Amber Dawn
Bio
I'm a freelance writer and editor for the EA community. I can help you edit drafts and write up your unwritten ideas. If you'd like to work with me, book a short calendly meeting or email me at ambace@gmail.com. Website with more info: https://amber-dawn-ace.com/
Posts 25
Comments168
Topic Contributions11
Thanks for this - this and an earlier post you wrote have made me, as it were, examine my privilege, since I'm one of the lucky vegans who genuinely seems to pay minimal costs, of any kind, from being vegan. This might be a combination of being taught good nutrition principles by my (pescatarian) parents, lucky genetics, living in vegan-friendly places, and having a reasonable budget for food. I'm in favour of people going some but not all of the way to vegan, if full veganism is massively costly and especially if it gives them health issues or makes them feel bad and undernourished day to day. I'm interested to hear people's stories (both positive and negative) about dietary change and what was hard about it, what they wish they'd known, etc
Why doesn't EA focus on equity, human rights, and opposing discrimination (as cause areas)?
KJonEA asks:
'How focused do you think EA is on topics of race and gender equity/justice, human rights, and anti-discrimination? What do you think are factors that shape the community's focus?'
In response, I ended up writing a lot of words, so I thought it was worth editing them a bit and putting them in a shortform. I've also added some 'counterpoints' that weren't in the original comment.
To lay my cards on the table: I'm a social progressive and leftist, and I think it would be cool if more EAs thought about equity, justice, human rights and discrimination - as cause areas to work in, rather than just within the EA community. (I'll call this cluster just 'equity' going forward). I also think it would be cool if left/progressive organisations had a more EA mindset sometimes. At the same time, as I hope my answers below show, I do think there are some good reasons that EAs don't prioritize equity, as well as some bad reasons.
So, why don't EAs priority gender and racial equity, as cause areas?
1. Other groups are already doing good work on equity (i.e. equity is less neglected)
The social justice/progressive movement has got feminism and anti-racism pretty well covered. On the other hand, the central EA causes - global health, AI safety, existential risk, animal welfare -are comparatively neglected by other groups. So it kinda makes sense for EAs to say 'we'll let these other movements keep doing their good work on these issues, and we'll focus on these other issues that not many people care about'.
Counter-point: are other groups using the most (cost)-effective methods to achieve their goals? EAs should, of course, be epistemically modest; but it seems that (e.g.) someone who was steeped in both EA and feminism, might have some great suggestions for how to improve gender equality and women's experiences, effectively.
2. Equity work isn't cost-effective
EAs care a lot about cost-effectiveness, ie how much demonstrable good impact you can get for your money. Maybe lots of equity/diversity work is, though important, not cost-effective: ie it's expensive, and the benefit is uncertain.
Counter-point: maybe EAs should try to work out how one might do equity work cost-effectively. ('Social justice' as such is seen as a western/rich world thing, but the countries where EA organisations often work also have equity problems, presumably).
3. Equity isn't an EA-shaped problem
EAs focus on what I think of as 'technical' solutions to social problems - i.e., 'fixes' that can be unilaterally performed by powerful actors such as nonprofits or governments or even singular wealthy individuals. I see many equity issues as cultural problems - that is, a nonprofit can't just swoop in and offer a wonk-ish fix; whole swathes of people have to be convinced to see the world differently and change their behaviour. Obviously, governments and NGOs do work on equity issues, but a big part of the "solution" to (e.g.) sexism is just "people, especially guys, learn basic feminist principles and stop being sexist to women". This is really important to work on, but it's not the style of solution that EAs tend to be drawn to.
4. EA is STEM-biased and equity is Humanities-biased
Related: historically many EAs have been from STEM or analytic philosophy academic backgrounds (citation needed: is this in the survey?) These EAs are naturally more drawn to science-and-maths-y problems and solutions, like 'how to cure diseases and distribute those cures' or 'how to align artificial intelligence with human values', since these are the types of problems they've learnt how to solve. More 'humanities'-ish problems and solutions - like 'what are the interpersonal dynamics that make people's lives better or worse and how can we change culture in the positive direction?' - are out of the modal EA's comfort zone.
5. EAs are privileged and underrate the need for equity
There are lots of people with social privilege in EA: it's majority white, straight, male, middle-class, etc. (Though getting more diverse on gender and race all the time, I think, and already more diverse on sexuality and stuff like mental health and neurodiversity than many social groups, I'd guess). You might predict that socially-privileged people would care less about equity issues than people who are directly impacted by those issues (though obviously this is not inevitable; many privileged people do care about equity issues that don't affect them).
6. EA is apolitical and equity is left-coded
Perhaps relatedly, EA is 'officially' apolitical, and equity/discrimination issues are more associated with left-wing or liberal politics. In fact, most EAs are liberal or politically left, but a decent amount are centrist, apolitical, libertarian or conservative. These EAs might not be interested in equity/discrimination issues; they might think that they're overrated, or they might dislike standard progressive approaches to equity (i.e. they might be "anti-woke"). This political minority might be vocal or central enough to sway the consensus.
Hi!
