Interesting article. I would like to raise one quabble:
Advocates for traditional diversity metrics such as race, gender and class do so precisely because they track different ways of thinking.
I agree this is the stated reason for many corporate diversity advocates, but I think it is not their true reason. In practice many companies recruit using basically a combination of filters whose purpose is to select people with a certain way of thinking (e.g. resumes, interviews, psychological screens) combined with various quotas for desired racial groups. If getting cognitive diversity was the goal they would try testing and selecting for that directly, or at least stop actively selecting against it. The status quo is likely to mean McKinsey get people from a variety of races, all of whom went to Harvard Business School, which I presume is basically what we want. After all, while cognitive diversity in some regards is useful, we want everyone to have the same (high) level of the cluster of skills that make up being a good consultant, like diligence, intelligence and sociability.
In particular, that even if hypothetically research showed that traditional racial/sexual diversity inhibited useful cognitive diversity (perhaps by making people less comfortable about sharing their views), advocates would be unlikely to change their mind.
I think their true motivations are more like some combination of:
Desire to appeal to a variety of audiences who would be less likely to buy from an outsider (e.g. hiring black sales guys to sell in black areas).
Wanting to avoid being criticized as racist by hostile outsiders.
Left wing conceptions of fairness on behalf of HR staff and other management, unrelated to firm objectives.
Intellectual conformism with others who believe for the previous three reasons.
A non-exhaustive subset of admired individuals I believe includes: … As far as I perceive it, all revered individuals are male.
It seems a little rude to make public lists of perceived intelligence. Imagine how it would feel to be a prominent EA and to be excluded from the list? :-( In this case, I think you have excluded some people who are definitely higher in community estimation that some on your list, including some prominent women.
Members write articles about him in apparent awe and possibly jest
The linked article is from over eleven years ago. I think GWWC hadn’t even launched at that point, let alone the rest of the EA community. This is like attacking democrats because Obama thought gay marriage was immoral and was trying to build a border wall with Mexico, both of which were the case in 2009.
1. I never spoke specifically of corporate advocates, so despite the fact that I agree with you that other motives are often at play, my point here was that one reason some advocates support traditional diversity is because they have reason to believe it tracks different views on the world. That’s neither mutually exclusive with the reasons you outline nor is this article about corporate motivation.
2. As you cite I state this list is ‘non-exhaustive’. If the prominent EAs who are not on this list agree that reverence is not good for a community’s epistemic health, then they should not even want to be on the list. After publishing this article I was also notified of prominant female EAs who could have maybe made this list, but since I only listed individuals who I experienced directly as being talked about in a revered manner, they are not listed. My experience won’t generalise to all experiences. My two points here are: there are revered individuals and they are mostly male. I agree there are likely a few revered women, but I would be surprised if they are numerous enough to balance out the male bias.
3. Fair point. I find it hard to tell how much things have changed and simply wanted to point out some evidence I found in writing.
My experience being named “Julia” in EA is that people periodically tell me how much they love my podcast, until they find out I’m not actually Julia Galef.
Interesting article. I would like to raise one quabble:
I agree this is the stated reason for many corporate diversity advocates, but I think it is not their true reason. In practice many companies recruit using basically a combination of filters whose purpose is to select people with a certain way of thinking (e.g. resumes, interviews, psychological screens) combined with various quotas for desired racial groups. If getting cognitive diversity was the goal they would try testing and selecting for that directly, or at least stop actively selecting against it. The status quo is likely to mean McKinsey get people from a variety of races, all of whom went to Harvard Business School, which I presume is basically what we want. After all, while cognitive diversity in some regards is useful, we want everyone to have the same (high) level of the cluster of skills that make up being a good consultant, like diligence, intelligence and sociability.
In particular, that even if hypothetically research showed that traditional racial/sexual diversity inhibited useful cognitive diversity (perhaps by making people less comfortable about sharing their views), advocates would be unlikely to change their mind.
I think their true motivations are more like some combination of:
Desire to appeal to a variety of audiences who would be less likely to buy from an outsider (e.g. hiring black sales guys to sell in black areas).
Wanting to avoid being criticized as racist by hostile outsiders.
Left wing conceptions of fairness on behalf of HR staff and other management, unrelated to firm objectives.
Intellectual conformism with others who believe for the previous three reasons.
It seems a little rude to make public lists of perceived intelligence. Imagine how it would feel to be a prominent EA and to be excluded from the list? :-( In this case, I think you have excluded some people who are definitely higher in community estimation that some on your list, including some prominent women.
The linked article is from over eleven years ago. I think GWWC hadn’t even launched at that point, let alone the rest of the EA community. This is like attacking democrats because Obama thought gay marriage was immoral and was trying to build a border wall with Mexico, both of which were the case in 2009.
1. I never spoke specifically of corporate advocates, so despite the fact that I agree with you that other motives are often at play, my point here was that one reason some advocates support traditional diversity is because they have reason to believe it tracks different views on the world. That’s neither mutually exclusive with the reasons you outline nor is this article about corporate motivation.
2. As you cite I state this list is ‘non-exhaustive’. If the prominent EAs who are not on this list agree that reverence is not good for a community’s epistemic health, then they should not even want to be on the list. After publishing this article I was also notified of prominant female EAs who could have maybe made this list, but since I only listed individuals who I experienced directly as being talked about in a revered manner, they are not listed. My experience won’t generalise to all experiences. My two points here are: there are revered individuals and they are mostly male. I agree there are likely a few revered women, but I would be surprised if they are numerous enough to balance out the male bias.
3. Fair point. I find it hard to tell how much things have changed and simply wanted to point out some evidence I found in writing.
My experience being named “Julia” in EA is that people periodically tell me how much they love my podcast, until they find out I’m not actually Julia Galef.