Kelly_Witwicki

Karma: 325

Kelly_Witwicki 29 Oct 2017 3:40 UTC
17 points
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on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Someone who prefers to remain anonymous shared with me that there were multiple issues that made her and other women interns feel excluded at an EA organization, but she felt it was too intimidating to bring them up because the staff seemed too tight, including the women, and the interns felt too separate from them.

Kelly_Witwicki 26 Oct 2017 20:18 UTC
13 points
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in reply to: Ben_West’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
I only hold this view weakly, but yes, I’m worried that, as you put it, “E first, A second” people are less likely to stick around.

I don’t think “A first, E second” people are necessarily easier to get in the first place though, as they are more likely to already have a calling (and so to have less personally to gain) and to be committed to other altruistic pursuits that are hard for them to drop as “ineffective.”

That said, I’ve seen significant movement among heavily committed farmed animal advocates towards thinking more about and acting in the interest of maximizing impact… though farmed animal advocates are often already doing that advocacy because they’re already thinking about effectiveness: they see the issue as massively important and very tractable. So I suppose realistically I’m putting most of my investments in people who are A first, but still clearly already E.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 13:22 UTC
12 points
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in reply to: xccf’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
The problem is that those thoughts, as I noted, become actions, just actions we can usually only see as systematic trends. Just because someone does not say “women are incompetent” does not mean they aren’t underestimating women’s competence and e.g. hiring them less than he should. Taking action on this just requires a more systematic approach than explicit discrimination does.

I agree that in terms of what works, just pointing out bias doesn’t seem to help and can even backfire, as I mentioned, which is why I provided a list of other possible solutions.

Kelly_Witwicki 29 Oct 2017 3:50 UTC
11 points
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in reply to: Kelly_Witwicki’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
The same person, in response to the point “Don’t dismiss or trivialize the altruistic concerns ordinary people have,” said:

Agree – this is one of the most alienating parts of EA groups I have come across. Charity snobbishness has become quite extreme in some contexts I’ve been in, and I found it to be a somewhat closed-minded approach to altruism generally. At one point, I became persuaded by this attitude and even noticed myself becoming judgmental with the people around me. It was only when my mum told me she thought I had become more judgmental, and not for the better, that I took initiative to really analyse why I was behaving like I was, and to understand that this is not a way to do the most good for people around you nor for trying to encourage people to give their time and money more effectively. I think many people in EA should take a step back and realise that in their attempt to do the most good, they are acting in a closed-minded way, which is actually preventing them to be able to achieve the most good they can.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 0:16 UTC
11 points
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in reply to: Michael_PJ’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Regarding discussion style: I think several EAs are great at discussions where they’re fully critical of each other but aren’t combative (e.g. they don’t raise their voices, go ad hominem, tear apart one aspect of an argument to dismiss the rest, or downvote comments that signal an identity that theirs is constructed in opposition to). I think it’s possible to get all the benefit of criticism and disagreement without negative emotions clouding our judgement.

I think the key may be to work against the impulse to be right, or the impulse that someone who disagrees with you is your enemy. I’m much better than I used to be at seeing disagreement as the route to everyone in the discussion getting closer to the truth, though unfortunately that takes a constant drive to improve. (It does help a lot to just remind myself that the person I’m disagreeing with -- in most cases at least—is on my team in the bigger picture.) Doing more to penalize combative behavior and reward constructive behavior—like how downvotes and upvotes are supposed to be used in this forum—seems like a feasible solution.

Regarding the grab-bag: That was my intention, to get the ball rolling. I hope for others to bring in their own thinking on prioritization and implementation.

Kelly_Witwicki 26 Oct 2017 23:12 UTC
11 points
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in reply to: xccf’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
The histories of many forms of prejudice are histories biological essentialism and biological determinism. Even if such claims are now made out of a “willingness to explore” alternative hypotheses despite this long history of precisely being an unwillingness to explore the much newer hypothesis of prejudice, they tend to be over-simplistic, as in the memo, and tend to have the effect—if not also the intention—of dismissing the other, newer hypothesis of prejudice, which is robustly supported by data that the memo’s author fails to include.

