I’m claiming the latter, yes. I do agree it’s hard to prove, but I place high subjective credence (~88%) on it. Put simply, if I can directly observe factors that would tend to lower the representation of WEIRD ethnic minorities, I don’t necessarily need to have an estmate of the percentages of WEIRD people who are ethnic minorities, or even of the percentage of people in EA who are from ethnic minorities. I only need to think that the factors are meaningful enough to lead to meaningful differences in representation, and not being offset by comparably-meaningful factors in the other direction. Some of these factors are innocuous, some less so.
But if you’re interested in public attempts to take the direct comparison route, which I fully acknowledge would be stronger evidence if done well, you might find this post of relevance. (Note I’m not necessarily advocating for the concrete suggestions in the post, mostly linking for the counts at the start.)
I’m claiming the latter, yes. I do agree it’s hard to prove, but I place high subjective credence (~88%) on it. Put simply, if I can directly observe factors that would tend to lower the representation of WEIRD ethnic minorities, I don’t necessarily need to have an estmate of the percentages of WEIRD people who are ethnic minorities, or even of the percentage of people in EA who are from ethnic minorities. I only need to think that the factors are meaningful enough to lead to meaningful differences in representation, and not being offset by comparably-meaningful factors in the other direction. Some of these factors are innocuous, some less so.
But if you’re interested in public attempts to take the direct comparison route, which I fully acknowledge would be stronger evidence if done well, you might find this post of relevance. (Note I’m not necessarily advocating for the concrete suggestions in the post, mostly linking for the counts at the start.)