Fwiw, my intuition is that EA hasn’t been selecting against, e.g. good epistemic traits historically, since I think that the current community has quite good epistemics by the standards of the world at large (including the demographics EA draws on).
I think it could be the case that EA itself selects strongly for good epistemics (people who are going to be interested in effective altruism have much higher epistemic standards than the world or large, even matched for demographics), and that this explains most of the gap you observe, but also that some actions/policies by EAs still select against good epistemic traits (albeit in a smaller way).
I think these latter selection effects, to the extent they occur at all, may happen despite (or, in some cases, because of) EA’s strong interest in good epistemics. e.g. EAs care about good epistemics, the criteria they use to select for good epistemics are in practice the person expressing positions/arguments they believe are good ones, this functionally selects more for deference than good epistemics.
I think it could be the case that EA itself selects strongly for good epistemics (people who are going to be interested in effective altruism have much higher epistemic standards than the world or large, even matched for demographics), and that this explains most of the gap you observe, but also that some actions/policies by EAs still select against good epistemic traits (albeit in a smaller way).
I think these latter selection effects, to the extent they occur at all, may happen despite (or, in some cases, because of) EA’s strong interest in good epistemics. e.g. EAs care about good epistemics, the criteria they use to select for good epistemics are in practice the person expressing positions/arguments they believe are good ones, this functionally selects more for deference than good epistemics.