First I want to say that I think your original comment and this one both express reasonable views, and do so in a civil manner. (Also, just in case you or anyone else was wondering, Iāve neither upvoted nor downvoted either comment.)
Also, while I think I disagree with you to some extent on some points, I think your comments have made me think more about things worth thinking about. I think theyāve also improved this post, via prompting me to add the following to the introductory section:
(Edit: I think that recommendations that arenāt commonly mentioned in EA are particularly valuable, holding general usefulness and EA-relevance constant. Same goes for recommendations of books by non-male, non-white, and/āor non-WEIRD authors. See this comment thread.)
(I added part of that after your first comment, and the second sentence after reading your second comment.)
Also, I acknowledge that there are two separate (though related) points youāre highlighting, and that my reply didnāt explicitly address the gender diversity part.
You only list male authors and lists that only feature male authors: all of them are [also] WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic).
I believe this is indeed true. (The part Iām slightly unsure of is whether all authors meet all WEIRD criteria, but in any case it definitely heavily skews WEIRD.) I also hadnāt specifically noticed that this was the case for all/āalmost all of these listed authors, so it does seem useful to me that you highlighted it. And I do agree that, all else equal, itād be better to have more diversity on each of these dimensions on someoneās reading list.
One thing Iād say in response is that thereās more demographic diversity in the other forms of content I consume (in particular, papers, podcasts, and posts) than in these books. Though those other forms of content I consume do still skew somewhat towards male and WEIRD (and also white).
I think three ways to address that are for me to:
Get more recommendations for content to consume thatās by authors (or podcasters, or whatever) with other demographic characteristics
Make more effort to actively seek out ideas for content to consume thatās from authors with other demographic characteristics
Factor in the demographic characteristics of an author when deciding which of multiple specific pieces of content I should spend time consuming
Iād be very happy if (1) happened. And I think hopefully this post should contribute to it happening, especially now that Iāve added an edit prompted by your comments. I think your own first comment already helps with that, which I appreciate.
I think I should also do a bit of (2) and (3). (For a start, Iāve just now downloaded Obamaās A Promised Land, and made a note to maybe read Strangers Drowning.) But Iām unsure how much, because Iām unsure how much weight I should give to demographic diversity relative to other factors when making tradeoffs about how I spend my time. And it just does seem to be the case that, in many of the fields I want to learn about, most of the most prominent authorsāmeaning prominent among e.g. the relevant academics, not just EAsāare male, WEIRD, and white. And I think thereās value in reading things from the most prominent authors.
But Iām personally inclined not to debate here precisely how much of (2) and (3) people should do, and the precise extent to which the prominent authors in these fields skew male, WEIRD, and white. This is because Iām concerned that that might result in a long and tense thread, partly due to this being a written medium with an audience and a lot of people not personally knowing each other, rather than a face-to-face conversation.
(Iām not trying to silence such a debate; it can be had here; Iām just personally inclined for it to not happen here. Readers may also be interested in posts tagged diversity and inclusion.)
(Iād also like to pre-emptively ask readers to keep in mind that itās easy to interpret things overly harshly when theyāre written down on the internet by someone you donāt know personally. If you think I or Hauke are saying things that are stupid or horrible, please seriously consider the hypothesis that thatās not really what I or Hauke mean, or that we just phrased things poorly, or something like that.)
Thanks for the courteous reply. Agree with much of this!
To be clear, I didnāt mean to criticize you or anyone personally. Though judging by the downvotes I got, people might think that Iām EAās wokest and hardest virtue-signalling SJW, but I actually only realized and was able to flag this issue because Iām guilty of recommending a very similar set of male authors too much myself. So this is something that should be improved more generally (in the community). Also, I agree that we shouldnāt spend much time on finding a precise āquotaā and Iām not saying that we should have 50% of women on AI safety syllabi (which would probably leave people scrambling and is more a society-wide issue) or cancel Toby Ord, but on current margin, we should probably err on the side of having a little more diversity in what we recommend. Not upvoting a list with 50 white males trending on the front page and implicitly endorse this as the EA cannon seems a really low bar. Hence the initial downvote, which Iāve now changed to an upvote, given that thereās a productive discussion in the comments, in particular thanks to Michael.
To be clear, I didnāt mean to criticize you or anyone personally. [...] Also, I agree that we shouldnāt spend much time on finding a precise āquota
Yeah, to be clear, I didnāt get the impression of being criticised in a way that singles me out quite specifically, and my points about being inclined not to discuss the precise amount of (2) and (3) I should do was not me saying āYouāve said too much about this already!ā, but rather āIām a little concerned that this thread could become overly spicy and contentiousā (and I primarily had in mind other people jumping in; I wasnāt worried about comments youād write). I think the comments so far have been civil, as I mentioned.
on current margin, we should probably err on the side of having a little more diversity in what we recommend
Agreed.
Not upvoting a list with 50 white males trending on the front page and implicitly endorse this as the EA cannon seems a really low bar.
Iām not totally sure I agree, partly because every Forum post starts out on the front page, and I think itād be really easy for EA to be flooded with a bunch more recommendation lists. So I think (a) I estimate a lower chance that this list ends up being extremely prominent than you do, and (b) if weāre worried about this list being too prominent, I think the best solution is just to vigorously encourage the posting of more lists (including ones with more demographically diverse authors).
As you noted, the Wiblin, Beckstead, and Muehlhauser lists are already quite prominent, and also skew towards male, white, WEIRD, etc. So I think it may be the case that āthe only way out is throughāāi.e., the best way to prevent there being too much focus on a small set of lists is to post more, not to avoid posting.
But, that of course wouldnāt fix the demographic diversity issue, unless those other lists either happen to include or are encouraged to include more demographic diversity. So you highlighting this with your comment seems useful.
