspectives. The probability of an American raised in the poorest 20% (where my personal pre-college career experience comes from) reaching the richest 20% by age 26 is roughly a 3rd that of an American raised in the richest 20%. This likely means we miss out on some important professional talent by being intolerant towards lower class American norms. I am not advocating a switch to lower class American gender norms, just seeing the humanity more in the many people who have chosen them and therefore the people that accidentally violate upper-class American ones in good faith.”
Not American, but I’m from Hong Kong and the higher acceptability of “saying things in a blunt way” in the socioeconomic circles I grew up in rings true to me. A caveat that traditional Chinese culture makes it more uncommon for discussions to center around sexual things. That said, it seems that if sexual things do come up, people aren’t super averse to it in the way that people in elite Western circles are. (Except in and around church. I grew up Protestant.)
The main (economic) factor might be that my parents and relatives all grew up poor (a common background for many people in HK) and that I have a sort-of-working class background (parents still broke but relatives became better off—got a great education with help from relatives but lived relatively worse off with my parents -it’s complicated). My sense is that my priorities are very different from Western EAs with more money, or actually, even other people in my home city with more money.
I’m guessing that for the generation before me, growing up in a small flat with 6 other siblings, it just doesn’t really matter if someone’s kind of “vulgar” or speaks kind of bluntly. And if people deliberately offend you with a comment, sure enough, you might get angry at that person—but it’s unlikely that you’ll find what they said paralyzing.
I myself grew up in better conditions, but maybe the cultural memory of severe material hardship persists, at least for a while. I didn’t really care that much when friends from school used explicit language. Because it frequently happened on a daily basis. Some of my (~middle class) friends and I often said “offensive things” to each other in the past for fun, and sometimes I kind of miss the opportunity to do that (sometimes not though) since now my social circles mostly consist of people from the upper/upper middle classes.
EA needs to be genuinely inclusive not just in terms of sex, race, nationality, etc., but in terms of social class and political values. And many of the recent discussions in EA Forum community posts might look quite odd and alienating to people who have experienced and enjoyed the kind of blunt, unpretentious, thick-skinned, working class culture that you mentioned.
Yes! And a note on that: I’ve heard of some low and middle income country cultures with sex/dating norms similar to lower class American ones, and some with sex/dating norms even more reserved than upper class American ones. This means I have no idea what alterations would produce more socioeconomic diversity on net, and encourage people from other countries to speak up about their cultural norms.
Sorry, it will be not a very kind comment and a bit of a rant—upper American class on this forum keeps saying “if you are in a position of power you should be very considerate of others and their boundaries, and give them space, because sometimes they may feel pressured to agree with you and find it hard to speak up”. Yeah, exactly.
Other people. I feel that certain perspectives on the forum are expressed very strongly, and with little consideration towards other points of view. One of them is “if you are in a position of power you should be considerate towards those who are not as they may feel pressured by you” which I agree with. But the same person sometimes also very strongly expresses some other view, regarding, i.e. dating, full of “shoulds” and often strongly rooted in the US norms and culture (in my perspective). I simply find it ironic.
As stated on the other post: “As someone from a poor family, I find the implicature of this piece, that I cannot control myself from harassing and bullying people, ridiculously offensive to the point of absurdity. The fact it hasn’t got more pushback is the perfect example of “Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble.” I did have a good chuckle at the idea of Owen trying this anywhere near my very blue-collar father though so thanks for that. ”
I’ve been thinking about your perspective lately, and wondered if there is a variable I hadn’t considered enough. I was raised middle class American. For this post, I drew on my decade of experience as a lower class American after a disability left me unable to earn a good living for a long time. My field was heavily male dominated (construction). Since in my experience lower class American norms seem more gendered to me, I would expect the experience of someone who hasn’t worked in a male-dominated lower class American field to be pretty different from mine. My friends were ones I made from work, so they already considered me one of the guys. Do you think your experience was different from mine because you didn’t work in a male-dominated field?
I also suspect I gave off a one-of-the-guys vibe (because that’s the environment I prefer) that you don’t that altered how people treated me. I found this Slate Star Codex post helpful in thinking about this.