That’s not to say it’s a black and white matter of total biological similarity or total culturally-imposed disparities and prejudice. That’s what the author of the memo implies, and I disagree. The evidence that prejudice is a major problem that is holding people back is substantial nonetheless.

Some of his suggestions for ways to reduce the gender gap are worth considering, and charitably he’s not exceptionally prejudiced and is able to analyze information that has found its way to him, but is just very poorly informed and has no willingness to explore the alternative explanation of prejudice. At most charitable this still enables that prejudice.

Given the extent of my knowledge, which is just the words in the memo, I can agree he’s not an outright asshole, and I should have phrased my side note about this example of zero tolerance with a heavy hand differently. It may even be a poor example, as I would say corrective action should have been taken in his case before he was fired if it wasn’t, which I don’t know about either way.
What links here?
- Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA by Kelly_Witwicki (26 Oct 2017 13:20 UTC; 46 points)
- xccf's comment on Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA by Kelly_Witwicki (29 Oct 2017 0:28 UTC; 4 points)

Kelly_Witwicki 29 Oct 2017 3:02 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: xccf’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
I like this idea. It will be skewed towards people who aren’t turned off by the culture, as those who are will have less interest in, and in some or many cases may not even be exposed to, the survey, but getting more systematic info on people’s feelings here would be very useful.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 13:23 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
I think that’s a huge part of the reason why we overrepresent people the demographics we do. But offloading responsibility onto part of the pipeline below us isn’t sufficient, least of all when we can source from other pipelines.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 1:17 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: Kelsey Piper’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
While I thoroughly appreciate your thoughts here and I’m glad you voiced them, I think you started on a miscommunication:

I don’t think the fact that there are costs to this, as anything, is controversial (though I know its cost-effectiveness is), and it sounds to me like Tyler just meant “intrinsic benefits,” in addition to the instrumental benefits to EA community-building. If he thought improving diversity and inclusion in the community had no cost, I would think he’d say its case is irrefutable, not that these benefits merely “strengthen” its case.

Kelly_Witwicki 29 Oct 2017 16:55 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: the_jaded_one’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
I entirely appreciate the concern of going too far. Let’s just be careful not to assume that risks only come with action—the opposite path is an awful one too, and with inaction we risk moving further down it.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 21:45 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: Julia_Wise’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Julia,

I appreciate the work you’ve done and continue to do on community-building. It seems though that there is a lot more productive work that can done than can be achieved by one part-time role, and that there are angles we’re not addressing.

For instance, we could bring in someone who can advise on all forms of communication from job postings to website UX to social media content and strategy; assist with speaker recruitment and selection and provide feedback for presentations at conferences; and conduct reviews of inclusionary performance in organizations’ hiring and management practices, in outreach efforts, and in local communities’ practices.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 1:01 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: xccf’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
The difficulty for movements against discrimination (between humans) in a lot of modern society lies in that definition of what constitutes “clear” discrimination. For instance, people don’t say explicitly discriminatory things as much as they used to, but they still hold discriminatory beliefs that make them e.g. mistrust, discredit and undervalue others, and we can for the most part only assess e.g. hiring bias by looking at whole samples, not at any one individual.

Kelly_Witwicki 26 Oct 2017 23:45 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: Michael_PJ’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Unfortunately since the respondents would be members of the EA community, it would be hard to control that data for cultural fit in order to get at how robustly EA people from each demographic are. People have stuck around in the community for reasons other than how EA they are or can be, as I hope I’ve shed some light on.

Kelly_Witwicki 16 Dec 2017 1:33 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: kierangreig’s comment on: Sentience Institute 2017 Accomplishments, 2018 Plans, and Room for Funding
Thank you Kieran! I will look into global numbers for farmed bait fish and fish mortality, and either update the sheet on that or qualify it with info about this if I cannot find/make estimates. Will update our US estimates too, and also qualify about these numbers being vertebrates. :)

Kelly_Witwicki 29 Oct 2017 18:46 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: the_jaded_one’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Regarding your “red flags”:

1) The post does not advocate for identity categories over competence, but competence over identity categories. As I’ve argued, we’re missing out on a lot of people because they don’t match irrelevant criteria.

