Thanks for sharing your write-up. I read this book a few years ago, and I remember it as partially inspirational, and partially cautionary. There are aspects of the stories that I really do find inspiring, and had the earlier years of my life happened differently I could see myself embracing some aspect of these stories. And of course, there are scenarios in these stories where these altruistic desires went to such extremes that I found them unhealthy or unhelpful.

It may seem obvious that there are downsides to being extremely altruistic, but I found it helpful to have some concrete examples of real things that people have done. I view it kind of like the difference between someone saying "don't go to that place" and "don't go to that place, because X, Y, Z things are likely to occur there."

I'm commenting on this a few years late, but for anyone reading this who wants to learn more, here is an excerpt from the book DEI Deconstructed, by Lily Zheng, along with a few references:

The “standard” best practice with resumes in the DEI space is to anonymize them, but I strongly advise caution. Proponents of resume anonymization argue that because the presence of gender and racial cues from names or hobbies can lead to hiring discrimination due to bias,²⁴ removing this information will interrupt it. They advocate for names, hobbies, profile pictures, and any other identifying information to be scrubbed from resumes and in the hiring process. However, research has documented unintended adverse consequences of resume anonymization: namely, that “neutral” characteristics that candidates from disadvantaged communities might face, like unemployment gaps, are perceived even more negatively when identifying information is removed. Additionally, companies that anonymize resumes tend to be more progressive and care more about supporting people’s identities—increasing the damage done when identity is removed from the process. As a result, for the companies that deploy it, anonymization can backfire and result in even greater demographic disparity—opposite its intended effect.²⁵ For organizations that value any aspect of their employees beyond purely skills and competencies, anonymization may harm rather than help.²⁶ While it can be tempting to remove the human element from consideration (and many third-party firms have emerged to meet precisely this demand), consider taking the time to train hiring managers to handle identity with intentionality instead and collecting regular data on outcomes to maintain accountability.

24. Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2003. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” National Bureau of Economic Research.

25. Behaghel, Luc, Bruno Crépon, and Thomas Le Barbanchon. 2015. “Unintended Effects of Anonymous Résumés.” American Economic Journal. Applied Economics 7 (3): 1–27.

26. White, Maia Jasper. 2020. “Eyes Wide Shut—The Case against Blind Auditions.” NewMusicBox (blog). September 10, 2020.

For anyone that wants to dig deeper, it appears that the Unintended Effects of Anonymous Résumés article is cited in several papers that could be useful to dig into, I haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

Sophia, I can't believe I didn't see this post until today. I've been interested in inclusion and accessibility-type topics for years, so I have no idea how I didn't see it when you first posted it. Things seem to have improved in some ways since August 2022, but there is still plenty of progress to be made.

Has anybody created a "Top Ten EA Jargon Words Explained"-type post? That seems like something that a person could create fairly easily, and I actually already have a comical version of it as a draft for an April Fool's post. I could easily create a post that could serve as a sort of reference page, so that people can easily link to it to explain jargon.

The 80,000 Hours team just published that "We now rank factory farming among the top problems in the world." I wonder if this is a coincidence or if this planned to coincide with the EA Forum's debate week? Combined with the current debate week's votes on where an extra $100 should be spent, these seem like nice data points to show to anyone that claims EA doesn't care about animals.

For what it is worth, you are not alone in feeling bad when you get downvotes. People have described me as a fairly confident person, and I view myself as pretty level-headed, but if I get a disagree vote without any comment or response I am also perplexed/frustrated/irritated. I often think something along the lines of "there is nothing in this comment that is stating a claim or making an argument; what could a person disagree with?"

I do wish there were a way to "break" the habit that EA forum users have to conflate up/down votes and agree/disagree votes.

Theoretically, if there was some sort of option for a user to "hide" votes (maybe on all content, or maybe just on the user's own content), do you think that would minimize the negative feelings you have relating to votes?

I'd be curious about what kinds of events you've enjoyed organizing. Do you have a list, or could you type out a few sentences describing them?

Informal and rambling thoughts:

I think of there being a sort of spectrum for events, ranging from fairly focused and goal-oriented on one end to fairly enjoyable, for-its-own sake on the other end. Maybe the type of events that EAs tend to organize tend to be more on one side of that (simplified) spectrum, but there isn't anything inherent that makes it so. I suspect that a lot of people tend to focus EA events on the recruiting, upskilling, professional networking, and knowledge-sharing that is likely to have a positive expected value. I for one would be very happy to see you organize some EA events with people interested in EA ideas, getting these people in the same room, and organizing something fun for these kinds of people. 

A potluck dinner, a casual picnic, a movie night, a book club, or a hike could all involve people interested in EA topics, and without putting such a focus on making the world a better place. But maybe we shouldn't even consider those EA events, because they are just regular events that happen to be attended by a bunch of EAs? If 10 EAs go for a hike, it isn't necessarily an "EA hike."

Some of the less enjoyable EA events I've gone to were let's practice this EA-relevant skill in order to increase our competence and network for jobs and the more enjoyable were we are a bunch of EAs who want to hang out and play frisbee/talk about relationships/do some activity for fun & enjoyment. I do think that there is a place for structured, outcome-focused events for the EA community, but I don't want 95% of events to be like that. Maybe 60%? Maybe 40%?

It looks great! I'm happy to see events that are fairly bottom-up and grassroots in the organization. Do you think that this template/model could be used by other groups (say, in Latin America, or in Southeast Asia) with some reasonable adaptations?

I really love seeing anecdotes of these kinds of principles applied in everyday, concrete, relatable situations. It helps illustrate the principles nicely, and gives an example that can be linked to (rather than linking someone to a 20-minute abstract essay).

I'm reminded about The Innovation Delusion (which I've mentioned a bit previously on the EA Forum: 1, 2), and ideas of credit, visibility, absence blindness, and maintenance work. An example of Thomas Edison is good enough that I will copy and paste it here:

Edison—widely celebrated as the inventor of the lightbulb, among many other things—is a good example. Edison did not toil alone in his Menlo Park laboratory; rather, he employed a staff of several dozen men who worked as machinists, ran experiments, researched patents, sketched designs, and kept careful records in notebooks. Teams of Irish and African American servants maintained their homes and boardinghouses. Menlo Park also had a boardinghouse for the workers, where Mrs. Sarah Jordan, her daughter Ida, and a domestic servant named Kate Williams cooked for the inventors and provided a clean and comfortable dwelling. But you won’t see any of those people in the iconic images of Edison posing with his lightbulb.

If I imagine being in a hypothetical role that is analogous to Mrs. Sarah Jordan's role, in which I support other people to accomplish things, am I okay with not getting any credit? Well, like everyone else I have ego and I would like the respect and approval of others. But I guess if I am well-compensated and my colleagues understand how my work contributes to our team's success I would be okay with somebody else being the public face and getting the book deals and getting the majority of the credit. How did senior people at Apple feel about Steve Jobs being so idolized in the public eye? I don't care too much if people in general don't acknowledge my work, as long as the people I care about most acknowledge it.

Of course it would be a lot nicer to be acknowledged widely, but that is generally not how we function. Most of us (unless we specifically investigate how people accomplished things) don't know who Michael Phelps's nutritionist was, nor do we know who taught Bill Gates about computers, nor who Magnus Carlsen's training partners are, nor who Oscar Wilde bounced around ideas with and got feedback from. I think there might be something about replaceability as well. Maybe there are hundreds of different people who could be (for example) a very good nutritionist for Michael Phelps or who could help Magnus Carlsen train, but there are only a handful of people who could be a world-class swimmer or a world class-chess player on that level?