Yes, poor people are not a monolith! Some people from our background (especially the people who chose to stick around EA long enough to be on the forum) will prefer current EA norms and feel grateful for them. I don’t mean to dismiss your experiences at all. And like I said earlier, there are many different socioeconomic cultures that are underrepresented in EA, so I don’t know what direction we should shift our norms in overall. Maybe there is that much diversity even within the US. I was speaking about my personal experience as someone from this background and the experiences of all the people I know well enough to know their perspectives from this background. I’m sorry I gave the impression I was trying to speak for you. I also wasn’t accusing us at all of having lack of control, just having the right to prefer different norms if we want to. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective! I do wish you had done so more politely though.
I’m curious: Do you feel like your wider lower class culture was very different from mine, or is it more that your family held different views that were a minority? Also, where were you raised and what role did religion play? My experience comes from Sacramento, California and religion was rarely discussed. I hope you don’t mind me asking these questions; There are so few of us around that EA needs all the data on us it can get!
I really think we are speaking past one another. Back to brass tacks: 1. I do not see Owen’s behavior as being okay in any context. 2. I understand and know well the banter culture you are referring to but what he did is way outside the pale and classifying it as banter is muddying the waters and clouding how serious his behavior actually was. 3. I resent the presentation of taking a strong stance against harassment and verbal abuse as a detriment to socioeconomic diversity. 4. “So I don’t know what direction we should shift our norms in overall.” I reject the norm framing but it seems pretty obvious to me that there can be no place for harassment in EA and if you think my message was impolite and you wish I had been kinder it seems you have that preference too.
I agree that Owen’s behavior was not ok in any context. I agree he should be punished for it. I am only disagreeing with the extent of the punishment demanded in the comments on that post and similar comments regarding some other incidents in the Time article.
“If any of them decided to engage further and made clumsy comments while getting used to EA culture, I would want them to be treated with empathy. Much of the conversation around the Time article (especially the response to Owen Cotton-Barratt’s mistake) has given me the impression that they would not be.”
1. That does not give the impression of thinking his behavior was serious (you reference clumsy comments and refer to his behavior as a “mistake”) and when you combine it with referencing banter culture it comes across like you are saying he was just bantering which he clearly was not. 2. I haven’t expressed an opinion on punishment here. My core issue here is that I object to painting a strong stance on harassment as detrimental to socio-economic diversity and the implicature that carries with it.
I did find your comments on that post and believe we have very different perspectives on how serious the punishment should be. I thought the likelihood of someone familiar with lower class banter culture having such different opinions from me about the punishment was low, so I really appreciate you speaking up!
“It didn’t occur to me that someone familiar with lower-class banter culture would have such different opinions from me about the punishment, so I appreciate you speaking up!” 1. It’s not banter, it’s sexual harassment. We know banter, it’s playful and consensual. It’s not this. 2. Being poor made me vulnerable, I don’t want anyone to go through what I did, and to the extent I have jurisdiction, I’m staking my flag and dying on the hill that people who harass get kicked out. We disagree and I’m pretty crabby about your post but I appreciate your stated openness to engaging with me on this issue.
I’m actually more open than I appear, and feel bad about not engaging more with you about the details. I want to, but going through all that again like we did in the comments on Owen’s post would be too distracting from school for me right now.
I agree with this, and want to share a concrete proposal that might help that I recently wrote a shortform about. Here’s the content of the shortform:
“On Socioeconomic Diversity:
I want to explain how the discourse on sexual misconduct may be reducing the specific type of socioeconomic diversity I am personally familiar with.
I’m a white female American who worked as an HVAC technician with co-workers mostly from racial minorities before going to college. Most of the sexual misconduct incidents discussed in the Time article have likely differed from standard workplace discussions in my former career only in that the higher status person expressed romantic/sexual attraction, making their statement much more vulnerable than the trash-talk I’m familiar with. In the places most of my workplace experience comes from, people of all genders and statuses make sexual jokes about coworkers of all genders and statuses not only in their field, but while on the clock. I had tremendous fun participating in these conversations. It didn’t feel sexist to me because I gave as good as I got. My experience generalizes well; Even when Donald Trump made a joke about sexual assault that many upper-class Americans believed disqualified him, immediately before the election he won, Republican women were no more likely to think he should drop out of the race than Republican voters in general. Donald Trump has been able to maintain much of his popularity despite denying the legitimacy of a legitimate election in part because he identified the gatekeeping elements of upper-class American norms as classist. I am strongly against Trump, but believe we should note that many female Americans from poorer backgrounds enjoy these conversations, and many more oppose the kind of punishments popular in upper class American communities. This means strongly disliking these conversations is not an intrinsic virtue, but a decision EA culture has made that is about more than simple morality.
