My personal experience interacting with college-educated people in Brazil is that our versions of “STEM” and “non-STEM” are treated as personal identities and, as such, linked to some very profound beliefs.
Specifically, I have trouble interacting with Brazilian non-STEMs, and I think the odds of someone among them being promising from an EA point of view are lower, because of a different belief about the fundamental nature of reality: the non-STEM tribe there shares a view that there is no such thing as an objective reality that is out there to be understood, evaluated and improved. Even if it is agreed that a given intervention would have a given effect—and that is already a big if—the evaluation of that effect is purely subjective, and we cannot say things like “most people think this effect is positive for their lives”.
So yeah, I personally don’t care about these particular people being in EA. The cultural milieu is certainly different elsewhere.
My personal experience interacting with college-educated people in Brazil is that our versions of “STEM” and “non-STEM” are treated as personal identities and, as such, linked to some very profound beliefs.
Specifically, I have trouble interacting with Brazilian non-STEMs, and I think the odds of someone among them being promising from an EA point of view are lower, because of a different belief about the fundamental nature of reality: the non-STEM tribe there shares a view that there is no such thing as an objective reality that is out there to be understood, evaluated and improved. Even if it is agreed that a given intervention would have a given effect—and that is already a big if—the evaluation of that effect is purely subjective, and we cannot say things like “most people think this effect is positive for their lives”.
So yeah, I personally don’t care about these particular people being in EA. The cultural milieu is certainly different elsewhere.