First, I’d very much like to see EA and/or Longtermist organizations hire people with “different academic backgrounds, different world views and different ideologies.” But I don’t think that would eliminate the need for improving diversity on other dimensions like race or gender, which can provide a different set of perspectives and experiences (see, for example, “when I find myself to be the only person of my group in the room I want to leave”) than could be captured by, for example, hiring more white males who studied art history.
Second, I’m not advocating for quotas, which I have a lot of concerns about. I’d prefer to look at interventions that could encourage talented minorities to apply. My prior is that there are headwinds that (on the margins) discourage minority applicants. As multiple respondents to 80K’s recent survey on diversity noted, there’s “a snowball effect there, where once you have a sufficiently non-diverse group it’s hard to make it more diverse.” If that effect is real, claims like “we hired a white male because he was the best candidate” become less meaningful since there might have been better minority candidates who didn’t apply in the first place.
Third, some methods of increasing minority applicants are extremely low cost. For example, I saw one recent job posting from a Longtermist organization that didn’t include language like one often sees in job descriptions along the lines of “We’re an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from all backgrounds.” It’s basically costless to include that language, so I doubt any minorities see it and think “I’m going to apply because this organization cares about diversity.” But it’s precisely because this language is costless that not including it signals that an organization doesn’t care about diversity, which discourages minorities from applying (especially if they see that the organization’s existing team is very homogeneous.)
I’d very much like to see EA and/or Longtermist organizations hire people with “different academic backgrounds, different world views and different ideologies.”
In that case you probably shouldn’t argue that an opinion being held by an ideological minority makes it especially dangerous:
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.
Diversity doesn’t bring any value if you then crush all disagreement!
I don’t think placing no value on diversity is a PR risk simply because it’s a view held by an ideological minority. Few people, either in the general population or the EA community, think mental health is the top global priority. But I don’t think EA incurs any PR risk from community members who prioritize this cause. And I also believe there are numerous ways EA could add different academic backgrounds, worldviews, etc. that wouldn’t entail any material PR risk.
I want to be very explicit that I don’t think EA should seek to suppress ideas simply because they are an extreme view and/or carry PR risks (which is not to say those risks don’t exist, or that EAs should pretend they don’t exist). That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been downvoting any comments in this thread even if I strongly disagree with them: I think it’s valuable for people to be able to express a wide range of views without discouragement.
A few points…
First, I’d very much like to see EA and/or Longtermist organizations hire people with “different academic backgrounds, different world views and different ideologies.” But I don’t think that would eliminate the need for improving diversity on other dimensions like race or gender, which can provide a different set of perspectives and experiences (see, for example, “when I find myself to be the only person of my group in the room I want to leave”) than could be captured by, for example, hiring more white males who studied art history.
Second, I’m not advocating for quotas, which I have a lot of concerns about. I’d prefer to look at interventions that could encourage talented minorities to apply. My prior is that there are headwinds that (on the margins) discourage minority applicants. As multiple respondents to 80K’s recent survey on diversity noted, there’s “a snowball effect there, where once you have a sufficiently non-diverse group it’s hard to make it more diverse.” If that effect is real, claims like “we hired a white male because he was the best candidate” become less meaningful since there might have been better minority candidates who didn’t apply in the first place.
Third, some methods of increasing minority applicants are extremely low cost. For example, I saw one recent job posting from a Longtermist organization that didn’t include language like one often sees in job descriptions along the lines of “We’re an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from all backgrounds.” It’s basically costless to include that language, so I doubt any minorities see it and think “I’m going to apply because this organization cares about diversity.” But it’s precisely because this language is costless that not including it signals that an organization doesn’t care about diversity, which discourages minorities from applying (especially if they see that the organization’s existing team is very homogeneous.)
In that case you probably shouldn’t argue that an opinion being held by an ideological minority makes it especially dangerous:
Diversity doesn’t bring any value if you then crush all disagreement!
I don’t think placing no value on diversity is a PR risk simply because it’s a view held by an ideological minority. Few people, either in the general population or the EA community, think mental health is the top global priority. But I don’t think EA incurs any PR risk from community members who prioritize this cause. And I also believe there are numerous ways EA could add different academic backgrounds, worldviews, etc. that wouldn’t entail any material PR risk.
I want to be very explicit that I don’t think EA should seek to suppress ideas simply because they are an extreme view and/or carry PR risks (which is not to say those risks don’t exist, or that EAs should pretend they don’t exist). That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been downvoting any comments in this thread even if I strongly disagree with them: I think it’s valuable for people to be able to express a wide range of views without discouragement.