Great (and also unsurprising so I’m now trying to work out why I felt the need to write the initial comment)
I think I wrote the initial comment less because I expected anyone to reflectively disagree and more because I think we all make snap judgements that maybe take conscious effort to notice and question.
I don’t expect anyone to advocate for people because they speak more jargon (largely because I think very highly of people in this community). I do expect it to be harder to understand someone who comes from a different cultural bubble and, therefore, harder to work out if they are aligned with your values enough. Jargon often gives precision that makes people more legible. Also human beings are pretty instinctively tribal and we naturally trust people who indicate in some way (e.g. in their language) they are more like us. I think it’s also easy for these things to get conflated (it’s hard to tell where a gut feeling comes from and once we have a gut feeling, we naturally are way more likely to have supporting arguments pop into our heads than opposing ones).
Anyway, I feel there is something I’m pointing to even if I’ve failed to articulate it.
Obviously EA hiring is pretty good because big things are getting accomplished and have already happened. I probably should have said initially that this does feel quite marginal. My guess as an outsider is that hiring is, overall, done quite a bit better than at the median non-profit organisation.
I think the reason it’s tempting to criticize EA orgs is because we’re all more invested in them being as good as they can possibly can be and so want to point out perceived flaws to improve them (though this instinct might often be counter-productive because it takes up scarce attention, so sorry about that!).
Great (and also unsurprising so I’m now trying to work out why I felt the need to write the initial comment)
I think I wrote the initial comment less because I expected anyone to reflectively disagree and more because I think we all make snap judgements that maybe take conscious effort to notice and question.
I don’t expect anyone to advocate for people because they speak more jargon (largely because I think very highly of people in this community). I do expect it to be harder to understand someone who comes from a different cultural bubble and, therefore, harder to work out if they are aligned with your values enough. Jargon often gives precision that makes people more legible. Also human beings are pretty instinctively tribal and we naturally trust people who indicate in some way (e.g. in their language) they are more like us. I think it’s also easy for these things to get conflated (it’s hard to tell where a gut feeling comes from and once we have a gut feeling, we naturally are way more likely to have supporting arguments pop into our heads than opposing ones).
Anyway, I feel there is something I’m pointing to even if I’ve failed to articulate it.
Obviously EA hiring is pretty good because big things are getting accomplished and have already happened. I probably should have said initially that this does feel quite marginal. My guess as an outsider is that hiring is, overall, done quite a bit better than at the median non-profit organisation.
I think the reason it’s tempting to criticize EA orgs is because we’re all more invested in them being as good as they can possibly can be and so want to point out perceived flaws to improve them (though this instinct might often be counter-productive because it takes up scarce attention, so sorry about that!).