But when it comes to acknowledging and internally correcting for the types of biases which result from growing up in a society which is built upon exploitation, I donât really think the EA community does better than any other randomly selected group of people who are from a similar demographic (lets say, randomly selected people who went to prestigious universities).
What are some of the biases youâre thinking of here? And are there any groups of people that you think are especially good at correcting for these biases?
My impression of the EA bubble is that it leans left-libertarian; Iâve seen a lot of discussion of criminal justice reform and issues with policing there (compared to e.g. the parts of the mainstream media dominated by people from prestigious universities).
I suppose the average EA might be more supportive of capitalism than the average graduate of a prestigious university, but I struggle to see that as an example of bias rather than as a focus on the importance of certain outcomes (e.g. average living standards vs. higher equity within society).
What are some of the biases youâre thinking of here? And are there any groups of people that you think are especially good at correcting for these biases?
The longer answer to this question: I am not sure how to give a productive answer to this question. In the classic âcognitive biasâ literature, people tend to immediately accept that the biases exist once they learn about them (âŠas long as you donât point them out right at the moment they are engaged in them). That is not the case for these issues.
I had to think carefully about how to answer because (when speaking to the aforementioned ârandomly selected people who went to prestigious universitiesâ, as well as when speaking to EAs) such issues can be controversial and trigger defensiveness. These topics are political and cannot be de-politicized, I donât think there is any bias I can simply state that isnât going to be upvoted by those who agree and dismissed as a controversial political opinion by those who donât already agree, which isnât helpful.
Itâs analogous to if you walked into a random town hall and proclaimed âThereâs a lot of anthropomorphic bias going on in this community, for example look at all the religiosityâ or âThereâs a lot of species-ism going on in this community, look at all the meat eatingâ. You would not necessarily make any progress on getting people to understand. The only people who would understand are those who know exactly what you mean and already agree with you. In some circles, the level of understanding would be such that people would get it. In others, such statements would produce minor defensiveness and hostility. The level of âunderstandingâ vs âdefensiveness and hostilityâ in the EA community regarding these issues is similar to that of randomly selected prestigious university students (that is, much more understanding than the population average, but less than ideal). As with âanthropomorphic biasâ and as with âspeciesismâ, there are some communities where certain concepts are implicitly understood by most people and need no explanation, and some communities where they arenât. It comes down to what someoneâs point of view is.
Acquiring an accurate point of view, and moving a community towards an accurate point of view, is a long process of truth seeking. It is a process of un-learning a lot of things that you very implicitly hold true. It wouldnât work to just list biases. If I start listing out things like (unfortunately poorly named) âprivilege-blindnessâ and (unfortunately poorly named) âwhite-fragilityâ I doubt itâs not going to have any positive effect other than to make people who already agree nod to themselves, while other people roll their eyes, and other people google the terms and then roll their eyes. Criticizing things such that something actually goes through is pretty hard.
The productive process involves talking to individual people, hearing their stories, having first-hand exposure to things, reading a variety of writings on the topic and evaluating them. I think a lot of people think of these issues as âidentity political topicsâ or âtopics that affect those less fortunateâ or âpoorly formed arguments to be dismissedâ. I think progress occurs when we frame-shift towards thinking of them as âpractical every day issues that affect our livesâ, and âhow can I better articulate these real issues to myself and othersâ and âthese issues are important factors in generating global inequality and suffering, an issue which affects us allâ.
Something which might be a useful contribution from someone familiar with the topic would be to write about it in EA-friendly terms. Practical every day issues donât have to be expressed in âpoorly formed argumentsâ. If the material could be expressed in well formed arguments (or in arguments which the EA community can recognise as well formed), I think it would gain a lot more traction in the community.
Iâve seen a lot of discussion of criminal justice reform
Well, I do think discussion of it is good, but if youâre referring to resources directed to the cause area...itâs not that I want EAs to re-direct resources away from low-income countries to instead solving disparities in high income countries, and I donât necessarily consider this related to the self-criticism as a community issue. I havenât really looked into this issue, but: on prior intuition Iâd be surprised if American criminal justice reform compares very favorably in terms of cost-effectiveness to e.g. GiveWell top charities, reforms in low income countries, or reforms regarding other issues. (Of course, prior intuitions arenât a good way to make these judgements, so right now thatâs just a âstrong opinion, weakly heldâ.)
