Hide table of contents

From Dr Strangelove (nuclear war is scary) to Paradise Lost (rebellion against God is seductive but bad) to Uncle Tom's Cabin (slavery is evil) or the many protest songs over the years, e.g. "We Shall Overcome" (black civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s) or "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" (against the Vietnam War), art and culture have been used to convey many ethically-relevant ideas. Indeed Horace defined literature to have the dual purpose of delighting and instructing.

This post explores the merits of creating works of art, fiction or culture geared towards EA. Art and culture are meant in a broad sense of the term which captures novels, songs, and films. The post's aim is to gently encourage people in the EA community to express these ideas creatively.

Readers may find it fun to skip straight to the appendix, which sets out a few of my own ideas. I have certainly taken great pleasure in playing with those ideas.

Contents

First section

  • 1.1 What do we *mean* by art/fiction/culture?
  • 1.2 Do we *want* to use art/fiction/culture to communicate EA ideas?
  • 1.3 *Can* we even use art/fiction/culture to communicate EA ideas?

In this section I will conclude that communicating EA ideas through art is hard, especially when defined in a fairly "pure" manner, but with some creativity I think it’s achievable. I also believe that it is a good use of time/effort, but I will also explore some counterarguments to this claim.

Second section

  • 2. A cursory assessment of different art forms
  • This is a list of different areas/types of art/culture, together with assessments of how popular the art form is, how easy it is for someone to create that art at all, how easy it is to achieve widespread success or a large audience with this art, how easy it is to communicate complex or EA ideas using that art form

The second section will suggest that novels, stand-up comedy, and poetry appear to be the most suitable art forms. Note however that the basis for this assessment is highly subjective and has very little data/evidence to back it.

1.1 What do we *mean* by art/culture?

I treat art/culture here as

  • Anything which enables ideas/memes to spread widely
  • And has some sort of creative merit that makes consuming that art interesting or enjoyable

This definition is intended to exclude the likes of university courses on Effective Altruism or non-fiction books – these sorts of things are good, but already exist. I’m also intending to exclude instances of writing posts about EA on social media (although perhaps in exceptional circumstances this might be considered art). I’m intending to include culture such as novels, films, songs, plays.

1.2 Do we *want* to use art/culture to communicate EA ideas?

At first glance, if we believe that EA concepts are correct and help make the world better, it seems obvious that spreading them is a good idea. Counters to this include the following:

  • I understand some EAs believe that talent/ability are power-law distributed, meaning that if you focus your efforts on influencing a small number of high-impact people, you’ll have massively more impact than influencing lots of people to a small extent
    • I can understand this objection, but I don’t think I agree (quite apart from the fact that ranking people on their impactfulness feels ugly). Firstly, writing fiction or creating art is fun, so it’s not clear that the time spent on this activity has much opportunity cost. Secondly, it’s hard to know who these high-impact people are, so influencing lots of people makes it easier to ensure we’re influencing the “best” people.  Finally, these high-impact people are unlikely to achieve impact on their own; most likely they will operate alongside other people, and warming those people up to EA ideas or normalising EA ideas is likely to help these high-impact people operate better.
  • The constraints of the medium may lead to a low-fidelity transmission of ideas
    • This might be true, but the opposite might be true too. After all, encountering creative new ideas and playing with them in your head might be a great way to have new ideas transmitted to you. To my mind, the best way to test whether this is true is to try it. For some examples, I include as an addendum some of my own ideas.
  • Poorly executed cultural artefacts may put EA into disrepute
    • Poorly executed anything may put the doer into disrepute. This objection comes up often, but I think it’s easily tackled – simply don’t brand your work is explicitly EA-related (but be willing to be honest, if asked, about your influences). This was my approach with my startup SoGive (which, by the way, isn't about any form of art).

