I made a quick graph of high-level categories for the question âWhat if anything do your personally dislike about EA?â
Notes on the categories:
âBehavior or attitue towards othersâ is comprised of: Elitism, Arrogant/âcondescending, Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissive.
âLack of interest in EA cause areasâ Iâve added in specific cause areas e.g. AI safety or Animal Welfare.
Here is the Google Sheet with the all the categorizations. You could also copy /â recategorize the data if you wishâIâd be curious what other ways we might categorize these issues.
Some things I thought of while making this chart
Whatâs interesting about this question is itâs asking about personal dislikes. Presumably these answers are based on peopleâs subjective experiences or general opinions on the community -I wonder what people would say if the question were more broad /â objective (e.g. âHow is EA failing to have impact /â What would you change about the EA community to ensure it has more impact going forward etc.)
For the âAttitudes towards EA communityâ questions, it would be interesting to compare them to other movements /â communities to try and benchmark them somehow.
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 doesnât follow that the item best fits in superordinate category 1 rather than one of the other superordinate categories.
Iâm not sure I would categorise many of the items in âElitism⊠Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissiveâ etc. as âBehaviour or attitude towards others.â At least some of these may be based more on a general impression of the community (e.g. seeing many/âmost of the major figures seem to be from Oxbridge) rather than on actual behaviours by individuals. Likewise the appearance of very âhigh standardsâ may be only very tangentially related to specific behaviours.
I also definitely wouldnât round off comments about AI or animal welfare as âlack of interest in EA cause areas.â If people complain about the communitybeing too focused on AI to the exclusion of other cause areas, itâs often because they are very interested in the other EA cause areas.
I agree with that. Also, âElitism⊠Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissiveâ etc all tend to be a particular sort of behaviours/âattitudes, relating to elitism and exclusivity. So one may want a more specific term or phrase than âbehavior or attitude towards othersâ.
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 Iâd maybe categorise under âelitistâ (although I donât want to because I think that term has different connotations for people). But perhaps something like âEAs are perceived as being better than non-EAsâ an this is expressed as the items I mentioned.
But perhaps it wouldnât be possible to draw these inferences without the comments themselves, where Iâd imagine people discussed these overlapping topics.
Iâve 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 Iâd maybe categorise under âelitistâ (although I donât want to because I think that term has different connotations for people). But perhaps something like âEAs are perceived as being better than non-EAsâ an this is expressed as the items I mentioned.
I think thereâs something of a family resemblance, but that it still wouldnât be possible to categorise them all as one thing. For example, I donât think disliking âhigh standardsâ, necessarily entails disliking a âperceived attitude towards othersâ, or necessarily even thinking that anyone has any particular attitude towards others. I would think itâs difficult/âimpossible to reliable tease these apart without access to the specific responses (which is unfortunately impossible, since we donât have permission to share any of peopleâs 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 itâs relatively time-intensive to do.
To get another reference point I coded the âHigh Standardsâ comments and found that 75% did not seem to be about âperceived attitudes towards others.â 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 âeveryone in the community is so talentedâ etc.
I made a quick graph of high-level categories for the question âWhat if anything do your personally dislike about EA?â
Notes on the categories:
âBehavior or attitue towards othersâ is comprised of: Elitism, Arrogant/âcondescending, Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissive.
âLack of interest in EA cause areasâ Iâve added in specific cause areas e.g. AI safety or Animal Welfare.
Here is the Google Sheet with the all the categorizations. You could also copy /â recategorize the data if you wishâIâd be curious what other ways we might categorize these issues.
Some things I thought of while making this chart
Whatâs interesting about this question is itâs asking about personal dislikes. Presumably these answers are based on peopleâs subjective experiences or general opinions on the community -I wonder what people would say if the question were more broad /â objective (e.g. âHow is EA failing to have impact /â What would you change about the EA community to ensure it has more impact going forward etc.)
For the âAttitudes towards EA communityâ questions, it would be interesting to compare them to other movements /â communities to try and benchmark them somehow.
Thanks! This is interesting to see.
A few caveats/âcomments:
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 doesnât follow that the item best fits in superordinate category 1 rather than one of the other superordinate categories.
Iâm not sure I would categorise many of the items in âElitism⊠Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissiveâ etc. as âBehaviour or attitude towards others.â At least some of these may be based more on a general impression of the community (e.g. seeing many/âmost of the major figures seem to be from Oxbridge) rather than on actual behaviours by individuals. Likewise the appearance of very âhigh standardsâ may be only very tangentially related to specific behaviours.
I also definitely wouldnât round off comments about AI or animal welfare as âlack of interest in EA cause areas.â If people complain about the communitybeing too focused on AI to the exclusion of other cause areas, itâs often because they are very interested in the other EA cause areas.
I agree with that. Also, âElitism⊠Exclusive, High standards, Hubris, Dismissiveâ etc all tend to be a particular sort of behaviours/âattitudes, relating to elitism and exclusivity. So one may want a more specific term or phrase than âbehavior or attitude towards othersâ.
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 Iâd maybe categorise under âelitistâ (although I donât want to because I think that term has different connotations for people). But perhaps something like âEAs are perceived as being better than non-EAsâ an this is expressed as the items I mentioned.
But perhaps it wouldnât be possible to draw these inferences without the comments themselves, where Iâd imagine people discussed these overlapping topics.
Iâve updated the category name for now based on the above + split the lack of interest from what you mentioned in point 3.
I think thereâs something of a family resemblance, but that it still wouldnât be possible to categorise them all as one thing. For example, I donât think disliking âhigh standardsâ, necessarily entails disliking a âperceived attitude towards othersâ, or necessarily even thinking that anyone has any particular attitude towards others. I would think itâs difficult/âimpossible to reliable tease these apart without access to the specific responses (which is unfortunately impossible, since we donât have permission to share any of peopleâs 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 itâs relatively time-intensive to do.
To get another reference point I coded the âHigh Standardsâ comments and found that 75% did not seem to be about âperceived attitudes towards others.â 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 âeveryone in the community is so talentedâ etc.