My stance is basically no on redirecting resources away from basic interventions in low income countries and towards other stuff, but yes on advocating that each individual tries to become more self-reflective and knowledgeable about these issues.
I suppose the average EA might be more supportive of capitalism than the average graduate of a prestigious university, but I struggle to see that as an example of bias
I agree, thatâs not an example of bias. This is one of those situations where a word gets too big to be usefulââsupportive of capitalismâ has come to stand for a uselessly large range of concepts. The same person might be critical about private property, or think it has sinister/âexploitative roots, and also support sensible growth focused economic policies which improve outcomes via market forces.
I think the fact that EA has common sense appeal to a wide variety of people with various ideas is a great feature. If you are actually focused on doing the most good you will start becoming less abstractly ideological and more practical and I think that is the right way to be. (Although I think a lot of EAs unfortunately stay abstract and end up supporting anything thatâs labeled âEAâ, which is also wrong).
My main point is that if someone is serious about doing the most good, and is working on a topic that requires a broad knowledge base, then a reasonable understanding the structural roots of inequality (including how gender and race and class and geopolitics play into it) should be one part of their practical toolkit. In my personal opinion, while a good understanding of this sort of thing generally does lead to a certain political outlook, itâs really more about adding things to your conceptual toolbox than it is about which -ism you rally around.
What are some of the biases youâre thinking of here?
This is a tough question to answer properly, both because it is complicated and because I think not everyone will like the answer. There is a short answer and a long answer.
Here is the short answer. Iâll put the long answer in a different comment.
Refer to Sanjayâs statement above
There are some who would argue that you canât tackle such a structural issue without looking at yourselves too, and understanding your own perspectives, biases and privileges...But I worried that tackling the topic of racism without even mentioning the risk that this might be a problem risked seeming over-confident.
At time of writing, this is sitting at negative-5 karma. Maybe it wonât stay there, but this innocuous comment was sufficiently controversial that itâs there now. Why is that? Is anything written there wrong? I think itâs a very mild comment pointing out an obviously true factâthat a communities should also be self-reflective and self-critical when discussing structural racism. Normally EAs love self-critical, skeptical behavior. What is different here? Even people who believe that âall people matter equallyâ and âracism is badâ are still very resistant to having self-critical discussions about it.
I think that understanding the psychology of defensiveness surrounding the response to comments such as this one is the key to understanding the sorts of biases Iâm talking about here. (And to be clearâI donât think this push back against this line of criticism is specific to the EA community, I think the EA community is responding as any demographically similar group would...meaning, this is general civilizational inadequacy at work, not something about EA in particular)
What are some of the biases youâre thinking of here? And are there any groups of people that you think are especially good at correcting for these biases?
My impression of the EA bubble is that it leans left-libertarian; Iâve seen a lot of discussion of criminal justice reform and issues with policing there (compared to e.g. the parts of the mainstream media dominated by people from prestigious universities).
I suppose the average EA might be more supportive of capitalism than the average graduate of a prestigious university, but I struggle to see that as an example of bias rather than as a focus on the importance of certain outcomes (e.g. average living standards vs. higher equity within society).
The longer answer to this question: I am not sure how to give a productive answer to this question. In the classic âcognitive biasâ literature, people tend to immediately accept that the biases exist once they learn about them (âŠas long as you donât point them out right at the moment they are engaged in them). That is not the case for these issues.
I had to think carefully about how to answer because (when speaking to the aforementioned ârandomly selected people who went to prestigious universitiesâ, as well as when speaking to EAs) such issues can be controversial and trigger defensiveness. These topics are political and cannot be de-politicized, I donât think there is any bias I can simply state that isnât going to be upvoted by those who agree and dismissed as a controversial political opinion by those who donât already agree, which isnât helpful.
Itâs analogous to if you walked into a random town hall and proclaimed âThereâs a lot of anthropomorphic bias going on in this community, for example look at all the religiosityâ or âThereâs a lot of species-ism going on in this community, look at all the meat eatingâ. You would not necessarily make any progress on getting people to understand. The only people who would understand are those who know exactly what you mean and already agree with you. In some circles, the level of understanding would be such that people would get it. In others, such statements would produce minor defensiveness and hostility. The level of âunderstandingâ vs âdefensiveness and hostilityâ in the EA community regarding these issues is similar to that of randomly selected prestigious university students (that is, much more understanding than the population average, but less than ideal). As with âanthropomorphic biasâ and as with âspeciesismâ, there are some communities where certain concepts are implicitly understood by most people and need no explanation, and some communities where they arenât. It comes down to what someoneâs point of view is.
