I agree with you that EA outreach to non-Western cultures is an important and probably neglected area — thank you for pointing that out!
There are lots of reasons to make EA more geographically (and otherwise) diverse, and also some things to be careful about, given that different cultures tend to have different ethical standards and discussion norms. See this article about translation of EA into Mandarin. Something to observe is that outreach is very language and culture-specific. I generally think that international outreach is best done in a granular manner — not just “outreach to all non-Western cultures” or “outreach to all the underprivileged”. So I think it would be wonderful for someone to post about how to best approach outreach in Malawi, but that the content might be extremely different from writing about outreach in Nigeria.
So: if you’re interested in questions like this, I think it would be great if someone were to choose a more specific question and research it! (And I appreciate that your post points out a real gap.)
On a different note, I think that the discussion around your post would be more productive if you used other terms than “social justice.” Similarly, I think that the dearth of the phrase “social justice” on the EA Forum is not necessarily a sign of a lack of desire for equity and honesty. There are many things about the “social justice” movement that EAs have become wary of. For instance, my sense is that the conventional paradigm of the contemporary Western elite is largely based on false or unfalsifiable premises. I’d guess that this makes EAs suspicious when they hear “social justice” — just like they’re often wary about certain types of sociology research (things like “grit,” etc. which don’t replicate) or psychosexual dynamics and other bits of Freud’s now-debunked research.
At the same time (just like with Freudism), a lot of the core observations that the modern social justice paradigm makes are extremely true and extremely useful. It is profoundly obvious, both from statistics and from the anecdotal evidence of any woman that pretty much every mixed-gender workplace has an unacceptable amount of harassment. There is abundant evidence that e.g. non-white Americans experience some level of racism, or at least are treated differently, in many situations.
Given this, here are some things that I think it would be useful to do:
Make the experience of minorities within EA more comfortable and safe.
Continue seriously investigating translating EA concepts to other cultural paradigms (or conversely, translating useful ideas from other cultural paradigms into EA). (See also this article .)
Take some of the more concrete/actionable pieces of the social justice paradigm and analyze/ harmonize them with the more consequentialist/science-based EA philosophy (with the understanding that an honest analysis sometimes finds cherished ideas to be false).
I think the last item is definitely worth engaging with more, especially with people who understand and value the social justice paradigm. Props if you can make progress on this!
I agree with you that EA outreach to non-Western cultures is an important and probably neglected area — thank you for pointing that out!
There are lots of reasons to make EA more geographically (and otherwise) diverse, and also some things to be careful about, given that different cultures tend to have different ethical standards and discussion norms. See this article about translation of EA into Mandarin. Something to observe is that outreach is very language and culture-specific. I generally think that international outreach is best done in a granular manner — not just “outreach to all non-Western cultures” or “outreach to all the underprivileged”. So I think it would be wonderful for someone to post about how to best approach outreach in Malawi, but that the content might be extremely different from writing about outreach in Nigeria.
So: if you’re interested in questions like this, I think it would be great if someone were to choose a more specific question and research it! (And I appreciate that your post points out a real gap.)
On a different note, I think that the discussion around your post would be more productive if you used other terms than “social justice.” Similarly, I think that the dearth of the phrase “social justice” on the EA Forum is not necessarily a sign of a lack of desire for equity and honesty. There are many things about the “social justice” movement that EAs have become wary of. For instance, my sense is that the conventional paradigm of the contemporary Western elite is largely based on false or unfalsifiable premises. I’d guess that this makes EAs suspicious when they hear “social justice” — just like they’re often wary about certain types of sociology research (things like “grit,” etc. which don’t replicate) or psychosexual dynamics and other bits of Freud’s now-debunked research.
At the same time (just like with Freudism), a lot of the core observations that the modern social justice paradigm makes are extremely true and extremely useful. It is profoundly obvious, both from statistics and from the anecdotal evidence of any woman that pretty much every mixed-gender workplace has an unacceptable amount of harassment. There is abundant evidence that e.g. non-white Americans experience some level of racism, or at least are treated differently, in many situations.
Given this, here are some things that I think it would be useful to do:
Make the experience of minorities within EA more comfortable and safe.
Continue seriously investigating translating EA concepts to other cultural paradigms (or conversely, translating useful ideas from other cultural paradigms into EA). (See also this article .)
Take some of the more concrete/actionable pieces of the social justice paradigm and analyze/ harmonize them with the more consequentialist/science-based EA philosophy (with the understanding that an honest analysis sometimes finds cherished ideas to be false).
I think the last item is definitely worth engaging with more, especially with people who understand and value the social justice paradigm. Props if you can make progress on this!