When I post about EA on social media, many of my co-workers from my blue-collar days think it sounds really cool. If any of them decided to engage further and made clumsy comments while getting used to EA culture, I would want them to be treated with empathy. Much of the conversation around the Time article (especially the response to Owen Cotton-Barratt’s mistake) has given me the impression that they would not be. We are a left-leaning movement. We need to include more conservative political perspectives to improve our data and get politicians to take our views on the worst catastrophes the world faces seriously. I feel my experience with much more poverty than the average EA has contributed unique insights that have improved our philosophical perspectives. The probability of an American raised in the poorest 20% (where my personal pre-college career experience comes from) reaching the richest 20% by age 26 is roughly a 3rd that of an American raised in the richest 20%. This likely means we miss out on some important professional talent by being intolerant towards lower class American norms. I am not advocating a switch to lower class American gender norms, just seeing the humanity more in the many people who have chosen them and therefore the people that accidentally violate upper-class American ones in good faith.”
Not American, but I’m from Hong Kong and the higher acceptability of “saying things in a blunt way” in the socioeconomic circles I grew up in rings true to me. A caveat that traditional Chinese culture makes it more uncommon for discussions to center around sexual things. That said, it seems that if sexual things do come up, people aren’t super averse to it in the way that people in elite Western circles are. (Except in and around church. I grew up Protestant.)
The main (economic) factor might be that my parents and relatives all grew up poor (a common background for many people in HK) and that I have a sort-of-working class background (parents still broke but relatives became better off—got a great education with help from relatives but lived relatively worse off with my parents -it’s complicated). My sense is that my priorities are very different from Western EAs with more money, or actually, even other people in my home city with more money.
I’m guessing that for the generation before me, growing up in a small flat with 6 other siblings, it just doesn’t really matter if someone’s kind of “vulgar” or speaks kind of bluntly. And if people deliberately offend you with a comment, sure enough, you might get angry at that person—but it’s unlikely that you’ll find what they said paralyzing.
I myself grew up in better conditions, but maybe the cultural memory of severe material hardship persists, at least for a while. I didn’t really care that much when friends from school used explicit language. Because it frequently happened on a daily basis. Some of my (~middle class) friends and I often said “offensive things” to each other in the past for fun, and sometimes I kind of miss the opportunity to do that (sometimes not though) since now my social circles mostly consist of people from the upper/upper middle classes.
I finally signed up for the forum just to upvote this contribution, I appreciate it so much.
Sonia—excellent points. Strongly agree.
EA needs to be genuinely inclusive not just in terms of sex, race, nationality, etc., but in terms of social class and political values. And many of the recent discussions in EA Forum community posts might look quite odd and alienating to people who have experienced and enjoyed the kind of blunt, unpretentious, thick-skinned, working class culture that you mentioned.
Yup. Not to mention that EA community is based also in the countries other than the US, which, I feel, is often forgotten about.
Yes! And a note on that: I’ve heard of some low and middle income country cultures with sex/dating norms similar to lower class American ones, and some with sex/dating norms even more reserved than upper class American ones. This means I have no idea what alterations would produce more socioeconomic diversity on net, and encourage people from other countries to speak up about their cultural norms.
Sorry, it will be not a very kind comment and a bit of a rant—upper American class on this forum keeps saying “if you are in a position of power you should be very considerate of others and their boundaries, and give them space, because sometimes they may feel pressured to agree with you and find it hard to speak up”. Yeah, exactly.
I’m actually a bit confused about what you mean. Can you elaborate? Also, are you criticizing me or other people?
Other people. I feel that certain perspectives on the forum are expressed very strongly, and with little consideration towards other points of view. One of them is “if you are in a position of power you should be considerate towards those who are not as they may feel pressured by you” which I agree with. But the same person sometimes also very strongly expresses some other view, regarding, i.e. dating, full of “shoulds” and often strongly rooted in the US norms and culture (in my perspective). I simply find it ironic.
