Aside from Ops people, I’d guess the other five groups are already strongly overrepresented in EA. This exercise may be sending an unintended message that “EA wants more of the same”, and I suspect you could tweak the question to convey “EA values diverse perspectives” without sacrificing any quality in the discussion. Over the long-term, you’ll get much better discussions because they’ll incorporate a broader set of perspectives.
I’m not sure I follow. The question asks what the participants think is most important, which may or may not be diversity of perspectives. At least some people think that diversity of perspectives is a misguided goal, that erodes core values.
Are you saying that this implies that “EA wants more of the same” because some new EA (call him Alex) will be paired with a partner (Barbra) who gives one of the above answers, and then Alex will presume that what Barbra said was the “party line” or “the EA answer” or “what everyone thinks”?
EA skews young, white, male, and quantitative. Imagine you’re someone who doesn’t fit that profile but has EA values, and is trying to decide “is EA for me?” You go to EA Global (where the audience is not very diverse) and go to a Double Crux workshop. If most of the people talk about prioritizing adding AI researchers and hedge fund people (fields that skew young, male, and quanty) it might not feel very welcoming.
Basically, I think the question is framed so that it produces a negative externality for the community. And you could probably tweak the framing to produce a positive externality for the community, so I’d suggest considering that option unless there’s a compelling reason to favor the current framing. People can have a valuable discussion about which new perspectives would be helpful to add, even if they don’t think increasing diversity of perspectives is EA’s most important priority.
Aside from Ops people, I’d guess the other five groups are already strongly overrepresented in EA. This exercise may be sending an unintended message that “EA wants more of the same”, and I suspect you could tweak the question to convey “EA values diverse perspectives” without sacrificing any quality in the discussion. Over the long-term, you’ll get much better discussions because they’ll incorporate a broader set of perspectives.
I’m not sure I follow. The question asks what the participants think is most important, which may or may not be diversity of perspectives. At least some people think that diversity of perspectives is a misguided goal, that erodes core values.
Are you saying that this implies that “EA wants more of the same” because some new EA (call him Alex) will be paired with a partner (Barbra) who gives one of the above answers, and then Alex will presume that what Barbra said was the “party line” or “the EA answer” or “what everyone thinks”?
EA skews young, white, male, and quantitative. Imagine you’re someone who doesn’t fit that profile but has EA values, and is trying to decide “is EA for me?” You go to EA Global (where the audience is not very diverse) and go to a Double Crux workshop. If most of the people talk about prioritizing adding AI researchers and hedge fund people (fields that skew young, male, and quanty) it might not feel very welcoming.
Basically, I think the question is framed so that it produces a negative externality for the community. And you could probably tweak the framing to produce a positive externality for the community, so I’d suggest considering that option unless there’s a compelling reason to favor the current framing. People can have a valuable discussion about which new perspectives would be helpful to add, even if they don’t think increasing diversity of perspectives is EA’s most important priority.