It makes me feel anxious to get a lot of downvotes with no explanation so I really appreciate your comment.
Just to clarify when you say “if that is a real tradeoff that a founder faces in practice, it is nearly always an indication the founder just hasn’t bothered to put much time or effort into cultivating a diverse professional network” I think I agree, but that this isn’t always something the founder could have predicted ahead of time, and the founder isn’t necessarily to blame. I think it can be very easy to ‘accidentally’ end up with a fairly homogeneous network eg. because your profession or university is homogenous. Sounds like Marcus is in this category himself (if tennis is mainly white, and his network is mainly tennis players).
Oh sure, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Lots of people have homogeneous networks through no fault of their own. But if that’s the case for you and you’re trying to do something for which having a diverse network would be helpful, then it’s something you need to budget time and energy towards just as it would be the case for ensuring strong organizational infrastructure, funding, etc. So that’s why I thought it was really valuable for you to point that out to Marcus, who seems to be getting an otherwise very promising project off the ground. :)
Re: the downvotes, I wish I could just say not to let them bother you, but the truth is they make me anxious too. Unfortunately there are a handful of EA Forum users who routinely strong-downvote posts and comments that have any whiff of a social/racial justice message.
From my perspective this is more just a complicated and controversial topic where people disagree a lot. You both framed your comments in a way that doesn’t acknowledge that reasonable people may disagree, which might make it more disagreeable for people with different perspectives. And critical feedback might be sparse because it’s so time and energy consuming to hash it out. I think it might be a bit uncharitable to think the people who downvoted are just social/racial justice detectors, no? And I agree, I also wish this wouldn’t make anyone feel anxious (and I definitely would feel anxious, too, even responding here and only implying that I disagree with you feels scary to me).
Hi there, I want to start by saying I certainly don’t want anyone here to feel scared to engage in constructive dialogue! And I agree that we should leave room to disagree reasonably with each other in our comments.
With that said, I’m honestly not sure why you feel that Alex and I didn’t do that. Quoting from Alex’s comment: “it seems worth flagging”; “some discussion of why this might matter”; “I just think it’s something to be aware of.” Quoting from mine: “I want to voice my support”; “in my opinion”; “I’ve come to believe”; “of course I don’t recommend [extreme version of my view].” Is there something else you would have liked to see?
I don’t think this is the right thread for a broader back-and-forth about downvoting behavior for reasons I elaborate on below, so I’ll just note for the record that I did not make any claim about the motivations of the downvoters, only an observation about the patterns I’ve seen over a long period of time (not just in this thread).
The final thing I’ll say is that while I think the topic of team selection and diversity is quite important for entrepreneurs in general, I don’t wish to see it overshadow the other good conversations about High Impact Athletes that are taking place on this page. For that reason, I’ve strong-upvoted some of the other top-level comments so that they’ll rank higher and hopefully be seen first.
Thanks! I appreciate it :)
It makes me feel anxious to get a lot of downvotes with no explanation so I really appreciate your comment.
Just to clarify when you say “if that is a real tradeoff that a founder faces in practice, it is nearly always an indication the founder just hasn’t bothered to put much time or effort into cultivating a diverse professional network” I think I agree, but that this isn’t always something the founder could have predicted ahead of time, and the founder isn’t necessarily to blame. I think it can be very easy to ‘accidentally’ end up with a fairly homogeneous network eg. because your profession or university is homogenous. Sounds like Marcus is in this category himself (if tennis is mainly white, and his network is mainly tennis players).
Oh sure, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Lots of people have homogeneous networks through no fault of their own. But if that’s the case for you and you’re trying to do something for which having a diverse network would be helpful, then it’s something you need to budget time and energy towards just as it would be the case for ensuring strong organizational infrastructure, funding, etc. So that’s why I thought it was really valuable for you to point that out to Marcus, who seems to be getting an otherwise very promising project off the ground. :)
Re: the downvotes, I wish I could just say not to let them bother you, but the truth is they make me anxious too. Unfortunately there are a handful of EA Forum users who routinely strong-downvote posts and comments that have any whiff of a social/racial justice message.
From my perspective this is more just a complicated and controversial topic where people disagree a lot. You both framed your comments in a way that doesn’t acknowledge that reasonable people may disagree, which might make it more disagreeable for people with different perspectives. And critical feedback might be sparse because it’s so time and energy consuming to hash it out. I think it might be a bit uncharitable to think the people who downvoted are just social/racial justice detectors, no? And I agree, I also wish this wouldn’t make anyone feel anxious (and I definitely would feel anxious, too, even responding here and only implying that I disagree with you feels scary to me).
Hi there, I want to start by saying I certainly don’t want anyone here to feel scared to engage in constructive dialogue! And I agree that we should leave room to disagree reasonably with each other in our comments.
With that said, I’m honestly not sure why you feel that Alex and I didn’t do that. Quoting from Alex’s comment: “it seems worth flagging”; “some discussion of why this might matter”; “I just think it’s something to be aware of.” Quoting from mine: “I want to voice my support”; “in my opinion”; “I’ve come to believe”; “of course I don’t recommend [extreme version of my view].” Is there something else you would have liked to see?
I don’t think this is the right thread for a broader back-and-forth about downvoting behavior for reasons I elaborate on below, so I’ll just note for the record that I did not make any claim about the motivations of the downvoters, only an observation about the patterns I’ve seen over a long period of time (not just in this thread).
The final thing I’ll say is that while I think the topic of team selection and diversity is quite important for entrepreneurs in general, I don’t wish to see it overshadow the other good conversations about High Impact Athletes that are taking place on this page. For that reason, I’ve strong-upvoted some of the other top-level comments so that they’ll rank higher and hopefully be seen first.