As stated on the other post:
“As someone from a poor family, I find the implicature of this piece, that I cannot control myself from harassing and bullying people, ridiculously offensive to the point of absurdity. The fact it hasn’t got more pushback is the perfect example of “Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble.” I did have a good chuckle at the idea of Owen trying this anywhere near my very blue-collar father though so thanks for that. ”
I’ve been thinking about your perspective lately, and wondered if there is a variable I hadn’t considered enough. I was raised middle class American. For this post, I drew on my decade of experience as a lower class American after a disability left me unable to earn a good living for a long time. My field was heavily male dominated (construction). Since in my experience lower class American norms seem more gendered to me, I would expect the experience of someone who hasn’t worked in a male-dominated lower class American field to be pretty different from mine. My friends were ones I made from work, so they already considered me one of the guys. Do you think your experience was different from mine because you didn’t work in a male-dominated field?
I also suspect I gave off a one-of-the-guys vibe (because that’s the environment I prefer) that you don’t that altered how people treated me. I found this Slate Star Codex post helpful in thinking about this.
Yes, poor people are not a monolith! Some people from our background (especially the people who chose to stick around EA long enough to be on the forum) will prefer current EA norms and feel grateful for them. I don’t mean to dismiss your experiences at all. And like I said earlier, there are many different socioeconomic cultures that are underrepresented in EA, so I don’t know what direction we should shift our norms in overall. Maybe there is that much diversity even within the US. I was speaking about my personal experience as someone from this background and the experiences of all the people I know well enough to know their perspectives from this background. I’m sorry I gave the impression I was trying to speak for you. I also wasn’t accusing us at all of having lack of control, just having the right to prefer different norms if we want to. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective! I do wish you had done so more politely though.
I’m curious: Do you feel like your wider lower class culture was very different from mine, or is it more that your family held different views that were a minority? Also, where were you raised and what role did religion play? My experience comes from Sacramento, California and religion was rarely discussed. I hope you don’t mind me asking these questions; There are so few of us around that EA needs all the data on us it can get!
I really think we are speaking past one another. Back to brass tacks:
1. I do not see Owen’s behavior as being okay in any context.
2. I understand and know well the banter culture you are referring to but what he did is way outside the pale and classifying it as banter is muddying the waters and clouding how serious his behavior actually was.
3. I resent the presentation of taking a strong stance against harassment and verbal abuse as a detriment to socioeconomic diversity.
4. “So I don’t know what direction we should shift our norms in overall.” I reject the norm framing but it seems pretty obvious to me that there can be no place for harassment in EA and if you think my message was impolite and you wish I had been kinder it seems you have that preference too.
I agree that Owen’s behavior was not ok in any context. I agree he should be punished for it. I am only disagreeing with the extent of the punishment demanded in the comments on that post and similar comments regarding some other incidents in the Time article.
“If any of them decided to engage further and made clumsy comments while getting used to EA culture, I would want them to be treated with empathy. Much of the conversation around the Time article (especially the response to Owen Cotton-Barratt’s mistake) has given me the impression that they would not be.”
1. That does not give the impression of thinking his behavior was serious (you reference clumsy comments and refer to his behavior as a “mistake”) and when you combine it with referencing banter culture it comes across like you are saying he was just bantering which he clearly was not.
2. I haven’t expressed an opinion on punishment here. My core issue here is that I object to painting a strong stance on harassment as detrimental to socio-economic diversity and the implicature that carries with it.
I’m sorry my comment gave the wrong impression!
I did find your comments on that post and believe we have very different perspectives on how serious the punishment should be. I thought the likelihood of someone familiar with lower class banter culture having such different opinions from me about the punishment was low, so I really appreciate you speaking up!
“It didn’t occur to me that someone familiar with lower-class banter culture would have such different opinions from me about the punishment, so I appreciate you speaking up!”
1. It’s not banter, it’s sexual harassment. We know banter, it’s playful and consensual. It’s not this.
2. Being poor made me vulnerable, I don’t want anyone to go through what I did, and to the extent I have jurisdiction, I’m staking my flag and dying on the hill that people who harass get kicked out.
We disagree and I’m pretty crabby about your post but I appreciate your stated openness to engaging with me on this issue.
I’m actually more open than I appear, and feel bad about not engaging more with you about the details. I want to, but going through all that again like we did in the comments on Owen’s post would be too distracting from school for me right now.
Please don’t feel bad. Good luck with school :)