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Neither of those pieces of evidence seem to count against the proposition that more men are interested in EA than women.
The focus groups were presumably speaking to men and women who were already interested in EA, not examining the broader population. It therefore can’t speak at all to whether there are more men than women interested in EA.
Kagan and Fitz’s linked study, while interesting, does not in my view tell us anything about relative levels of interest in EA. It seems to tell us about which people have general pro-charity attitudes and are vaguely cosmopolitan (in an extremely watered down sense e.g. being more willing to donate to international rather than domestic charities).
Edit: given that the focus groups intentionally selected men and women who were likely among the most interested (based on selection for highest attendance), it seems particularly clear that they could not tell us anything about this question.
I think you’d need to operationalise EA in a way that captures the ideas that are actually distinctive of EA i.e. using evidence and reason to do the most good you can do (or some such).
The main challenge in doing this with non-EA participants is that most expressions of this core EA idea are easily read platitudinously rather than as actually expressing the ideas that EAs hold. i.e. most people nominally believe in “evidence and reason” and doing “the most good.” The fact that Kagan and Fitz found quite high and wide-ranging support for the ideas described in their survey, while EA continues to have little support is perhaps suggestive of this mismatch. I’ve seen similar mismatch in early SHIC surveys as well as surveys for other EA orgs, where putative expressions of EA ideas receive near-maximum levels of support, despite respondents not supporting any of their implications.
I think a good operationalisation of EA ideas (which would have to be tested empirically of course), would include some explicit (strictly posed) statements of EA ideas, like doing the most good you can, along with other factors which seem implicitly related to EA, and stricter statements of which actions people would support. A few things which should probably be included would be:
Impartial maximisation
Strict cosmopolitanism (including, potentially, species, the far future etc. not just standard global poverty charities)
True cause neutrality (including some reverse scored items about whether people would prefer certain causes/charities, even if they weren’t the most cost-effective/weren’t intuitively appealing (see: Berman et al., 2018. Similarly, whether people would, in principle, endorse supporting those in the distant future rather than those in need now)
One might want to include some further questions about epistemics/deliberation to see how people’s endorsement of “evidence and reason” cashes out (i.e. do they actually endorse any epistemic principles that would be recognisable as or compatible with EA).
Naturally this is all unavoidably tied up with controversial questions about what counts as “EA”- though I think something like this would be necessary to actually discern what people’s views are about EA. I would guess (conservatively) that >50% of people who endorse something like the Kagan-Fitz operationalisation would strongly object to multiple ideas that are core to EA.
So you’re saying it’s not possible to tell if men or women are more intuitively drawn to the ideas of EA, unless we have a survey that communicates EA principles more clearly (such as by providing unintuitive examples of cost-effectiveness)?
I’d say that if we’re testing people’s attitudes towards certain ideas, in order to discern their attitudes towards effective altruism, then those ideas should actually be indicative of effective altruism- which seems exceedingly uncontroversial.
I wouldn’t say “it’s not possible to tell… unless we have a survey” because you could use various other methods. For example, looking at people’s donation preferences, looking at the population of those who seem to be interested in EA and seeing how many are men and how many are women, and you could examine the attitudes of non-EA without a survey e.g. via interviews, though each of these methods would have their own limitations.
Because there are more men interested in EA than women.
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That hypothesis is not supported by the available evidence. The focus group found no difference in level of interest in EA ideas. This survey from last year found women self-reported to be more generous and, even controlling for generosity, more open to the ideas of EA. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MDxaD688pATMnjwmB/to-grow-a-healthy-movement-pick-the-low-hanging-fruit
Neither of those pieces of evidence seem to count against the proposition that more men are interested in EA than women.
The focus groups were presumably speaking to men and women who were already interested in EA, not examining the broader population. It therefore can’t speak at all to whether there are more men than women interested in EA.
Kagan and Fitz’s linked study, while interesting, does not in my view tell us anything about relative levels of interest in EA. It seems to tell us about which people have general pro-charity attitudes and are vaguely cosmopolitan (in an extremely watered down sense e.g. being more willing to donate to international rather than domestic charities).
Edit: given that the focus groups intentionally selected men and women who were likely among the most interested (based on selection for highest attendance), it seems particularly clear that they could not tell us anything about this question.
What do you think does count as being interested in EA, if not the ideas that survey respondents evaluated?
I think you’d need to operationalise EA in a way that captures the ideas that are actually distinctive of EA i.e. using evidence and reason to do the most good you can do (or some such).
The main challenge in doing this with non-EA participants is that most expressions of this core EA idea are easily read platitudinously rather than as actually expressing the ideas that EAs hold. i.e. most people nominally believe in “evidence and reason” and doing “the most good.” The fact that Kagan and Fitz found quite high and wide-ranging support for the ideas described in their survey, while EA continues to have little support is perhaps suggestive of this mismatch. I’ve seen similar mismatch in early SHIC surveys as well as surveys for other EA orgs, where putative expressions of EA ideas receive near-maximum levels of support, despite respondents not supporting any of their implications.
I think a good operationalisation of EA ideas (which would have to be tested empirically of course), would include some explicit (strictly posed) statements of EA ideas, like doing the most good you can, along with other factors which seem implicitly related to EA, and stricter statements of which actions people would support. A few things which should probably be included would be:
Impartial maximisation
Strict cosmopolitanism (including, potentially, species, the far future etc. not just standard global poverty charities)
True cause neutrality (including some reverse scored items about whether people would prefer certain causes/charities, even if they weren’t the most cost-effective/weren’t intuitively appealing (see: Berman et al., 2018. Similarly, whether people would, in principle, endorse supporting those in the distant future rather than those in need now)
One might want to include some further questions about epistemics/deliberation to see how people’s endorsement of “evidence and reason” cashes out (i.e. do they actually endorse any epistemic principles that would be recognisable as or compatible with EA).
Naturally this is all unavoidably tied up with controversial questions about what counts as “EA”- though I think something like this would be necessary to actually discern what people’s views are about EA. I would guess (conservatively) that >50% of people who endorse something like the Kagan-Fitz operationalisation would strongly object to multiple ideas that are core to EA.
So you’re saying it’s not possible to tell if men or women are more intuitively drawn to the ideas of EA, unless we have a survey that communicates EA principles more clearly (such as by providing unintuitive examples of cost-effectiveness)?
I’d say that if we’re testing people’s attitudes towards certain ideas, in order to discern their attitudes towards effective altruism, then those ideas should actually be indicative of effective altruism- which seems exceedingly uncontroversial.
I wouldn’t say “it’s not possible to tell… unless we have a survey” because you could use various other methods. For example, looking at people’s donation preferences, looking at the population of those who seem to be interested in EA and seeing how many are men and how many are women, and you could examine the attitudes of non-EA without a survey e.g. via interviews, though each of these methods would have their own limitations.
I think the text used in the survey is indicative of Effective Altruism, which is why your response that it doesn’t count confused me.