Most LessWrong posters and readers are American, perhaps even the vast majority (I am not). Hispanic Americans differ from white Americans differ from black Americans culturally and socio-economically not just on average but in systemic ways regardless if the person in question defines himself as Irish American, Kenyan American, white American or just plain American. From the US we have robust sociological data that allows us to compare LWers based on this information. The same is true of race in Latin America, parts of Africa and more recently Western Europe.
Nationality is not the same thing as racial or even ethnic identity in multicultural societies.
Considering every now and then people bring up a desire to lower barriers to entry for “minorities” (whatever that means in a global forum), such stats are useful for those who argue on such issues and also for ascertaining certain biases.
Adding a nationality and/or citizenship question would probably be useful though.
Nationality is not the same thing as racial or even ethnic identity in multicultural societies.
I have not said that it is. I was objecting to arbitrariness of “Hispanic race”: I believe that the difference between Hispanic White Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans is not significantly higher than the difference between both two groups and non-Americans, and that the number of non-Americans among LW users would be higher than 3.8% reported for the Hispanics. I am not sure what exact sociological data we may extract from the survey, but in any case, the comparison to standard American sociological datasets will be problematic because the LW data are contaminated by presence of non-Americans and there is no way to say how much, because people were not asked about that.
I didn’t meant to imply you did, I just wanted to emphasise that data is gained by the racial breakdown. Especially in the American context, race sits at the strange junction of appearance, class, heritage, ethnicity, religion and subculture. And its hard to capture it by any of these metrics.
I am not sure what exact sociological data we may extract from the survey, but in any case, the comparison to standard American sociological datasets will be problematic because the LW data are contaminated by presence of non-Americans and there is no way to say how much, because people were not asked about that.
Once we have data on how many are American (and this is something we really should have) this will be easier to say.
Most LessWrong posters and readers are American, perhaps even the vast majority (I am not). Hispanic Americans differ from white Americans differ from black Americans culturally and socio-economically not just on average but in systemic ways regardless if the person in question defines himself as Irish American, Kenyan American, white American or just plain American. From the US we have robust sociological data that allows us to compare LWers based on this information. The same is true of race in Latin America, parts of Africa and more recently Western Europe.
Nationality is not the same thing as racial or even ethnic identity in multicultural societies.
Considering every now and then people bring up a desire to lower barriers to entry for “minorities” (whatever that means in a global forum), such stats are useful for those who argue on such issues and also for ascertaining certain biases.
Adding a nationality and/or citizenship question would probably be useful though.
I have not said that it is. I was objecting to arbitrariness of “Hispanic race”: I believe that the difference between Hispanic White Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans is not significantly higher than the difference between both two groups and non-Americans, and that the number of non-Americans among LW users would be higher than 3.8% reported for the Hispanics. I am not sure what exact sociological data we may extract from the survey, but in any case, the comparison to standard American sociological datasets will be problematic because the LW data are contaminated by presence of non-Americans and there is no way to say how much, because people were not asked about that.
I didn’t meant to imply you did, I just wanted to emphasise that data is gained by the racial breakdown. Especially in the American context, race sits at the strange junction of appearance, class, heritage, ethnicity, religion and subculture. And its hard to capture it by any of these metrics.
Once we have data on how many are American (and this is something we really should have) this will be easier to say.