″… of course, we should strive to be more welcoming. Yet, if EA is already building a highly loyal community willing to promote EA, then perhaps this isn’t one of the most pressing problems facing EA.”
It seems to me that EA is great at getting people who are very much like existing EAs, which leads to the risk of ossification of “types of people in EA” (in other words, a lack of diversity). I think being more welcoming is important to avoid this. (If I remember correctly, you agreed with this point this last year, have you changed your mind on this? If so, how?)
Agreed, and though this good evidence about people in EA having a positive experience, it has almost no chance of detecting the people who don’t, since participation is conditional on
1.) The subjects choosing to invest significant time and money in attending EAG &
2.) The subjects’ applications being approved to attend the conference by the organisers.
I’m not meaning to suggest that the application process was actively weeding out negative people, but pointing out there are a number of significant selective processes before people were asked this question. For that reason it’s got limited power to detect anybody who doesn’t have a positive experience of EA, and shouldn’t be used as evidence of no problem.
It is good to hear about positive experiences though, so thanks for sharing it.
My guess is that if EA is growing via people telling their friends, then being generally welcoming probably isn’t the problem. Maybe we’re very welcoming to some people and not at all welcoming to others, but presumably, similar behaviors work with a wide range of people.
An alternative explanation is that the demographic makeup of EA is largely caused by founder effects. EA grows through referrals, and people tend to know other people who are similar to themselves. So, absent some external pressure, we should expect EA to grow to be similar in demographic makeup to the way it was at its founding. If this is true, then EAs being more welcoming probably won’t solve the problem (even if it’s a good thing to do for other reasons).
At EA Berkeley, we have members who came through people telling their friends, and people who we got essentially by picking students at Berkeley near-randomly (but selecting for altruistic tendencies). (TL;DR: These students get involved either through a speed Giving Game or by seeing an ad for our course on EA, rather than through social networks.)
The members who came from people telling their friends fit the standard EA demographic, as you might expect—mostly male, and all STEM (and mostly Comp Sci). Let’s call them group A.
Meanwhile, the students who we got near-randomly, selecting for altruistic tendencies, are more likely to be female and have essentially no specific major. Let’s call them group B.
Now, group A forms a much larger percentage of EA Berkeley, so they tend to determine topics of conversation and group activities. We’ve talked about NP-completeness, video games, the popularity of certain CS professors, etc. These are great topics of conversation for group A, even if the individual members don’t know each other. Note that they have nothing to do with EA. However, there are usually one or two members of group B at these events, and inevitably they are quiet and don’t interact much with everyone else.
With that sort of dynamic, it’s not surprising to me at all that we tend not to get very many active members from group B. When I say “being more welcoming”, I mean not talking about NP-completeness, video games and popularity of CS professors, and instead talking about topics that everyone could be a part of. This seems like an important change that will directly lead to more retention of members in group B, which in turn seems important to me because it increases the diversity of EA.
Note that “EA is already building a highly loyal community willing to promote EA” is perfectly compatible with this view—that loyal community is group A.
Also, as a result I strongly disagree with “presumably, similar behaviors work with a wide range of people”—the behavior of “talking about NP-completeness, etc.” works great with CS majors but not others.
I mostly agree with your last paragraph, except that I think “being more welcoming” is the external pressure that would help EA become more diverse (through the mechanism outlined above).
I would like to offer a contrasting view point from our experiences at EA McGill. Our members seem to be more often in subjects like Economics and International Development and since McGill has a high female to male ratio, they also tend to be women.
I actually happen to be one of the few CS students. From what I can tell this difference is primarily due to the founder effect, as our founders were in more economics like subjects, and due to the different demographic make ups of Berkeley and McGill.
I think it’s absolutely the founder effect. Sorry I didn’t make that clear—EA Berkeley’s demographics are much more a product of the social circles of the most committed members (mostly CS, mostly male, disproportionately Indian), than they are a product of EA’s demographics as a whole.
When I say “being more welcoming”, I mean not talking about NP-completeness, video games and popularity of CS professors, and instead talking about topics that everyone could be a part of. This seems like an important change that will directly lead to more retention of members in group B, which in turn seems important to me because it increases the diversity of EA.
Excellent point. I think I agree.
I think this is an instance of “Selecting on the Correlates” which I talked about in my talk at EA Global this year (starts at minute 36). Given the examples you cite, I agree that this exerts a selection pressure against diversity and that this is bad.