Acquiring an accurate point of view, and moving a community towards an accurate point of view, is a long process of truth seeking. It is a process of un-learning a lot of things that you very implicitly hold true. It wouldnât work to just list biases. If I start listing out things like (unfortunately poorly named) âprivilege-blindnessâ and (unfortunately poorly named) âwhite-fragilityâ I doubt itâs not going to have any positive effect other than to make people who already agree nod to themselves, while other people roll their eyes, and other people google the terms and then roll their eyes. Criticizing things such that something actually goes through is pretty hard.
The productive process involves talking to individual people, hearing their stories, having first-hand exposure to things, reading a variety of writings on the topic and evaluating them. I think a lot of people think of these issues as âidentity political topicsâ or âtopics that affect those less fortunateâ or âpoorly formed arguments to be dismissedâ. I think progress occurs when we frame-shift towards thinking of them as âpractical every day issues that affect our livesâ, and âhow can I better articulate these real issues to myself and othersâ and âthese issues are important factors in generating global inequality and suffering, an issue which affects us allâ.
Something which might be a useful contribution from someone familiar with the topic would be to write about it in EA-friendly terms. Practical every day issues donât have to be expressed in âpoorly formed argumentsâ. If the material could be expressed in well formed arguments (or in arguments which the EA community can recognise as well formed), I think it would gain a lot more traction in the community.
Well, I do think discussion of it is good, but if youâre referring to resources directed to the cause area...itâs not that I want EAs to re-direct resources away from low-income countries to instead solving disparities in high income countries, and I donât necessarily consider this related to the self-criticism as a community issue. I havenât really looked into this issue, but: on prior intuition Iâd be surprised if American criminal justice reform compares very favorably in terms of cost-effectiveness to e.g. GiveWell top charities, reforms in low income countries, or reforms regarding other issues. (Of course, prior intuitions arenât a good way to make these judgements, so right now thatâs just a âstrong opinion, weakly heldâ.)
My stance is basically no on redirecting resources away from basic interventions in low income countries and towards other stuff, but yes on advocating that each individual tries to become more self-reflective and knowledgeable about these issues.
I agree, thatâs not an example of bias. This is one of those situations where a word gets too big to be usefulââsupportive of capitalismâ has come to stand for a uselessly large range of concepts. The same person might be critical about private property, or think it has sinister/âexploitative roots, and also support sensible growth focused economic policies which improve outcomes via market forces.
I think the fact that EA has common sense appeal to a wide variety of people with various ideas is a great feature. If you are actually focused on doing the most good you will start becoming less abstractly ideological and more practical and I think that is the right way to be. (Although I think a lot of EAs unfortunately stay abstract and end up supporting anything thatâs labeled âEAâ, which is also wrong).
My main point is that if someone is serious about doing the most good, and is working on a topic that requires a broad knowledge base, then a reasonable understanding the structural roots of inequality (including how gender and race and class and geopolitics play into it) should be one part of their practical toolkit. In my personal opinion, while a good understanding of this sort of thing generally does lead to a certain political outlook, itâs really more about adding things to your conceptual toolbox than it is about which -ism you rally around.
This is a tough question to answer properly, both because it is complicated and because I think not everyone will like the answer. There is a short answer and a long answer.
Here is the short answer. Iâll put the long answer in a different comment.
Refer to Sanjayâs statement above
At time of writing, this is sitting at negative-5 karma. Maybe it wonât stay there, but this innocuous comment was sufficiently controversial that itâs there now. Why is that? Is anything written there wrong? I think itâs a very mild comment pointing out an obviously true factâthat a communities should also be self-reflective and self-critical when discussing structural racism. Normally EAs love self-critical, skeptical behavior. What is different here? Even people who believe that âall people matter equallyâ and âracism is badâ are still very resistant to having self-critical discussions about it.
I think that understanding the psychology of defensiveness surrounding the response to comments such as this one is the key to understanding the sorts of biases Iâm talking about here. (And to be clearâI donât think this push back against this line of criticism is specific to the EA community, I think the EA community is responding as any demographically similar group would...meaning, this is general civilizational inadequacy at work, not something about EA in particular)