7. The communities differ in key personality traits and demographics. Alignment skews much more heavily male (9:1) and younger compared to EA (2:1 male:female).
Though the article does disclaim this point ever-so-slightly …
“While this gender distribution is not unfamiliar in engineering spaces …”
… it would be difficult to understate how profoundly a simple skew in gender can profoundly skew everything that results therefrom; one should keep the ‘base-rate fallacy’ concept in mind when drawing conclusions (as the sample may/may not reflect the EA community as a whole, e.g. in the case of the forums introducing an implicit bias in sample). Note the lack of comments pertaining to the findings regarding gender...!
Though the article does disclaim this point ever-so-slightly …
… it would be difficult to understate how profoundly a simple skew in gender can profoundly skew everything that results therefrom; one should keep the ‘base-rate fallacy’ concept in mind when drawing conclusions (as the sample may/may not reflect the EA community as a whole, e.g. in the case of the forums introducing an implicit bias in sample). Note the lack of comments pertaining to the findings regarding gender...!