Yet, we want to draw some important lines here. Interest in talking about CS professors is not a selection pressure we want to exert. But, interest in talking about EA-relevant topics (even unusual or controversial ones) is a selection pressure we want to exert. It’s important to strike the right balance.
I think the issue is that “be welcoming” doesn’t seem to be very helpful. To me, it sometimes seems to mean something like “be nice” which I don’t think we’re failing at. Other times it seems to mean something like “be normal” where that can refer to moderating actions or opinions to sync more closely with mainstream thought which may or may not be a good thing.
I think the “don’t select on the correlates” idea makes the point in a more crisp way.
Haven’t had a chance to listen to your talk which might clear this up but while “don’t select on the correlates” does technically capture Rohin’s point, it doesn’t really resonate with me as making the point in a more crisp way, especially when contrasted with being welcoming.
I think one of the more insidious features of the type of phenomenon Rohin’s talking about is that, from the inside, it doesn’t FEEL like you’re making a selection at all. Indeed, apparently EA Berkeley’s intentional/explicit attempts at selection were basically random—selecting for almost nothing other than altruism. But, despite the lack of explicit selection, there was still a selection effect.
Asking people to do selection differently feels pretty far removed from the actual actions (if any) we might want someone to take if a lot of those people don’t by default feel like they’re doing selection at all.
Okay, I agree with the “don’t select on the correlates” phrasing.
That said, when I hear “be welcoming”, and even “be nice”, I don’t hear “Don’t talk about controversial EA-related topics”, I hear something more like “Don’t talk about CS professors”, which I certainly do think we’re failing at. (Heck, we couldn’t do this at EA Berkeley, which already feels more diverse to me than the general EA community.) I don’t know if everyone else means that when they say “be welcoming”.
(Some evidence that other people feel this way too—as of now, 4 people upvoted my previous comment.)
So it sounds like “recruit outside your immediate social network” and “be welcoming” may be equally important? You seem to have had some success with the “recruit outside your immediate social network” part—what has worked for you?
Random unrelated note: one interpretation of “be welcoming” is “suppress weird ideas to avoid scaring away newcomers”. I think this approach has benefits, but it also has a few important costs. First, weird ideas will get discussed anyway. If getting classified as a newcomer makes you not privy to those discussions, and you can tell, you won’t feel welcomed. Second, weird ideas bind people together. The modern world is a lonely place, and people want meaningful group cohesion. That’s why Crossfit is such a hit. Absent exercising really hard together, we should use whatever we’ve got. Third, weird ideas are an important part of EA, and if someone dislikes weird ideas, that’s evidence that they’re not a good fit. Therefore, I propose that instead of suppressing weird ideas, we share them with newcomers as though they are being let in on a secret.
Recruit outside your social network: We teach a DeCal (student taught course) about Effective Altruism that is posted on a list of DeCals that all Berkeley students can see, and we play speed Giving Games with random students who are walking down Sproul plaza. The class has been pretty successful; the speed Giving Games not so much (most successes there are with people who already know someone in the club). I’ll be posting a retrospective about EA Berkeley soon with more details. TL;DR: This is hard to do.
I would say “be welcoming” is more important—there’s already a small base rate of people outside standard EA social networks that have some interest in EA. Currently I think a very large proportion of them (>80%) end up not becoming a part of EA. (Compared to ~50% for standard EA demographics.) Bringing that number down would be very helpful, and I think is more tractable.
Re: random unrelated note: That makes sense, but I will say that my impression of “be welcoming” is not “suppress weird ideas”, I’ve said more about this in a comment above.
I think the founder effect explanation is definitely a big part of the story in terms of the demographic makeup. However, that does not mean being more welcoming won’t help. As a white founder myself, I have learned the hard way that racial diversity in particular must be actively cultivated, and you can get yourself very deep into a hole after a short time because people start to notice the demographic makeup and make judgments and inferences about the community based on it. I was pleased to see more racial diversity at EA Global this year than I expected (although still very few black and Latino participants), but one thing I couldn’t help but notice is that there were no non-white speakers at ANY of the sessions I attended over two days. That’s the sort of thing that can be perceived as unwelcoming for someone who has made the commitment to attend a conference and has already spent a bunch of time being one of the few people in a room who looks a certain way, and it also shows that it’s not just about who expresses interest in EA in the first place.
