I think this is true and that saying it is useful.
Though when one is saying that, itās probably worth also noting that a majority of EAs are male (and also a majority are white and a majority are from WEIRD societies),[1] which could increase the risk of implicit or explicit biases towards male (or white or WEIRD) authors. (I think being male, white, etc. is neither necessary nor sufficient for being biased towards reading things by males, white people, etc., but it does seem likely to raise the risk somewhat.)
I donāt think that implicit or explicit bias is what caused the list of authors Iāve read EA-relevant books from to be all male and mostly or all white and WEIRD. As noted elsewhere, I think the cause is primarily just that the books that are most prominent/ārecommended (and not just by EAs) in the areas Iām interested in have a strong tendency to be written by people from those demographics. (Iām of course not saying that it has to be that wayāthat could reflect sexism, racism, etc. in various parts of the talent or recommendation āpipelineā.)
But itās hard to rule out implicit or explicit bias on either my part or the part of the EAs who Iāve gotten recommendations from, so it seems worth noting the possibility. And that possibility means itās at least possible that something like āmaking a mild effort to fulfil an imaginary quotaā may push against a bias in the opposite direction and thereby land us in something thatās more like an unbiased meritocracy, all things considered.
Iām currently unsure how best to handle this. So my current plan is to make a mild effort to increase the demographic diversity of my reading list going forward, but primarily via being more conscious to seek out ideas of books to read from authors with other demographic characteristics, as well as sometimes using demographic diversity as something like a ātie-breakerā between books that seem like good reading choices anyway.
(And I hadnāt been thinking about any of this before Haukeās comments, so I think theyāve been useful for me.)
So perhaps we indeed shouldnāt have āstrong community norms against having book lists include only male authorsā, but should have a norm of gently and non-judgementally pointing out to people when their book lists (or whatever) are very demographically non-diverse, in case they hadnāt even thought about that before? It does seem hard to strike the right balance/ātone in an online, written medium, though!
[1] Of respondents to the 2019 EA Survey 2019, ā71% reported their gender as maleā and ā87% reported that they identify as whiteā (source). Of course, āthe EA communityā can be defined in many ways, and not all of its members will have responded to that survey, but it gives an indication. And ā74% of EAs in the survey currently live in the same set of 5 high-income English-speaking western countries as in 2018ā³ (source).
I think this is true and that saying it is useful.
Though when one is saying that, itās probably worth also noting that a majority of EAs are male (and also a majority are white and a majority are from WEIRD societies),[1] which could increase the risk of implicit or explicit biases towards male (or white or WEIRD) authors. (I think being male, white, etc. is neither necessary nor sufficient for being biased towards reading things by males, white people, etc., but it does seem likely to raise the risk somewhat.)
I donāt think that implicit or explicit bias is what caused the list of authors Iāve read EA-relevant books from to be all male and mostly or all white and WEIRD. As noted elsewhere, I think the cause is primarily just that the books that are most prominent/ārecommended (and not just by EAs) in the areas Iām interested in have a strong tendency to be written by people from those demographics. (Iām of course not saying that it has to be that wayāthat could reflect sexism, racism, etc. in various parts of the talent or recommendation āpipelineā.)
But itās hard to rule out implicit or explicit bias on either my part or the part of the EAs who Iāve gotten recommendations from, so it seems worth noting the possibility. And that possibility means itās at least possible that something like āmaking a mild effort to fulfil an imaginary quotaā may push against a bias in the opposite direction and thereby land us in something thatās more like an unbiased meritocracy, all things considered.
Iām currently unsure how best to handle this. So my current plan is to make a mild effort to increase the demographic diversity of my reading list going forward, but primarily via being more conscious to seek out ideas of books to read from authors with other demographic characteristics, as well as sometimes using demographic diversity as something like a ātie-breakerā between books that seem like good reading choices anyway.
(And I hadnāt been thinking about any of this before Haukeās comments, so I think theyāve been useful for me.)
So perhaps we indeed shouldnāt have āstrong community norms against having book lists include only male authorsā, but should have a norm of gently and non-judgementally pointing out to people when their book lists (or whatever) are very demographically non-diverse, in case they hadnāt even thought about that before? It does seem hard to strike the right balance/ātone in an online, written medium, though!
[1] Of respondents to the 2019 EA Survey 2019, ā71% reported their gender as maleā and ā87% reported that they identify as whiteā (source). Of course, āthe EA communityā can be defined in many ways, and not all of its members will have responded to that survey, but it gives an indication. And ā74% of EAs in the survey currently live in the same set of 5 high-income English-speaking western countries as in 2018ā³ (source).