I’ll now add a few advantages of doing this:

  • Some people have become excited by EA ideas after reading a book such as Doing Good Better or something by Peter Singer. This same effect may arise among people who are unlikely to read those particular books
  • Anecdotally, I’ve heard a number of members of the EA community say that they harboured some ethical ideas that their friends and family would have thought weird, such as donating a large proportion of their income. Finding a community of people with shared values is one way to resolve this, but encountering these ideas in more popular culture may also help people feel less weird and isolated.
  • Producing the art may bring benefits to the EAs who create it
  • The opportunity cost of the time spent producing the art may be lower if the effort of creating it feels more like fun than work

1.3 *Can* we even use art/culture to communicate EA ideas? (tractability)

I would like to distinguish between object-level EA ideas and abstract/meta-level EA ideas. 

To help distinguish between the object-level category and the abstract or meta-level category, note that it is a contingent fact the world we live in that (eg) there are lots of suffering animals, however the idea that 1000 times more good is 1000 times better than less good is more universal.

The table indicates that object-level EA ideas can be communicated relatively easily, but that at the more abstract level, this is hard to convey artistically.

Having given this some thought, I'm of the view that abstract-level EA ideas *can* be conveyed through art/fiction/culture, even if it's hard to do so. The best evidence I can give for this is that, having given it a lot of (pleasurable) thought, I've thought of some ideas that I think are potentially thought-provoking and engaging. I have listed some in an appendix.

I list here some techniques that I feel have been helpful in generating ideas. I do not claim to be an expert on this. My tips will be biased towards short stories/novels, because that’s the area where I’ve expended most effort myself.

  • When talking about EA ideas with “normal” people, notice what creates tension or discomfort. Think about it, and understand why.
  • I previously used to try to fill my time with productive tasks as much as possible; e.g. if I’m on public transport then I might check my emails. I’m now more prone to have time for quiet reflection to think through ideas.
  • Talk to other writers about their creativity and ideas. When you hear something you like, see if you can adapt it to incorporate the EA ideas you’re interested in
  • Try to find pre-existing fiction/art/culture which can be the vehicle for your idea, and which just requires a “tweak” to make it convey your EA idea. In my experience, the “just a tweak” approach won’t actually work – adapting it properly will require departing substantially from the original. However it can be helpful for idea generation

I’ll add that I’ve been thinking about this for about 3 years, and only recently come up with ideas that I like enough to want to start writing (so I’m still far from finishing any of my stories yet). I mention this to set expectations that the process may be slow. (Or maybe not if you’re better at creativity than I am!)

I am unclear on the extent to which this is already happening. There may well be other EAs out there creating art/culture relating to EA ideas. There is also pre-existing culture which is pertinent to EA (I believe I saw someone make a list of novels/films/etc that might be of interest to EA thinking at some point several years ago, although I’m not sure where that is). As an example, Saving Private Ryan (a film which I've not seen) mocks (I'm told) quite powerfully deontologically driven ethical decisions whilst also highlighting the negativities of war.

2. Assessments of different forms of art/culture

This section reviews several different types of art/fiction/culture and provides assessments of their suitability for conveying EA ideas.

Just to reiterate, the method of creating these assessments is highly subjective and had little-to-no science behind it. I would suggest that this be treated as a first draft, and I would be happy for others to evolve this thinking further, both by questioning the dimensions of analysis (i.e. the columns in this table) and the individual assessments.

Again, I'm attempting to include a table here, however this is difficult to render effectively on this forum, and on my screen this looks too small to be easily legible. Apologies that my many attempts to capture this here better have been unfruitful.

If you’re wondering why I excluded art form X, the answer is almost certainly that I didn’t think of it.

The method for combining the assessments into an overall score was to linearly combine the scores with a weighting of 0.5 and 0.5 for the two tractability scores, 1 for the popularity score, and 2 for the suitability for expressing EA ideas score. Having done that, I used this as a starting point and then adjusted using my judgement.