″… of course, we should strive to be more welcoming. Yet, if EA is already building a highly loyal community willing to promote EA, then perhaps this isn’t one of the most pressing problems facing EA.”
It seems to me that EA is great at getting people who are very much like existing EAs, which leads to the risk of ossification of “types of people in EA” (in other words, a lack of diversity). I think being more welcoming is important to avoid this. (If I remember correctly, you agreed with this point this last year, have you changed your mind on this? If so, how?)
Agreed, and though this good evidence about people in EA having a positive experience, it has almost no chance of detecting the people who don’t, since participation is conditional on 1.) The subjects choosing to invest significant time and money in attending EAG & 2.) The subjects’ applications being approved to attend the conference by the organisers.
I’m not meaning to suggest that the application process was actively weeding out negative people, but pointing out there are a number of significant selective processes before people were asked this question. For that reason it’s got limited power to detect anybody who doesn’t have a positive experience of EA, and shouldn’t be used as evidence of no problem.
It is good to hear about positive experiences though, so thanks for sharing it.
Agree 100%.
My guess is that if EA is growing via people telling their friends, then being generally welcoming probably isn’t the problem. Maybe we’re very welcoming to some people and not at all welcoming to others, but presumably, similar behaviors work with a wide range of people.
An alternative explanation is that the demographic makeup of EA is largely caused by founder effects. EA grows through referrals, and people tend to know other people who are similar to themselves. So, absent some external pressure, we should expect EA to grow to be similar in demographic makeup to the way it was at its founding. If this is true, then EAs being more welcoming probably won’t solve the problem (even if it’s a good thing to do for other reasons).
At EA Berkeley, we have members who came through people telling their friends, and people who we got essentially by picking students at Berkeley near-randomly (but selecting for altruistic tendencies). (TL;DR: These students get involved either through a speed Giving Game or by seeing an ad for our course on EA, rather than through social networks.)
The members who came from people telling their friends fit the standard EA demographic, as you might expect—mostly male, and all STEM (and mostly Comp Sci). Let’s call them group A.
Meanwhile, the students who we got near-randomly, selecting for altruistic tendencies, are more likely to be female and have essentially no specific major. Let’s call them group B.
Now, group A forms a much larger percentage of EA Berkeley, so they tend to determine topics of conversation and group activities. We’ve talked about NP-completeness, video games, the popularity of certain CS professors, etc. These are great topics of conversation for group A, even if the individual members don’t know each other. Note that they have nothing to do with EA. However, there are usually one or two members of group B at these events, and inevitably they are quiet and don’t interact much with everyone else.
With that sort of dynamic, it’s not surprising to me at all that we tend not to get very many active members from group B. When I say “being more welcoming”, I mean not talking about NP-completeness, video games and popularity of CS professors, and instead talking about topics that everyone could be a part of. This seems like an important change that will directly lead to more retention of members in group B, which in turn seems important to me because it increases the diversity of EA.
Note that “EA is already building a highly loyal community willing to promote EA” is perfectly compatible with this view—that loyal community is group A.
Also, as a result I strongly disagree with “presumably, similar behaviors work with a wide range of people”—the behavior of “talking about NP-completeness, etc.” works great with CS majors but not others.
I mostly agree with your last paragraph, except that I think “being more welcoming” is the external pressure that would help EA become more diverse (through the mechanism outlined above).
I would like to offer a contrasting view point from our experiences at EA McGill. Our members seem to be more often in subjects like Economics and International Development and since McGill has a high female to male ratio, they also tend to be women.
I actually happen to be one of the few CS students. From what I can tell this difference is primarily due to the founder effect, as our founders were in more economics like subjects, and due to the different demographic make ups of Berkeley and McGill.
I completely missed this comment, sorry.
I think it’s absolutely the founder effect. Sorry I didn’t make that clear—EA Berkeley’s demographics are much more a product of the social circles of the most committed members (mostly CS, mostly male, disproportionately Indian), than they are a product of EA’s demographics as a whole.
Huh! Does economics at McGill have more women than men?
Excellent point. I think I agree.
I think this is an instance of “Selecting on the Correlates” which I talked about in my talk at EA Global this year (starts at minute 36). Given the examples you cite, I agree that this exerts a selection pressure against diversity and that this is bad.