First of all, welcome :)
Second, answers to your questions:
How much does EA focus on anti-discrimination, equity and human rights?
I'd say 'not all that much, but somewhat'. There are lots of EAs who are definitely trying to make the EA community itself more diverse, more just, and a better place for people with oppressed/marginalized identities (see e.g. this post on advice for addressing sexual misconduct in the community). But EAs don't tend to focus on addressing anti-discrimination etc in the world more broadly, as a cause area.
Why doesn't EA focus on these things? I think for a few reasons, some of which are better than others:
-there is already a lot of good work being done on equity and human rights issues by other groups (e.g. the social justice/progressive movement broadly). On the other hand, some of the causes EAs focus on - global health, AI safety, animal welfare - are comparatively neglected by other groups. So it kinda makes sense for EAs to say 'we'll let these other movements keep doing their good work on these issues, and we'll focus on these other issues that not many people care about'.
-relatedly, EAs care a lot about cost-effectiveness (ie how much demonstrable good can you get for your money), and maybe lots of equity/diversity work is, though important, not cost-effective (ie it's expensive and the benefit is a bit uncertain)
-EAs focus on what I think of as 'technical' solutions to problems - e.g., 'fixes' that powerful entities can perform, whereas I see a lot of equity/diversity issues as cultural problems - that is, an NGO or government can't just swoop in and do some wonk-ish quick fix; whole swathes of people have to change their behaviour. Obviously governments and NGOs do work on diversity/equity issues, but a big part of (eg) feminist or anti-sexist work is just 'guys learn basic feminist principles and stop being sexist to women'. This is a really important thing to work on, but this is not the 'style' of solution that EAs tend to like.
I personally think it's a shame that more EA work isn't done on this, because if you can successfully change the culture in positive directions, that can be massively impactful.
-relatedly, historically many EAs have been from STEM or analytic philosophy academic backgrounds, so they are more drawn to 'science-y' problems and solutions (like 'how to cure diseases and distribute those cures' or 'how to align artificial intelligence with human values') rather than 'humanities' problems and solutions (like 'what are the interpersonal dynamics that make people's lives better or worse and how can we change culture in the positive direction?')
-there are lots of people with social privilege in EA: it's majority white, straight, male, middle-class, etc. (Though getting more diverse on gender and race all the time, I think, and already more diverse on sexuality and stuff like mental health and neurodiversity than many social groups, I'd guess). You might predict that socially-privileged people would care less about equity issues than people who are directly impacted by those issues (obviously not inevitable, many privileged people care about equity issues)
-perhaps relatedly, EA is 'officially' apolitical, and equity/discrimination issues are more associated with left-wing or liberal politics. In fact, most EAs are liberal or left, but a decent amount are centrist, apolitical, libertarian or conservative. These EAs might not be interested in equity/discrimination issues, on the basis that they don't think they're important, or they dislike standard progressive approaches to them.
Anyway, I wrote a mini-essay there XD but I hope it's somewhat helpful. Fwiw, I'm a social progressive and I would love to see projects that brought an EA mindset to equity, human rights or anti-discrimination projects.
I do think the focus on 1:1s is a bit over-intense. Obviously they can be really helpful or interesting with the right people, but it feels a bit like (some) EAs were like 'moderate amounts of this thing is obviously good - maybe EXTREME amounts would be EVEN BETTER'. More dakka is definitely an appropriate attitude sometimes, but sometimes it's better to have a balance of mutually-enhancing different things (in this case, a balance of 1:1s, unstructured hanging-out-with-strangers, talks, catching up with friends, and rest, perhaps?)
Incidentally, I really enjoyed being a Logistics volunteer at EAGx Cambridge, because it gave me a break from all the intense people-ing, and I brought more energy to the interactions I did have.
It's also kinda funny that the organisers put all this effort into producing talks, and then kinda dissuade people from going to them! (even though some of them are really good).
I guess first of all, I'd say the concept of 'career capital' is complicated: it's less that people have 'high' or 'low' capital, it's more like, the work you've done gives you career capital for other similar work? So people who have worked for many years - which admittedly isn't everyone! - probably have career capital in some arena. I used to think that I didn't have any career capital of the sort that would be useful for "EA-like jobs", but that turned out to be untrue, and I've heard other stories like this: there are lots of ways to do impactful work. This isn't to deny that some things look more 'impressive' to more people on a CV.
Second, a core idea of EA is that if you live in a richer country, you can have a big impact through donations to effective charities, even if your salary (and the proportion you donate) is relatively modest. Again, this doesn't apply to everyone, but if the "average joe" lives in a richer country and makes a decent salary, I'd propose that they just donate.
Another action you could suggest to pretty much everyone is to advocate for EA ideas. Perhaps they aren't in a position to run a health charity or solve alignment, but maybe someone they know is. Older people can be particularly influential here, as they might be in mentorship roles to younger people and can expose them to ideas they might not have heard otherwise.
I'm doing a bit of research into fish welfare and this is a super helpful overview - thank you so much for writing it! I also agree with Sanjay that the writing style is great - you could have a future as quick-explainer-blog-writer or some such.