This post calls out un-diversities in EA. Instead of attributable to EA doing something wrong, I find these patterns mainly underline a basic fact about what type of people EA tends to attract. So I don’t find the post fair to EA and its structure in a very general way.
I find to detect in the article an implicit, underlying view of the EA story being something like:
‘Person becoming EA → World giving that person EA privileges’
But imho, this completely turns upside down the real story, which I mostly see as:
‘Privileged person ->becoming EA → trying to put their resources/privileges to good use, e.g. to help the most underprivileged in the world’,
whereby privileged refers to the often a bit geeky, intellectual-ish, well-off person we often find particularly attracted to EA.
In light of this story, the fact that white dudes are over-represented relative to the overall global world population, in EA organizations, would be difficult to avoid in today’s world, a bit like it would be difficult to avoid a concentration of high-testosterone males in a soccer league.
Of course, this does not deny that many biases exist everywhere in the selection process for higher ranks within EA, and these may be a true problem. Call them out specifically, and we have a starting point to work from. Also in EA, people tend to abuse of power, and this is not easy to prevent. Again, welcome to all enlightenment about how, specifically, to improve on this. Finally, that skin color is associated with privileges worldwide may be a huge issue in itself, but I’d not reproach this specifically to ‘EA’ itself. Certainly, EAs should also be interested in this topic, if they find cost-effective measures to address it (although, to some degree, these potential measures have tough competition, just because there is so much poverty and inequality in the world, absorbing a good part of EA’s focus for not only bad reasons).
Examples of what I mean (I add the emphasize):
However, the more I learn about the people of EA, the more I worry EA is another exclusive, powerful, elite community, which has somehow neglected diversity. The face of EA appears from the outside to be a collection of privileged, highly educated, primarily young, white men.
Let’s talk once you have useful info on whether they focus on the wrong things, rather than that they have the wrong skin colors. In my model, and in my observations, there is simply a bias in who feels attracted to EA, and as much as anyone here would love the average human to care about EA, it is sadly not the case (although in my experience, it is mostly true that more generally slightly geeky, young, logical, possibly well-off persons like and join EA, and can and want to use resources towards it, than simply the “white men” you mention).
The EA organizations now manage billions of dollars, but the decisions, as far as I can tell, are made by only a handful of people. Money is power, and although the decisions might be carefully considered to doing the most good, it is acutely unfair this kind of power is held by an elite few. How can it be better distributed? What if every person in low-income countries were cash-transferred one years’ wage?
The link between the last bold part and the preceding bold parts surprises me. I see two possible readings:
a. ‘The rich few elite EAs get the money, but instead we should take that money to support the poorest?’ That would have to be answered by: These handful work with many many EAs or other careful employees, to try to figure out what causes to prioritize based on decent cost-benefit analysis, and they don’t use this money for themselves (and indeed, at times, it seems like cash-transfers to the poorest show up among promising candidates for funding, but these still compete with other ways to try to help the poorest beings or those most at risk in the future).
b. ‘Give all poorest some money, so some of these could become some of the “handful of people” with the power (to decide on the EA budget allocation)’. I don’t know. Seems a bit a distorted view on the most pressing reason for alleviating the most severe poverty in the world.
While it might be easy to envy some famous persons in our domain, none has chosen ‘oh, whom could we give a big privilege of running the EA show’, but instead there is a process, however imperfect, trying to select some of the people who seem most effective for also the higher rank EA positions. And as many skills useful for it correlate with privileged education, I’d not necessarily want to force more randomization or anything—other than through compelling, specific ways to avoid biases.
This post calls out un-diversities in EA. Instead of attributable to EA doing something wrong, I find these patterns mainly underline a basic fact about what type of people EA tends to attract. So I don’t find the post fair to EA and its structure in a very general way.
I find to detect in the article an implicit, underlying view of the EA story being something like:
‘Person becoming EA → World giving that person EA privileges’
But imho, this completely turns upside down the real story, which I mostly see as:
‘Privileged person ->becoming EA → trying to put their resources/privileges to good use, e.g. to help the most underprivileged in the world’,
whereby privileged refers to the often a bit geeky, intellectual-ish, well-off person we often find particularly attracted to EA.
In light of this story, the fact that white dudes are over-represented relative to the overall global world population, in EA organizations, would be difficult to avoid in today’s world, a bit like it would be difficult to avoid a concentration of high-testosterone males in a soccer league.
Of course, this does not deny that many biases exist everywhere in the selection process for higher ranks within EA, and these may be a true problem. Call them out specifically, and we have a starting point to work from. Also in EA, people tend to abuse of power, and this is not easy to prevent. Again, welcome to all enlightenment about how, specifically, to improve on this. Finally, that skin color is associated with privileges worldwide may be a huge issue in itself, but I’d not reproach this specifically to ‘EA’ itself. Certainly, EAs should also be interested in this topic, if they find cost-effective measures to address it (although, to some degree, these potential measures have tough competition, just because there is so much poverty and inequality in the world, absorbing a good part of EA’s focus for not only bad reasons).
Examples of what I mean (I add the emphasize):
Let’s talk once you have useful info on whether they focus on the wrong things, rather than that they have the wrong skin colors. In my model, and in my observations, there is simply a bias in who feels attracted to EA, and as much as anyone here would love the average human to care about EA, it is sadly not the case (although in my experience, it is mostly true that more generally slightly geeky, young, logical, possibly well-off persons like and join EA, and can and want to use resources towards it, than simply the “white men” you mention).
The link between the last bold part and the preceding bold parts surprises me. I see two possible readings:
a. ‘The rich few elite EAs get the money, but instead we should take that money to support the poorest?’ That would have to be answered by: These handful work with many many EAs or other careful employees, to try to figure out what causes to prioritize based on decent cost-benefit analysis, and they don’t use this money for themselves (and indeed, at times, it seems like cash-transfers to the poorest show up among promising candidates for funding, but these still compete with other ways to try to help the poorest beings or those most at risk in the future).
b. ‘Give all poorest some money, so some of these could become some of the “handful of people” with the power (to decide on the EA budget allocation)’. I don’t know. Seems a bit a distorted view on the most pressing reason for alleviating the most severe poverty in the world.
While it might be easy to envy some famous persons in our domain, none has chosen ‘oh, whom could we give a big privilege of running the EA show’, but instead there is a process, however imperfect, trying to select some of the people who seem most effective for also the higher rank EA positions. And as many skills useful for it correlate with privileged education, I’d not necessarily want to force more randomization or anything—other than through compelling, specific ways to avoid biases.