EA - A few more relevant categories to think about diversity in EA by AmAristizabal

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A few more relevant categories to think about diversity in EA, published by AmAristizabal on December 19, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is a Draft Amnesty Day draft. That means it’s not polished, it’s probably not up to my standards, the ideas are not thought out, and I haven’t checked everything. I was explicitly encouraged to post something unfinished! Commenting and feedback guidelines: I’m going with the default — please be nice. But constructive feedback is appreciated; please let me know what you think is wrong. Feedback on the structure of the argument is also appreciated.Posted on draft Amnesty Day, one day late oopsPeople who think about diversity in EA or face diversity-related issues in their work often find it helpful to find common labels and identities. It allows identifying common problems, framings and solutions. The EA Survey already identifies common categories that are useful to think about diversity, such as gender, sexual orientation, age, race, education level and financial instability. Here I expand a bit on some other terms that I find particularly helpful.Some important previous thoughts:This is based on anecdotal use of the terms instead of official definitions (people with a background in diversity studies might have better suggestions).These terms are also huge generalizations that fail to capture individual differences and the use of these terms can also harm diversity by creating “us vs them” narratives or packing people into groups that don’t represent them.If terminology needs to be corrected, this post is also to invite refining these terms.Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) (as opposed to High Income Countries)Definition: All countries not considered to be high-income. Although there is no universally agreed-upon definition, the World Bank defines high-income countries as those with a gross national income per capita of $12,696 or more in 2020. Upper-middle, lower-middle, and low-income countries are classified as LMICs.Why this category is useful for diversity in EA: I’ve been surprised by how many similarities there are between LMICs, regardless of regions. This seems true outside EA, and Gapminder’s dollar street project perfectly portrays this: they show with a massive collection of photos how income is the main determinant of people’s daily lives, regardless of geography. LMICs meetups in EA events tend to group compatible people with very common experiences.EA is predominant in high income countries and I’ve found that the LMICs category is probably one of the best at capturing a lot of what people care about when they speak about diversity in EA. LMICs groups across the world share a lot in common.This guide, for example, was created by a team from India, Malaysia and Colombia and we all had relatable experiences.Examples:Usual EA framings that address topics like donations or income are unfamiliar to LMICs, such as the usual “you’re the top 1%” assumption (although in relative terms this can still be true at an individual level for high income individuals in LMICs).It captures what is usually referred to as “global north” vs “global south”, which is relevant in many discussions. It might capture that distinction better, because there are some geographically southern countries that are high income (such as Australia) and northern countries that are LMICs.It captures a lot of the historical divisions between colonized and colonizer countries and what that implies: countries often have weak institutions, corruption, poverty, poor responses to emergencies, inequality and all sorts of immediate problems.We share similar questions, experiences and tradeoffs when we think about funding on the EA space. Funding in these countries has way more purchasing power than in high income countries and this has...