2) No skepticism of questionable claims has been suspended. You are welcome, as others have, to point out what claims are too confident and why. You’ll note that I’ve edited the post to qualify a claim I made that a commenter pointed out is debated in the literature, and an implication I made that a commenter convinced me I made too confidently.

You are also welcome to provide arguments for the position you seem to take that the status quo (or an even more exclusive community, which we may be becoming) is better than a more inclusive community. Bringing up the risk is a valuable contribution to this discussion and I really appreciate it. Let’s go further with our analysis of tradeoffs and discuss specific steps we can take to become more inclusive while limiting the risks in either direction, and let’s have a healthy skepticism of the status quo.

3) A dismissal of the whole project of inclusion because of the risk that it will go too far is itself something of a silencing of dissenting opinions and an abandoning of free speech. As I said very explicitly in my comment about free speech, the term is often used to justify speech that pushes people out and reduces the diversity of opinions in the community and the freedom that people have to speak. The question is where the line is—and it’s probably a blurry, messy one—and how we should address transgressions of it to keep our debates as free and productive as possible.

Kelly_Witwicki 29 Oct 2017 18:33 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: the_jaded_one’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
I already commented this on your earlier, similar comment, but since you’re repeating this here I will too so it’s not missed:

I entirely appreciate the concern of going too far. Let’s just be careful not to assume that risks only come with action—the opposite path is an awful one too, and with inaction we risk moving further down it.

Kelly_Witwicki 1 Nov 2017 0:54 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: xccf’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Since I’m already working on inclusionary practices myself, there’s not much else to do but private or public discussion.

The private discussions I have had explicitly around the issue have varied a lot in their content and purpose and can be characterized as any of the following or a combination thereof: Listening to people’s experiences; sharing my own; discussing solutions; actively (beyond just listening) supporting people who were treated poorly; sharing information and concern about the issue with people in a better or still good position to do something about it; trying to discuss why this or more specific issues of exclusion are a problem with people who prefer the status quo; or endeavoring to show people why something they did was a problem and what they should do differently.

Dealing with a bewilderingly amateur situation myself and working to privately help the people responsible to understand the problem and improve took a month out of my life, and with a really important counterfactual, and that’s strictly in time spent on the issue that I don’t think I would have had to lose in e.g. the animal advocacy community, and not accounting for the emotional toll. I have good reason for (cautious) optimism that that was fruitful but also a red flag restraining that optimism and regardless only time will tell.

Basically I’ve spent a huge amount of time on those private and often solution-oriented conversations and have been hanging over the precipice of burnout with the community since day 1 several years ago. (The broader community at least, not the animal advocacy sub/intersected-community. And disclaimer that there are great individuals throughout the broader community who are my friends and/or whose presence in the community I am so happy for, etc.) And I’m definitely not alone in that.

I can do more to have private conversations with people in better positions than myself to make change here (such as people who are looked up to in the community by the people whose behavior could be more inclusionary, or donors to EA orgs), and I might if this post and the discussion here doesn’t inspire other people to take more action on this issue, which is my hope.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 21:01 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: xccf’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
An explanation of what you mean by “turn out OK” would be helpful. For instance, do movements that err more towards social justice fare worse than those that err away from it (or than those that sit at the status quo)?

Whether that’s the case for the atheism movement or the open source community is a heavy question that merits more explanation.

Actually, I would think that any overshooting you see in these communities is a reaction to how status-quo (or worse) both of those communities are. Note for instance that when women are not collaborators on a project (but not when they are), their open-source contributions are more likely to be accepted than men’s when their gender is not known but despite that they’re less likely to be accepted than men’s when their gender is known.

Kelly_Witwicki 27 Oct 2017 13:24 UTC

7 points

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Kelly_Witwicki 26 Oct 2017 20:38 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: Anon123456’s comment on: Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA
Thanks! I added a note about the debate.

I’m not sure what your comments about critical discussion style are referring to in the post.