Recategorising comments into superordinate categories based on the category they were assigned to is inherently going to be a bit questionable. Even if an item best fits category A, and category A (considered in the abstract) broadly seems like it fits in superordinate category 1, it doesn’t follow that the item best fits in superordinate category 1 rather than one of the other superordinate categories.
I’m not sure I would categorise many of the items in “Elitism… Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissive” etc. as “Behaviour or attitude towards others.” At least some of these may be based more on a general impression of the community (e.g. seeing many/most of the major figures seem to be from Oxbridge) rather than on actual behaviours by individuals. Likewise the appearance of very “high standards” may be only very tangentially related to specific behaviours.
I also definitely wouldn’t round off comments about AI or animal welfare as “lack of interest in EA cause areas.” If people complain about the communitybeing too focused on AI to the exclusion of other cause areas, it’s often because they are very interested in the other EA cause areas.
I agree with that. Also, “Elitism… Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissive” etc all tend to be a particular sort of behaviours/attitudes, relating to elitism and exclusivity. So one may want a more specific term or phrase than “behavior or attitude towards others”.
This is all really useful, especially the second point regarding actual vs. perceived behaviors.
I do think there are some similarities between all these points that I’d maybe categorise under “elitist” (although I don’t want to because I think that term has different connotations for people). But perhaps something like “EAs are perceived as being better than non-EAs” an this is expressed as the items I mentioned.
But perhaps it wouldn’t be possible to draw these inferences without the comments themselves, where I’d imagine people discussed these overlapping topics.
I’ve updated the category name for now based on the above + split the lack of interest from what you mentioned in point 3.
I do think there are some similarities between all these points that I’d maybe categorise under “elitist” (although I don’t want to because I think that term has different connotations for people). But perhaps something like “EAs are perceived as being better than non-EAs” an this is expressed as the items I mentioned.
I think there’s something of a family resemblance, but that it still wouldn’t be possible to categorise them all as one thing. For example, I don’t think disliking “high standards”, necessarily entails disliking a “perceived attitude towards others”, or necessarily even thinking that anyone has any particular attitude towards others. I would think it’s difficult/impossible to reliable tease these apart without access to the specific responses (which is unfortunately impossible, since we don’t have permission to share any of people’s qualitative responses).
If there was sufficient interest we could analyse this with more of a qualitative network approach, which can identify these clusters, but as you can imagine it’s relatively time-intensive to do.
To get another reference point I coded the “High Standards” comments and found that 75% did not seem to be about “perceived attitudes towards others.” Many comments explicitly disavowed the idea that that they think EAs look down on others, for example, but still reported that they feel bad because of demandingness considerations or because ‘everyone in the community is so talented’ etc.
Thanks! This is interesting to see.
A few caveats/comments:
Recategorising comments into superordinate categories based on the category they were assigned to is inherently going to be a bit questionable. Even if an item best fits category A, and category A (considered in the abstract) broadly seems like it fits in superordinate category 1, it doesn’t follow that the item best fits in superordinate category 1 rather than one of the other superordinate categories.
I’m not sure I would categorise many of the items in “Elitism… Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissive” etc. as “Behaviour or attitude towards others.” At least some of these may be based more on a general impression of the community (e.g. seeing many/most of the major figures seem to be from Oxbridge) rather than on actual behaviours by individuals. Likewise the appearance of very “high standards” may be only very tangentially related to specific behaviours.
I also definitely wouldn’t round off comments about AI or animal welfare as “lack of interest in EA cause areas.” If people complain about the communitybeing too focused on AI to the exclusion of other cause areas, it’s often because they are very interested in the other EA cause areas.
I agree with that. Also, “Elitism… Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissive” etc all tend to be a particular sort of behaviours/attitudes, relating to elitism and exclusivity. So one may want a more specific term or phrase than “behavior or attitude towards others”.
This is all really useful, especially the second point regarding actual vs. perceived behaviors.
I do think there are some similarities between all these points that I’d maybe categorise under “elitist” (although I don’t want to because I think that term has different connotations for people). But perhaps something like “EAs are perceived as being better than non-EAs” an this is expressed as the items I mentioned.
But perhaps it wouldn’t be possible to draw these inferences without the comments themselves, where I’d imagine people discussed these overlapping topics.
I’ve updated the category name for now based on the above + split the lack of interest from what you mentioned in point 3.
I think there’s something of a family resemblance, but that it still wouldn’t be possible to categorise them all as one thing. For example, I don’t think disliking “high standards”, necessarily entails disliking a “perceived attitude towards others”, or necessarily even thinking that anyone has any particular attitude towards others. I would think it’s difficult/impossible to reliable tease these apart without access to the specific responses (which is unfortunately impossible, since we don’t have permission to share any of people’s qualitative responses).
If there was sufficient interest we could analyse this with more of a qualitative network approach, which can identify these clusters, but as you can imagine it’s relatively time-intensive to do.
To get another reference point I coded the “High Standards” comments and found that 75% did not seem to be about “perceived attitudes towards others.” Many comments explicitly disavowed the idea that that they think EAs look down on others, for example, but still reported that they feel bad because of demandingness considerations or because ‘everyone in the community is so talented’ etc.