However, my sense is that, despite problems with diversity in EA, this has been recognized, and the majority view is actually that diversity is important and needs to be improved (see for instance CEA’s stance on diversity).
Also supporting this view, most of the respondents in 80K’s recent anonymous survey on diversity said they valued demographic diversity. The people who didn’t mention this explicitly generally talked about other types of diversity (e.g. epistemic and political) instead. And nobody expressed Larks’ view that they “do not place any value on diversity.” I agree with Hauke that this perspective carries PR risk, and in my opinion seems especially extreme in a community that politically skews ~20:1 left vs. right.
Larks’ view that they “do not place any value on diversity.”
I assume Larks means ‘racial diversity’ in the context of this thread (and based on their comment, which talks about increasing diverse viewpoints through other means).
To clarify, my comment about EA’s political skew wasn’t meant to suggest Larks doesn’t care about viewpoint diversity. Rather, I was pointing out that the position of not caring about racial diversity is more extreme in a heavily left leaning community than it would be in a heavily right leaning community.
I assumed diversity of any kind was meant—as used in common parlance (i.e. gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, etc. excluding political diversity which is a more recent Jonathan Haidt thing).
If in the context of this thread, only ethnic diversity was meant, then this implies that we ought to improve gender diversity in EA orgs, but not ethnic diversity. Which would make this highly upvoted statement even more absurd.
Also supporting this view, most of the respondents in 80K’s recent anonymous survey on diversity said they valued demographic diversity. The people who didn’t mention this explicitly generally talked about other types of diversity (e.g. epistemic and political) instead. And nobody expressed Larks’ view that they “do not place any value on diversity.” I agree with Hauke that this perspective carries PR risk, and in my opinion seems especially extreme in a community that politically skews ~20:1 left vs. right.
I assume Larks means ‘racial diversity’ in the context of this thread (and based on their comment, which talks about increasing diverse viewpoints through other means).
To clarify, my comment about EA’s political skew wasn’t meant to suggest Larks doesn’t care about viewpoint diversity. Rather, I was pointing out that the position of not caring about racial diversity is more extreme in a heavily left leaning community than it would be in a heavily right leaning community.
Gotcha. I actually meant to reply to Hauke (who thought the poster was talking about diversity of any kind, rather than racial diversity).
I assumed diversity of any kind was meant—as used in common parlance (i.e. gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, etc. excluding political diversity which is a more recent Jonathan Haidt thing).
If in the context of this thread, only ethnic diversity was meant, then this implies that we ought to improve gender diversity in EA orgs, but not ethnic diversity. Which would make this highly upvoted statement even more absurd.