As an obviously extreme analogy, suppose that someone applying for a job decides to include information about their sexual history on their CV.
I think this depends a lot on the exact job, and the nature of the sexual history. If you are a registered sex-offender, and are open about this on your CV, then that will overall make a much better impression than if I find that out from doing independent research later on, since that is information that (depending on the role and the exact context) might be really highly relevant for the job.
Obviously including potentially embarrassing information in a CV without it having much purpose is a bad idea, and mostly signals various forms of social obliviousness, as well as distract from the actually important parts of your CV, which pertain to your professional experience and factors that will likely determine how well you will do at your job.
But I’m inclined to agree with Howie that the extra clarity you get from moving beyond ‘high-level’ categories probably isn’t all that decision-relevant.
So, I do think this is probably where our actual disagreement lies. Of the most concrete conflicts of interest that have given rise to abuses of power I have observed both within the EA community, and in other communities, more than 50% where the result of romantic relationships, and were basically completely unaddressed by the high-level COI policies that the relevant institutions had in place. Most of these are in weird grey-areas of confidentiality, but I would be happy to talk to you about the details of those if you send me a private message.
I think being concrete here is actually highly action relevant, and I’ve seen the lack of concreteness in company policies have very large and concrete negative consequences for those organizations.
Responding on a more object-level:
I think this depends a lot on the exact job, and the nature of the sexual history. If you are a registered sex-offender, and are open about this on your CV, then that will overall make a much better impression than if I find that out from doing independent research later on, since that is information that (depending on the role and the exact context) might be really highly relevant for the job.
Obviously including potentially embarrassing information in a CV without it having much purpose is a bad idea, and mostly signals various forms of social obliviousness, as well as distract from the actually important parts of your CV, which pertain to your professional experience and factors that will likely determine how well you will do at your job.
So, I do think this is probably where our actual disagreement lies. Of the most concrete conflicts of interest that have given rise to abuses of power I have observed both within the EA community, and in other communities, more than 50% where the result of romantic relationships, and were basically completely unaddressed by the high-level COI policies that the relevant institutions had in place. Most of these are in weird grey-areas of confidentiality, but I would be happy to talk to you about the details of those if you send me a private message.
I think being concrete here is actually highly action relevant, and I’ve seen the lack of concreteness in company policies have very large and concrete negative consequences for those organizations.