I feel similarly confused with this somewhat arbitrary categorisation which also seems heavily flawed.
CE is in it's nature a narrow career focus, it focuses just on entrepreneurs in the neartermist space and is highly biased to thinking this is the most impactful career someone can do, whilst for many starting a new charity would not be. It seems a large stretch to put CE in this category and also doesnt seem to be where CE focuses its time and energy. HIP also focuses just on mid-career professionals but it's hard to know what they are doing as they seem to change what they are doing and their target audience relatively often.
80,000 hours, Probably Good and Animal Advocacy Careers seem broader in their target audience and seem like the most natural fit for being the most impactful career community. They also advise people on how they can do the most effective thing although obviously, they all have their own biases based on their cause prioritisation.
This seems absurd to me, why do vegans have to justify their diets and non vegans dont? Why do you assume that eating meat should be the default and what do you say to the numerous articles and research that suggest most meat is very unhealthy for humans to consume
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Thanks for writing this Peter, i really like the critcisms. I would have loved to see some suggestions on solutions even if they are super early initial ideas.
One thing i did want to comment on in particular was this << I think EA, and especially longtermism, has pretty homogenous demographics in a way that I think reduces our impact>>
I think its a good point but i think a large part of it is due to how unwelcoming EA is to women and how hard it is to be taken seriously as a woman in the EA community. As an example i would be curious to know how many of the posts on the EA forum are written by women vs. men and how many of the top posts are written by women. I could be wrong here maybe its not that different because i havent done the analysis. But anecdotally i know at least 3 women who write their own EA related blogs but wouldnt bother to write on the EA forum, feeling like they would be shot down or not valued.
I genuinely think this is going to be a limiting factor for EA if it continues in this way and that makes me very sad, more should be done to proactively attract, welcome and retain other genders and race, otherwise this will continue to affect our talent issues.
I feel similarly confused with this somewhat arbitrary categorisation which also seems heavily flawed.
CE is in it's nature a narrow career focus, it focuses just on entrepreneurs in the neartermist space and is highly biased to thinking this is the most impactful career someone can do, whilst for many starting a new charity would not be. It seems a large stretch to put CE in this category and also doesnt seem to be where CE focuses its time and energy. HIP also focuses just on mid-career professionals but it's hard to know what they are doing as they seem to change what they are doing and their target audience relatively often.
80,000 hours, Probably Good and Animal Advocacy Careers seem broader in their target audience and seem like the most natural fit for being the most impactful career community. They also advise people on how they can do the most effective thing although obviously, they all have their own biases based on their cause prioritisation.
This seems absurd to me, why do vegans have to justify their diets and non vegans dont? Why do you assume that eating meat should be the default and what do you say to the numerous articles and research that suggest most meat is very unhealthy for humans to consume
Thanks for writing this Peter, i really like the critcisms. I would have loved to see some suggestions on solutions even if they are super early initial ideas.
One thing i did want to comment on in particular was this << I think EA, and especially longtermism, has pretty homogenous demographics in a way that I think reduces our impact>>
I think its a good point but i think a large part of it is due to how unwelcoming EA is to women and how hard it is to be taken seriously as a woman in the EA community. As an example i would be curious to know how many of the posts on the EA forum are written by women vs. men and how many of the top posts are written by women. I could be wrong here maybe its not that different because i havent done the analysis. But anecdotally i know at least 3 women who write their own EA related blogs but wouldnt bother to write on the EA forum, feeling like they would be shot down or not valued.
Secondly without wanting my opinion to be cancelled as being "social justice" I dont think this is just a gender problem, it is also a race issue as argued here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oD3zus6LhbhBj6z2F/red-teaming-contest-demographics-and-power-structures-in-ea
I genuinely think this is going to be a limiting factor for EA if it continues in this way and that makes me very sad, more should be done to proactively attract, welcome and retain other genders and race, otherwise this will continue to affect our talent issues.