Note: I’m really unsure what I believe about the following comment, but I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about it.
Whenever we add an additional condition of the type of thing we want (say, diversity), we sacrifice some amount of the terminal aim (getting the best people). While there are good reasons to care about diversity (optics, founder effects, making people feel more comfortable), there are also ones that are more controversial (for instance—in some cases like grant-making, diversity of sex or race as a proxy for getting a “more diverse outlook” on a particular subject). Let’s call optics/ founder effects instrumental diversity and more diverse outlook diversity. Given this framing, I think two points are important:
Note: I understand that this framing is weird because the kind of diversity of knowledge/ experience is said to be good instrumentally—i still wanted to make a different conceptual category for it because 1) it’s more controversial and 2) some conditions might apply to it that may not apply to other constraints.
Some argue that diversity is a powerful meme and will be hard to resist once you take some of its premises—this type of thing seems particularly apt for value drift. Perhaps this means that EAs should be more hesitant to take on some of the diversity (as opposed to instrumental diversity) points into decision making when hiring and such.
Conditional that someone decides to give some weight to diversity, I think it should be made more clear that this is a diversity point rather than an instrumental diversity point, as the former is more controversial.
I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about this—especially if you think this comment overrates the amount that EAs care about diversity (vs instrumental diversity). I’m also interested in hearing if you think I’m underestimating the reasons for why diversity might be important that I might be missing.
I’m not 100% confident, but I suspect that I’ve read more on diversity than most EAs, so I’ll venture a guess and share some musings. The goal of many diversity efforts is less about adding an additional condition, and more about removing a “hidden” condition that we weren’t really cognizant of. In fact, my impression is that it is incredibly rare to have sex, race, etc., as a condition for employment (although it may often be an unofficial condition in a social, non-professional context). I do think that often this is done poorly and it often fails, but I don’t think that is an EA-specific thing.
Broadly speaking, my informal mental framework is that there tend to be two reasons for diversity and similar initiatives for an organization/company: the justice/fairness argument, and the innovation/creativity argument. I’m at the risk of rambling here, so I’ll instead just leave a link to a Notion page that I put together a while back: Joseph’s notes on Diversity.
I don’t have any data, but I hypothesize that most engaged EAs care about both instrumental diversity and diversity[1]. Each of them has uses/benefits, but it would be a bit foolish to naively assume that either of them is useful in all contexts, for all end goals. I do think that a diverse outlook (or experience, or knowledge) can be very helpful in certain contexts, but unfortunately we (I mean people in general) often use membership in a certain group as a sloppy and imperfect proxy for that outlook.[2] When superficial diversity is what gets emphasized, then you end up with “All skin folk ain’t kinfolk.” I’m reminded of a quote from The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, from a Mexican student at Harvard College who “struggled to come to terms with the huge gap between himself and other people who looked like him.”
I started realizing race and class didn’t always go hand in hand. There were minorities I thought I could relate to, but when they talk about money, I feel the distance.… Moving in, my floor posted our hometowns on the doors. I see Mexico City. I was like “Another Mexican? We’re about to be homies!” I was so excited. But he was an aristocrat from Mexico. He says, “Dallas Cowboys; they’re my favorite team. I have my dad fly me out to every home game.” Excuse me! Plane ticket, game tickets, hotel: Are you joking? That was shocking; my first introduction to the huge disparities… he has this Ralph Lauren velvet, beautiful bathrobe. He’s like, “I don’t want to pack this.” He’s going to throw it away. I took it.
For a more light-hearted critique, here is a meme/joke about diversity along Wall Street Analysts. (for anybody without the culture context, the snarky joke here is that these people are all from incredibly wealthy backgrounds, and are quite similar in all ways aside from superficial diversity).
Although we might label them as something like the appearance of diversity and diversity of perspective. Both of them have value, but American pop-culture tends to focus much more on the former. I might also be engaged in too much sloppy generalization, assuming that my values and perspectives are widely shared. So take this all with a grain of salt.
I’m reminded about hearing how many black Americans were very happy in 2008 when Obama was elected as president, but who also felt that in a certain sense he didn’t really represent them, because his childhood and his experiences were so different. The thought experiment that I occasionally use is to think of a stereotypical college brochures showing a group of students, and imagine which variation would be more diverse:
a group of students of the same race, gender, ethnicity, and disability status with radically different worldviews and life experiences (maybe one is a upper middle class American Marxist, one grew up in a slum and can barely read, one is a hardcore Buddhist who as taken a vow of silence, one was orphaned and then grew up in a series of short-term foster care homes), or
a group of students of a various races, genders, ethnicities, and disability statuses, all of whom had broadly similar life experiences (maybe they grew up in the same neighborhood, with similar family income levels, attended the same school, read the same books, etc.).
