My 2 cents: Nobody’s going to solve the question of social justice here, the path forward is to agree on whatever common ground is possible, and make sure that disagreements are (a) clearly defined, avoiding big vague words, (b) narrow enough to have a thorough discussion, and (c) relevant to EA. Otherwise, it’s too easy to disagree on the overall “thumbs up or down to social justice” question, and not notice that you in fact do agree on most of the important operational questions of what EA should do.
So “When introducing EA to newcomers, we generally shouldn’t discuss income and IQ, because it’s unnecessary and could make people feel unwelcome at first” would be a good claim to disagree on, because it’s important to EA, and because the disagreement is narrow enough to actually sort out.
Other examples of narrow and EA-relevant claims that therefore could be useful to discuss: “EA orgs should actively encourage minority applicants to apply to positions”; “On the EA Forum, no claim or topic should be forbidden for diversity reasons, as long as it’s relevant to EA”; or “In public discussions, EAs should make minority voices welcome, but not single out members of minority groups and explicitly ask for their opinions/experiences, because this puts them in a potentially stressful situation.”
On the other hand, I think this conversation has lots of claims that are (a) too vague to be true or false, (b) too broad to be effectively discussed, or (c) not relevant to EA goals. Questions like this would include “Are women oppressed?”, “Is truth more important than inclusivity?”, or “Is EA exclusionary?” It’s not obvious what it would really mean for these to be true or false, you’re unlikely to change anyone’s mind in a reasonable amount of time, and their significance to EA is unclear.
My guess is that we all probably agree a lot on specific operationalized questions relevant to EA, and disagree much more when we abstract to overarching social justice debates. If we stick to specific, EA-relevant questions, there’s probably a lot more common ground here than there seems to be.
I’m in favour of operationalization and avoiding politics (and I suspect the other collaborators would as well). However, I suspect that those coming from a social justice perspective would feel that limiting the discussion in this way would be unfair to them. The kinds of arguments they might make for minority applicants deserving AA for EA roles, for example, would most likely be based upon a claim of massive, ongoing, systematic disadvantage and exclusion both in society itself and EA. There are other arguments that they could make, but they’d still probably feel that we had excluded a pillar of their main argument for many claims by fiat. For this reason, addressing these issues seems unavoidable.
My 2 cents: Nobody’s going to solve the question of social justice here, the path forward is to agree on whatever common ground is possible, and make sure that disagreements are (a) clearly defined, avoiding big vague words, (b) narrow enough to have a thorough discussion, and (c) relevant to EA. Otherwise, it’s too easy to disagree on the overall “thumbs up or down to social justice” question, and not notice that you in fact do agree on most of the important operational questions of what EA should do.
So “When introducing EA to newcomers, we generally shouldn’t discuss income and IQ, because it’s unnecessary and could make people feel unwelcome at first” would be a good claim to disagree on, because it’s important to EA, and because the disagreement is narrow enough to actually sort out.
Other examples of narrow and EA-relevant claims that therefore could be useful to discuss: “EA orgs should actively encourage minority applicants to apply to positions”; “On the EA Forum, no claim or topic should be forbidden for diversity reasons, as long as it’s relevant to EA”; or “In public discussions, EAs should make minority voices welcome, but not single out members of minority groups and explicitly ask for their opinions/experiences, because this puts them in a potentially stressful situation.”
On the other hand, I think this conversation has lots of claims that are (a) too vague to be true or false, (b) too broad to be effectively discussed, or (c) not relevant to EA goals. Questions like this would include “Are women oppressed?”, “Is truth more important than inclusivity?”, or “Is EA exclusionary?” It’s not obvious what it would really mean for these to be true or false, you’re unlikely to change anyone’s mind in a reasonable amount of time, and their significance to EA is unclear.
My guess is that we all probably agree a lot on specific operationalized questions relevant to EA, and disagree much more when we abstract to overarching social justice debates. If we stick to specific, EA-relevant questions, there’s probably a lot more common ground here than there seems to be.
I’m in favour of operationalization and avoiding politics (and I suspect the other collaborators would as well). However, I suspect that those coming from a social justice perspective would feel that limiting the discussion in this way would be unfair to them. The kinds of arguments they might make for minority applicants deserving AA for EA roles, for example, would most likely be based upon a claim of massive, ongoing, systematic disadvantage and exclusion both in society itself and EA. There are other arguments that they could make, but they’d still probably feel that we had excluded a pillar of their main argument for many claims by fiat. For this reason, addressing these issues seems unavoidable.