(But I genuinely just mean āIām not totally sure I agreeā; I think your sentence is a reasonable claim.)
judging by the downvotes I got
Yeah, I donāt like that your comment is currently on net negative karma. Iām going to strong upvote it for balanceās sake, and make a separate comment about that.
First I want to say that I think your original comment and this one both express reasonable views, and do so in a civil manner. (Also, just in case you or anyone else was wondering, Iāve neither upvoted nor downvoted either comment.)
Also, while I think I disagree with you to some extent on some points, I think your comments have made me think more about things worth thinking about. I think theyāve also improved this post, via prompting me to add the following to the introductory section:
(I added part of that after your first comment, and the second sentence after reading your second comment.)
Also, I acknowledge that there are two separate (though related) points youāre highlighting, and that my reply didnāt explicitly address the gender diversity part.
I believe this is indeed true. (The part Iām slightly unsure of is whether all authors meet all WEIRD criteria, but in any case it definitely heavily skews WEIRD.) I also hadnāt specifically noticed that this was the case for all/āalmost all of these listed authors, so it does seem useful to me that you highlighted it. And I do agree that, all else equal, itād be better to have more diversity on each of these dimensions on someoneās reading list.
One thing Iād say in response is that thereās more demographic diversity in the other forms of content I consume (in particular, papers, podcasts, and posts) than in these books. Though those other forms of content I consume do still skew somewhat towards male and WEIRD (and also white).
I think three ways to address that are for me to:
Get more recommendations for content to consume thatās by authors (or podcasters, or whatever) with other demographic characteristics
Make more effort to actively seek out ideas for content to consume thatās from authors with other demographic characteristics
Factor in the demographic characteristics of an author when deciding which of multiple specific pieces of content I should spend time consuming
Iād be very happy if (1) happened. And I think hopefully this post should contribute to it happening, especially now that Iāve added an edit prompted by your comments. I think your own first comment already helps with that, which I appreciate.
I think I should also do a bit of (2) and (3). (For a start, Iāve just now downloaded Obamaās A Promised Land, and made a note to maybe read Strangers Drowning.) But Iām unsure how much, because Iām unsure how much weight I should give to demographic diversity relative to other factors when making tradeoffs about how I spend my time. And it just does seem to be the case that, in many of the fields I want to learn about, most of the most prominent authorsāmeaning prominent among e.g. the relevant academics, not just EAsāare male, WEIRD, and white. And I think thereās value in reading things from the most prominent authors.
But Iām personally inclined not to debate here precisely how much of (2) and (3) people should do, and the precise extent to which the prominent authors in these fields skew male, WEIRD, and white. This is because Iām concerned that that might result in a long and tense thread, partly due to this being a written medium with an audience and a lot of people not personally knowing each other, rather than a face-to-face conversation.
(Iām not trying to silence such a debate; it can be had here; Iām just personally inclined for it to not happen here. Readers may also be interested in posts tagged diversity and inclusion.)
(Iād also like to pre-emptively ask readers to keep in mind that itās easy to interpret things overly harshly when theyāre written down on the internet by someone you donāt know personally. If you think I or Hauke are saying things that are stupid or horrible, please seriously consider the hypothesis that thatās not really what I or Hauke mean, or that we just phrased things poorly, or something like that.)
Thanks for the courteous reply. Agree with much of this!
To be clear, I didnāt mean to criticize you or anyone personally. Though judging by the downvotes I got, people might think that Iām EAās wokest and hardest virtue-signalling SJW, but I actually only realized and was able to flag this issue because Iām guilty of recommending a very similar set of male authors too much myself. So this is something that should be improved more generally (in the community). Also, I agree that we shouldnāt spend much time on finding a precise āquotaā and Iām not saying that we should have 50% of women on AI safety syllabi (which would probably leave people scrambling and is more a society-wide issue) or cancel Toby Ord, but on current margin, we should probably err on the side of having a little more diversity in what we recommend. Not upvoting a list with 50 white males trending on the front page and implicitly endorse this as the EA cannon seems a really low bar. Hence the initial downvote, which Iāve now changed to an upvote, given that thereās a productive discussion in the comments, in particular thanks to Michael.
Yeah, to be clear, I didnāt get the impression of being criticised in a way that singles me out quite specifically, and my points about being inclined not to discuss the precise amount of (2) and (3) I should do was not me saying āYouāve said too much about this already!ā, but rather āIām a little concerned that this thread could become overly spicy and contentiousā (and I primarily had in mind other people jumping in; I wasnāt worried about comments youād write). I think the comments so far have been civil, as I mentioned.
Agreed.
Iām not totally sure I agree, partly because every Forum post starts out on the front page, and I think itād be really easy for EA to be flooded with a bunch more recommendation lists. So I think (a) I estimate a lower chance that this list ends up being extremely prominent than you do, and (b) if weāre worried about this list being too prominent, I think the best solution is just to vigorously encourage the posting of more lists (including ones with more demographically diverse authors).
As you noted, the Wiblin, Beckstead, and Muehlhauser lists are already quite prominent, and also skew towards male, white, WEIRD, etc. So I think it may be the case that āthe only way out is throughāāi.e., the best way to prevent there being too much focus on a small set of lists is to post more, not to avoid posting.
But, that of course wouldnāt fix the demographic diversity issue, unless those other lists either happen to include or are encouraged to include more demographic diversity. So you highlighting this with your comment seems useful.
(But I genuinely just mean āIām not totally sure I agreeā; I think your sentence is a reasonable claim.)
Yeah, I donāt like that your comment is currently on net negative karma. Iām going to strong upvote it for balanceās sake, and make a separate comment about that.