Funders who value diversity should communicate this priority to the organizations they support or are considering supporting, particularly large funders who can influence organizational direction.
As a donor I would like to make clear that I do not place any value on diversity. Furthermore, given the enormous stakes I think it would be a mistake for even donors and organisations who do value diversity as a terminal value to dedicate resources to this instead of focusing on their core mission.
Nor do I think there are likely to be significant instrumental benefits. You suggest the biggest issue is missing out on talent and viewpoints:
Their high degree of racial homogeneity suggests these organizations have been missing out on talented employees and alternative perspectives
Yet each of these organisations is very small; likely they are all missing out on a vast number of good candidates, so focusing on one narrow aspect of this seems like privileging the hypothesis. If we are concerned about incorporating a variety of perspectives, this is an issue that can be addressed directly, by hiring people with different academic backgrounds, different world views and different ideologies. It is a well known fact that conservatives are massively under-represented in EA organisations for example, despite the immediate policy relevance. In contrast, hiring someone because of their race, and hoping this will mean they have specific views, seems like a very oblique way of doing so.
Furthermore, there are significant disadvantages to attempting to socially engineer a racial breakdown. Most obvious is the pressure to achieve racist hiring goals over competence, leading to token minorities on the teams. There is evidence that technology investors are biased against white entrepreneurs (see here for example) - indeed I personally experienced being told that we couldn’t hire the best candidate because they were a white male and we had hit our diversity quota—and I would not like to see the same happening here.
given the enormous stakes I think it would be a mistake for even donors and organisations who do value diversity as a terminal value to dedicate resources to this instead of focusing on their core mission. Nor do I think there are likely to be significant instrumental benefits.
I very strongly disagree.
At the very least, consider the instrumental benefits from avoiding the PR-risk of the community adopting your far-out view that we ought not value diversity at all. This seems like a legitimate risk for EA, as evidenced by your comment having more upvotes than the author of this thread.
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).
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.
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.
As a donor I would like to make clear that I do not place any value on diversity. Furthermore, given the enormous stakes I think it would be a mistake for even donors and organisations who do value diversity as a terminal value to dedicate resources to this instead of focusing on their core mission.
Nor do I think there are likely to be significant instrumental benefits. You suggest the biggest issue is missing out on talent and viewpoints:
Yet each of these organisations is very small; likely they are all missing out on a vast number of good candidates, so focusing on one narrow aspect of this seems like privileging the hypothesis. If we are concerned about incorporating a variety of perspectives, this is an issue that can be addressed directly, by hiring people with different academic backgrounds, different world views and different ideologies. It is a well known fact that conservatives are massively under-represented in EA organisations for example, despite the immediate policy relevance. In contrast, hiring someone because of their race, and hoping this will mean they have specific views, seems like a very oblique way of doing so.
Furthermore, there are significant disadvantages to attempting to socially engineer a racial breakdown. Most obvious is the pressure to achieve racist hiring goals over competence, leading to token minorities on the teams. There is evidence that technology investors are biased against white entrepreneurs (see here for example) - indeed I personally experienced being told that we couldn’t hire the best candidate because they were a white male and we had hit our diversity quota—and I would not like to see the same happening here.
I very strongly disagree.
At the very least, consider the instrumental benefits from avoiding the PR-risk of the community adopting your far-out view that we ought not value diversity at all. This seems like a legitimate risk for EA, as evidenced by your comment having more upvotes than the author of this thread.
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.
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.
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.