I found the part about philosophers being well-suited to many aspects of EA research especially interesting. You said this:
Contrary to popular stereotypes, philosophers often excel at quantitative thinking. Many philosophy PhDs have an undergraduate background in math or science. For subfields of philosophy like formal epistemology, population ethics, experimental philosophy, decision theory, philosophy of science, and, of course, logic, a strong command of quantitative skills is essential. Even beyond these subfields, quantitative acumen is prized. In analytic philosophy in particular, papers with a lot of math and formalism are more likely to be taken seriously than comparable papers explained informally.
Do you have any data about philosophy PhDs often having an undergraduate background in math or science? I, for example, have chosen a lot of courses in mathematical economics, data analysis, and social science research methodology to support my philosophy degree, but this is very uncommon in my experience. However, this depends a lot on the region and surely USA and UK are different than continental Europe on this matter.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any hard data to back up that claim, just extensive anecdotal evidence from roughly seven years interacting with professional philosophers and philosophy graduate students. And my anecdotal evidence skews heavily toward the US, so I’m not in a position to even hazard a guess about the prevalence of philosophy PhDs with STEM backgrounds in continental Europe. Sorry!
I found the part about philosophers being well-suited to many aspects of EA research especially interesting. You said this:
Do you have any data about philosophy PhDs often having an undergraduate background in math or science? I, for example, have chosen a lot of courses in mathematical economics, data analysis, and social science research methodology to support my philosophy degree, but this is very uncommon in my experience. However, this depends a lot on the region and surely USA and UK are different than continental Europe on this matter.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any hard data to back up that claim, just extensive anecdotal evidence from roughly seven years interacting with professional philosophers and philosophy graduate students. And my anecdotal evidence skews heavily toward the US, so I’m not in a position to even hazard a guess about the prevalence of philosophy PhDs with STEM backgrounds in continental Europe. Sorry!