Note: I’m really unsure what I believe about the following comment, but I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about it.
Whenever we add an additional condition of the type of thing we want (say, diversity), we sacrifice some amount of the terminal aim (getting the best people). While there are good reasons to care about diversity (optics, founder effects, making people feel more comfortable), there are also ones that are more controversial (for instance—in some cases like grant-making, diversity of sex or race as a proxy for getting a “more diverse outlook” on a particular subject). Let’s call optics/ founder effects instrumental diversity and more diverse outlook diversity. Given this framing, I think two points are important:
Note: I understand that this framing is weird because the kind of diversity of knowledge/ experience is said to be good instrumentally—i still wanted to make a different conceptual category for it because 1) it’s more controversial and 2) some conditions might apply to it that may not apply to other constraints.
Some argue that diversity is a powerful meme and will be hard to resist once you take some of its premises—this type of thing seems particularly apt for value drift. Perhaps this means that EAs should be more hesitant to take on some of the diversity (as opposed to instrumental diversity) points into decision making when hiring and such.
Conditional that someone decides to give some weight to diversity, I think it should be made more clear that this is a diversity point rather than an instrumental diversity point, as the former is more controversial.
I’m interested in hearing what others have to say about this—especially if you think this comment overrates the amount that EAs care about diversity (vs instrumental diversity). I’m also interested in hearing if you think I’m underestimating the reasons for why diversity might be important that I might be missing.
I’m not 100% confident, but I suspect that I’ve read more on diversity than most EAs, so I’ll venture a guess and share some musings. The goal of many diversity efforts is less about adding an additional condition, and more about removing a “hidden” condition that we weren’t really cognizant of. In fact, my impression is that it is incredibly rare to have sex, race, etc., as a condition for employment (although it may often be an unofficial condition in a social, non-professional context). I do think that often this is done poorly and it often fails, but I don’t think that is an EA-specific thing.
Broadly speaking, my informal mental framework is that there tend to be two reasons for diversity and similar initiatives for an organization/company: the justice/fairness argument, and the innovation/creativity argument. I’m at the risk of rambling here, so I’ll instead just leave a link to a Notion page that I put together a while back: Joseph’s notes on Diversity.
I don’t have any data, but I hypothesize that most engaged EAs care about both instrumental diversity and diversity[1]. Each of them has uses/benefits, but it would be a bit foolish to naively assume that either of them is useful in all contexts, for all end goals. I do think that a diverse outlook (or experience, or knowledge) can be very helpful in certain contexts, but unfortunately we (I mean people in general) often use membership in a certain group as a sloppy and imperfect proxy for that outlook.[2] When superficial diversity is what gets emphasized, then you end up with “All skin folk ain’t kinfolk.” I’m reminded of a quote from The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, from a Mexican student at Harvard College who “struggled to come to terms with the huge gap between himself and other people who looked like him.”
For a more light-hearted critique, here is a meme/joke about diversity along Wall Street Analysts. (for anybody without the culture context, the snarky joke here is that these people are all from incredibly wealthy backgrounds, and are quite similar in all ways aside from superficial diversity).
Although we might label them as something like the appearance of diversity and diversity of perspective. Both of them have value, but American pop-culture tends to focus much more on the former. I might also be engaged in too much sloppy generalization, assuming that my values and perspectives are widely shared. So take this all with a grain of salt.
I’m reminded about hearing how many black Americans were very happy in 2008 when Obama was elected as president, but who also felt that in a certain sense he didn’t really represent them, because his childhood and his experiences were so different. The thought experiment that I occasionally use is to think of a stereotypical college brochures showing a group of students, and imagine which variation would be more diverse:
a group of students of the same race, gender, ethnicity, and disability status with radically different worldviews and life experiences (maybe one is a upper middle class American Marxist, one grew up in a slum and can barely read, one is a hardcore Buddhist who as taken a vow of silence, one was orphaned and then grew up in a series of short-term foster care homes), or
a group of students of a various races, genders, ethnicities, and disability statuses, all of whom had broadly similar life experiences (maybe they grew up in the same neighborhood, with similar family income levels, attended the same school, read the same books, etc.).