I didn’t down/up-vote this comment but I feel the down-votes without explanation and critical engagement are a bit harsh and unfair, to be honest. So I’m going to try and give some feedback (though a bit rapidly, and maybe too rapidy to be helpful...)
It feels like just an statement of fact to say that IQ tests have a sordid history; and concepts of intelligence have been weaponised against marginalised groups historically (including women, might I add to your list ;) ). That is fair to say.
But reading this post, it feels less interested in engaging with the OP’s post let alone with Linch’s response, and more like there is something you wanted to say about intelligence and racism and have looked for a place to say that.
I don’t feel like relating the racist history of IQ tests helps the OP think about their role in EA; it doesn’t really engage with what they were saying that they feel they are average and don’t mind that, but rather just want to be empowered to do good.
I don’t feel it meaningfully engages with Linch’s central point; that the community has lots of people with attributes X in it, and is set up for people with attributes X, but maybe there are some ways the community is not optimised for other people
I think your post is not very balanced on intelligence.
general intelligence is as far as I understand a well established psychological / individual differences domain
Though this does how many people with outlying abilities in e.g. maths and sciences will—as they put it themselves—not be as strong on other intelligences, such as social. And in fairness to many EAs who are like this, they put their hands up on their intelligence shortcominds in these domains!
Of course there’s a bio(psycho)social interaction between biological inheritance and environment when it comes to intelligence. The OP’s and Linch’s points still stand with that in mind.
The correlation between top university attendance and opportunity. Notably, the strongest predictor of whether you go to Harvard is whether your parents went to Harvard; but disentangling that from a) ability and b) getting coached / moulded to show your ability in the ways you need to for Harvard admissions interviews is pretty hard. Maybe a good way of thinking of it is something like for every person who get into elite university X...:
there are 100s of more talented people not given the opportunity or moulding to succeed at this, who otherwise would trounce them, but
there are 10000s more who, no matter how much opportunity or moulding they were given, would not succeed
Anyway, in EA we have a problem when it comes to identifying ourselves as a group that could be easily resolved by investing efforts in how our dynamics work, and the ways in which we exclude other people (I’m not just referring to Olivia) and how that affects within the community, at the level of biases and at the level of the effects that all this has on the work we do.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying “we have some group dynamics problems; we involve some types of people less, and listen to some voices less”. Is that correct?
I agree—I think almost everyone would identify different weird dynamics within EA they don’t love, and ways they think the community could be more inclusive; or some might find lack of inclusiveness unpalateable but be willing to bite that bullet on trade-offs. Some good work has been done recently on starting up EA in non-Anglophone, non-Western countries, including putting forward the benefits of more local interventions; but a lot more could be done.
A new post on voices we should be listening to more, and EA assumptions which prevent this from happening would be welcome!
Thank you for your comment, at the beginning I did not understand about the downvotes and why I wasn’t getting any kind of criticism
I agree with what you say with my comment, I would not contribute anything to Olivia’s post, I realized this within hours of writing it and I did not want to delete or edit it. I prefer that the mistakes I may do remain present so that I can study a possible evolution for the near-medium future.
But reading this post, it feels less interested in engaging with the OP’s post let alone with Linch’s response, and more like there is something you wanted to say about intelligence and racism and have looked for a place to say that.
Actually, my intention was not focused at any time to bring up the issue of racism or eugenics, but more in terms of how within the EA community intelligence is conceptualized and defined as a means to measure oneself between the group and the others. I believe this, thinking about it, is a good idea to write about it in this forum.
I also point out about writing on the subject of EA dynamics, giving voices to other people and criticizing both sides that you comment
I didn’t down/up-vote this comment but I feel the down-votes without explanation and critical engagement are a bit harsh and unfair, to be honest. So I’m going to try and give some feedback (though a bit rapidly, and maybe too rapidy to be helpful...)
It feels like just an statement of fact to say that IQ tests have a sordid history; and concepts of intelligence have been weaponised against marginalised groups historically (including women, might I add to your list ;) ). That is fair to say.
But reading this post, it feels less interested in engaging with the OP’s post let alone with Linch’s response, and more like there is something you wanted to say about intelligence and racism and have looked for a place to say that.
I don’t feel like relating the racist history of IQ tests helps the OP think about their role in EA; it doesn’t really engage with what they were saying that they feel they are average and don’t mind that, but rather just want to be empowered to do good.
I don’t feel it meaningfully engages with Linch’s central point; that the community has lots of people with attributes X in it, and is set up for people with attributes X, but maybe there are some ways the community is not optimised for other people
I think your post is not very balanced on intelligence.
general intelligence is as far as I understand a well established psychological / individual differences domain
Though this does how many people with outlying abilities in e.g. maths and sciences will—as they put it themselves—not be as strong on other intelligences, such as social. And in fairness to many EAs who are like this, they put their hands up on their intelligence shortcominds in these domains!
Of course there’s a bio(psycho)social interaction between biological inheritance and environment when it comes to intelligence. The OP’s and Linch’s points still stand with that in mind.
The correlation between top university attendance and opportunity. Notably, the strongest predictor of whether you go to Harvard is whether your parents went to Harvard; but disentangling that from a) ability and b) getting coached / moulded to show your ability in the ways you need to for Harvard admissions interviews is pretty hard. Maybe a good way of thinking of it is something like for every person who get into elite university X...:
there are 100s of more talented people not given the opportunity or moulding to succeed at this, who otherwise would trounce them, but
there are 10000s more who, no matter how much opportunity or moulding they were given, would not succeed
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying “we have some group dynamics problems; we involve some types of people less, and listen to some voices less”. Is that correct?
I agree—I think almost everyone would identify different weird dynamics within EA they don’t love, and ways they think the community could be more inclusive; or some might find lack of inclusiveness unpalateable but be willing to bite that bullet on trade-offs. Some good work has been done recently on starting up EA in non-Anglophone, non-Western countries, including putting forward the benefits of more local interventions; but a lot more could be done.
A new post on voices we should be listening to more, and EA assumptions which prevent this from happening would be welcome!
Thank you for your comment, at the beginning I did not understand about the downvotes and why I wasn’t getting any kind of criticism
I agree with what you say with my comment, I would not contribute anything to Olivia’s post, I realized this within hours of writing it and I did not want to delete or edit it. I prefer that the mistakes I may do remain present so that I can study a possible evolution for the near-medium future.
Actually, my intention was not focused at any time to bring up the issue of racism or eugenics, but more in terms of how within the EA community intelligence is conceptualized and defined as a means to measure oneself between the group and the others. I believe this, thinking about it, is a good idea to write about it in this forum.
I also point out about writing on the subject of EA dynamics, giving voices to other people and criticizing both sides that you comment
Nothing to add—just wanted to explicitly say I appreciate a lot that you took the time to write the comment I was too lazy to.