I think Ozy Brennan's response to this section was very good. To quote the relevant section (though I would encourage readers to read the whole piece, which also includes some footnotes) : 

It is true that effective altruism is very homogeneous, and this is a problem. I am 100% behind inclusivity efforts. And I praise the authors for their observation that inclusivity goes beyond the standard race/class/gender to matters of culture and intellectual diversity.

However, I think that this subject should be addressed with care. When you’re talking about homogeneity, it’s important to acknowledge effective altruist members of various groups underrepresented in effective altruism. Very few things are more unwelcoming than “by the way, people like you don’t exist here.”

Further, the description itself is offensive in many ways. Describing the average member of a movement with as many Jews as effective altruism as “culturally Protestant” is quite anti-Semitic. The authors fail to mention queerness and transness, probably because it would be a bit inconvenient for their point to mention that an enormous number of EAs are bisexual and trans women are represented in EA at something like forty times the population rate. The average effective altruist is “neurodivergent” which… is a bad thing, apparently? We need to go represent the neurotypical point of view, which is inescapable everywhere else in politics, corporations, and the media? The vague term “neurodivergence” actually understates the scale of effective altruism’s inclusion problem. Effective altruism is inclusive of a relatively narrow range of neurodivergences: it’s strikingly unwelcoming of, say, non-Aspie autistics.

Finally, some of this homogeneity is about things that are… true? I realize it’s rude to say so, but consuming animal products in the vast majority of situations in fact supports an industry which tortures animal and God in fact doesn't exist.I am glad that the effective altruism movement has reached general consensus on these things! Effective Altruist Political Ideology is hardly correct in every detail, but I don't think it's a bad sign if a movement broadly agrees on a lot of political issues. Some political policies are harmful! Other policies make things better!

Further, perhaps I am interpreting the authors uncharitably, but I suspect that when they say “there should be more diversity of political opinions” they mean “there should be more leftists.” I am just ever-so-slightly suspicious that if my one-sided archnemesis Richard Hanania showed up with a post about how the top cause area is fighting wokeness, the authors would not be happy with this and in fact would probably start talking about racism. Which is fine! I too agree that fighting wokeness is not the top cause area! But in this case your criticism is not “effective altruism should be more inclusive of different political views,” it’s “effective altruism’s political views are wrong and they should have different, correct ones,” and it is dishonest to smuggle it in as an inclusivity thing.

If there was no difference at all between the beliefs/values/behaviours of a the average member of this community, versus the average member of the human species - then there would be no reson for the concept "Effective Altruism" to exist at all.

It would be a terrible thing for our community to directly discriminate against traits which are totally irrelevant to what someone has offer to the EA project (such as race/gender/sexual preference) - and I've never heard anyone around here disagree with that.

But when it comes to a traits such as being highly intelligent, not being a political extremist, or having intellectual curiosity about any part of the universe other than our comparitively tiny planet (aka "thinks space is cool") - having these traits be  over-represented in the community is an obviously good thing!

Dear authors, if you think the community at large has the wrong idea about moral philosophy, I think the best response is to present compelling arguments which criticize utilitarianism directly!

If you think the community at large has the wrong economic/political beliefs, please argue against these directly!

Or if you think there is a a particular organisation in the movement is making a particular mistake which they wouldn't have made had they consulted more domain experts, please lay out a compelling case for this as well!

I remain of the opinion that posts made in good faith should not be voted below one karma without a pretty good reason. The original Doing EA Better was just too massive to facilitate discussion of specifics, and splitting it up to facilitate more specific discussion seems reasonable. I do not see a good reason for this to have negative karma.

I definitely think it’s a good idea for EA to expand the variety of academic disciplines of its members. I certainly think that the social sciences would benefit EA- for example, sociology could give us a framework of the social, cultural, and institutional relationships that underlie the problems found within developing countries. This could inform how we direct our resources. I also think that EAs may be blindsided to the idea that diversity increases a group’s collective intelligence because we assume that we already recruit the most talented people (e.g., highly educated people studying the most relevant subjects). Therefore, if we recruit the most talented people, then our epistemics is surely top-notch. This therefore excludes lots of people, especially those in poorer countries where education isn’t as easily accessible, and ways of thinking/knowing. 

I think I shut my epistemology brain off at "make beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences" when I first got sequences pilled. Emphasizing predictions and being wrong, constraining anticipation, this is I think the most productive way to think about belief. I definitely kept grinding up applied epistemology by reading Jaynes or something like that. But I still haven't seen an adequate argument that I'm wrong about feeling like we solved ways of knowing. Sometimes a subset of philosophy gets solved! You can even bring in the merits of standpoint epistemology under the banner of making beliefs pay rent by celebrating how much demographic diversity improves your brier score, if you want, I think that'd be clearheaded and understandable! 