Yet, we want to draw some important lines here. Interest in talking about CS professors is not a selection pressure we want to exert. But, interest in talking about EA-relevant topics (even unusual or controversial ones) is a selection pressure we want to exert. It’s important to strike the right balance.
I think the issue is that “be welcoming” doesn’t seem to be very helpful. To me, it sometimes seems to mean something like “be nice” which I don’t think we’re failing at. Other times it seems to mean something like “be normal” where that can refer to moderating actions or opinions to sync more closely with mainstream thought which may or may not be a good thing.
I think the “don’t select on the correlates” idea makes the point in a more crisp way.
Haven’t had a chance to listen to your talk which might clear this up but while “don’t select on the correlates” does technically capture Rohin’s point, it doesn’t really resonate with me as making the point in a more crisp way, especially when contrasted with being welcoming.
I think one of the more insidious features of the type of phenomenon Rohin’s talking about is that, from the inside, it doesn’t FEEL like you’re making a selection at all. Indeed, apparently EA Berkeley’s intentional/explicit attempts at selection were basically random—selecting for almost nothing other than altruism. But, despite the lack of explicit selection, there was still a selection effect.
Asking people to do selection differently feels pretty far removed from the actual actions (if any) we might want someone to take if a lot of those people don’t by default feel like they’re doing selection at all.
Okay, I agree with the “don’t select on the correlates” phrasing.
That said, when I hear “be welcoming”, and even “be nice”, I don’t hear “Don’t talk about controversial EA-related topics”, I hear something more like “Don’t talk about CS professors”, which I certainly do think we’re failing at. (Heck, we couldn’t do this at EA Berkeley, which already feels more diverse to me than the general EA community.) I don’t know if everyone else means that when they say “be welcoming”.
(Some evidence that other people feel this way too—as of now, 4 people upvoted my previous comment.)
So it sounds like “recruit outside your immediate social network” and “be welcoming” may be equally important? You seem to have had some success with the “recruit outside your immediate social network” part—what has worked for you?
Random unrelated note: one interpretation of “be welcoming” is “suppress weird ideas to avoid scaring away newcomers”. I think this approach has benefits, but it also has a few important costs. First, weird ideas will get discussed anyway. If getting classified as a newcomer makes you not privy to those discussions, and you can tell, you won’t feel welcomed. Second, weird ideas bind people together. The modern world is a lonely place, and people want meaningful group cohesion. That’s why Crossfit is such a hit. Absent exercising really hard together, we should use whatever we’ve got. Third, weird ideas are an important part of EA, and if someone dislikes weird ideas, that’s evidence that they’re not a good fit. Therefore, I propose that instead of suppressing weird ideas, we share them with newcomers as though they are being let in on a secret.
Recruit outside your social network: We teach a DeCal (student taught course) about Effective Altruism that is posted on a list of DeCals that all Berkeley students can see, and we play speed Giving Games with random students who are walking down Sproul plaza. The class has been pretty successful; the speed Giving Games not so much (most successes there are with people who already know someone in the club). I’ll be posting a retrospective about EA Berkeley soon with more details. TL;DR: This is hard to do.
I would say “be welcoming” is more important—there’s already a small base rate of people outside standard EA social networks that have some interest in EA. Currently I think a very large proportion of them (>80%) end up not becoming a part of EA. (Compared to ~50% for standard EA demographics.) Bringing that number down would be very helpful, and I think is more tractable.
Re: random unrelated note: That makes sense, but I will say that my impression of “be welcoming” is not “suppress weird ideas”, I’ve said more about this in a comment above.
I think the founder effect explanation is definitely a big part of the story in terms of the demographic makeup. However, that does not mean being more welcoming won’t help. As a white founder myself, I have learned the hard way that racial diversity in particular must be actively cultivated, and you can get yourself very deep into a hole after a short time because people start to notice the demographic makeup and make judgments and inferences about the community based on it. I was pleased to see more racial diversity at EA Global this year than I expected (although still very few black and Latino participants), but one thing I couldn’t help but notice is that there were no non-white speakers at ANY of the sessions I attended over two days. That’s the sort of thing that can be perceived as unwelcoming for someone who has made the commitment to attend a conference and has already spent a bunch of time being one of the few people in a room who looks a certain way, and it also shows that it’s not just about who expresses interest in EA in the first place.