About steel-manning vs charitably interpreting

The ConcernedEA's state:

"People with heterodox/'heretical' views should be actively selected for when hiring to ensure that teams include people able to play 'devil’s advocate' authentically, reducing the need to rely on highly orthodox people accurately steel-manning alternative points of view"

I disagree. Ability to accurately evaluate the views of the heterodox minority depends on developing a charitable interpretation (not necessarily a steel-manning) of the views. Furthermore, if the majority can not or will not develop such a charitable interpretation, then the heretic must put their argument in a form that the majority will accept (for example, using jargon and selectively adopting non-conflicting elements of the majority ideology). This unduly increases burden on the person with heterodox views.

The difference between a charitably -interpreted view and a steel-manned view is that the steel-manned view is strengthened to seem like a stronger argument to the opposing side. Unfortunately, if there are differences in evaluating strength of evidence or relevance of lines of argument (for example, due to differing experiences between the sides), then steel-manning will actually distort the argument. A charitable interpretation only requires that you accurately determine what the person holding the view intends to mean when they communicate it, not that you make the argument seem correct or persuasive to you.

Sometimes I think EA's mean "charitable interpretation" when they write "steel-manning". Other times I think that they don't. So I make the distinction here.

It's up to the opposing side to charitably interpret any devil's advocate position or heretical view. While you could benefit from including diverse viewpoints, the burden is on you to interpret them correctly, to gain any value available from them.

Developing charitable interpretation skills

To charitably interpret another's viewpoint takes Scout Mindset, first of all. With the wrong attitude, you'll produce the wrong interpretation no matter how well you understand the opposing side. It also takes some pre-existing knowledge of the opposing side's worldview, typical experiences, and typical communication patterns. That comes from research and communication skills training. Trial-and-error also plays a role: this is about understanding another's culture, like an anthropologist would. Immersion in another person's culture can help.

However, I suspect that the demands on EA's to charitably interpret other people's arguments are not that extreme. Charitable interpretations are not that hard in the typical domains you require them. To succeed with including heterodox positions, though, demands on EA's empathy, imagination, and communication skills do go up.

About imagination, communication skills, and empathy for charitably interpreting

EA's have plenty of imagination, that is, they can easily consider all kinds of strange views, it's a notable strength of the movement, at least in some domains. However, EA's need training or practice in advanced communication skills and argumentation. They can't benefit from heterodox views without them. Their idiosyncratic takes on argumentation (adjusting Bayesian probabilities) and communication patterns (schelling points) fit some narrative about their rationalism or intelligence, I suppose, but they could benefit from long-standing work in communication, critical thinking, and informal logic. As practitioners of rationalism to the degree that mathematics is integral, I would think that EA's would have first committed their thinking to consistent analysis with easier tools, such as inference structures, setting aside word-smithing for argument analysis. Instead, IBT gives EA's the excuse not to grapple with the more difficult skills of analyzing argument structures, detailing inference types, and developing critical questions about information gaps present in an argument. EDIT: that's a generalization, but is how I see the impact of IBT in practical use among EA's.

The movement has not developed in any strong way around communication skills specifically, aside from a commitment to truth-seeking and open-mindedness, neither of which is required in order to understand others' views, but are still valuable to empathy.

There's a generalization that "lack of communication skills" is some kind of remedial problem. There are communication skills that fit that category, but those skills are not what I mean.

After several communication studies courses, I learned that communication skills are difficult to develop, that they require setting aside personal opinions and feelings in favor of empathy, and that specific communication techniques require practice. A similar situation exists with interpreting arguments correctly: it takes training in informal logic and plenty of practice. Scout mindset is essential to all this, but not enough on its own.

Actually, Galef's podcast Rationally Speaking includes plenty of examples of charitable interpretation, accomplished through careful questions and sensitivity to nuance, so there's some educational material there.

Typically the skills that require practice are the ones that you (and I) intentionally set aside at the precise time that they are essential: when our emotions run high or the situation seems like the wrong context (for example, during a pleasant conversation or when receiving a criticism). Maybe experience helps with that problem, maybe not. It's a problem that you could address with cognitive aids, when feasible.

Is moral uncertainty important to collective morality?

Ahh, am I right that you see the value of moral uncertainty models as their use in establishing a collective morality given differences in the morality held by individuals?