The aim of these four assessments is to capture:

  • Tractability 1: this is trying to capture the fact that some art forms are quite accessible (e.g. writing requires literacy and a computer, or at least a pen and paper) whereas others might require something more demanding (knowledge of music, ability to dance or sculpt) If, in fact, you already know (e.g.) lots about music, the assessment may need to be tweaked for your specific circumstances.
  • Tractability 2: Just creating a thing at all is relatively easy – creating something good enough to be considered high quality is harder, and this is trying to capture that. Note that everything has low tractability on this basis, so a score of “good” is intended to be relative. It’s a place to capture that, for example, not only does a popular film need a marketing budget (as indeed, a popular book might too) but it also requires the right networks and lots of equipment (whereas self-publishing has democratised the book publishing process)
  • Popularity reflects the fact that even if you create something good, some art forms have only a niche following
  • Suitability for conveying EA ideas is self-explanatory

Conclusions

I'm of the view that expressing EA ideas through art/fiction/culture is an (as yet) underexploited method of communicating these ideas. I'd suggest that the benefits of this have the potential to be positive for consumers of the arts and also for those creating it. I myself have had many hours of pleasure from thinking about the stories I've been dreaming up.

My analysis (which is very much an initial stab which could probably be improved on) suggests that novels, stand-up comedy, poetry, and comic strips are good choices. 

Appendix: some of my creative ideas

Beautopia -- your attractiveness reflects your karma

One day, inexplicably, "The Change" occurs -- everyone wakes up looking very different to how they looked before they went to sleep (albeit still recognisably the same person). Eventually people work out that how youthful and attractive people look is largely driven by the sum of the good or evil they have done (or their karmic balance). And your actions continue to influence your appearance after The Change.

Some people have pointed to parallels with The Picture of Dorian Gray.

I have multiple plot ideas for the Beautopia world. Here's a few of them:

  • A girl gets bullied at school, gets into a sticky situation and ends up doing something nasty and becoming less attractive, leading to her love interest going off her. Suspended from school and deeply depressed, she finds herself looking through some old notes left behind by her dead father. She discovers that he had created a special database which enables people to rank charities according to their bang for your buck (and more impact per buck means more attractiveness for your buck). She goes on a mission to Africa to find the database (which has been taken there by her father's cofounder). She is being stymied by someone who she thinks is helping her; she doesn't know that he has a vested interest in a charity which is cost-ineffective. She ultimately triumphs, leading to her being more attractive, and also creating a better, healthier world.
  • A group of people start going to a gym (before The Change). They become friends, even though they are quite different and have different motivations. After The Change, much of the way they use their time no longer makes sense, and they lose a lot of what feels like a core part of their personal identity. The story explores how different people respond to change, and shows how the ability to adapt to new circumstances and take pleasure in diverse things (including helping others) will help you in the long run
  • A priest is sexually abusing children. At some point shortly after The Change, a friend of someone who has been abused becomes upset when the abused friend dies by suicide. Unable to find a healthy way to express his grief, he confronts and kills the priest. He knows that other instances of people killing someone have rendered the murderer less attractive, however in this case the killer becomes more attractive. The killer is then unsure about whether to come clean, but point to the improvement in attractiveness as evidence that the murder was the right decision. The story raises questions about the importance of the rule of law, and has echoes of "Minority Report"

Dead baby currency

This idea is inspired by https://80000hours.org/2012/06/dead-children-currency-51/

The concept is that every time you spend £3,000, a dead infant appears in your arms, and a big chunk of your vision is obscured by unavoidable hallucinations showing you the grieving family of the child, lasting for about 30 seconds. You are then left holding the baby, quite literally. That night, you will also have a nightmare which will vividly show the family of the child and how they loved the now-dead infant, and how they are suffering now.

The plot I have in mind has two strands.

Plotline 1: a lady from the bottom billion (say from sub-Saharan Africa) longs to have a child; somehow she manages to encounter a genie who enables her to have a child, and then cruelly the child dies. In her anger she summons the genie again and when she can't have her child back she wishes for something drastic to happen -- this causes the dead-baby-currency phenomenon to happen.

Plotline 2: the other plotline follows a man from Florida who has worked very hard to set up a business selling luxury yachts to high-net-worth individuals. In the dead baby currency world, he can't succeed. His wife (who spends £3,000 a month on clothes, and more on hair and shoes) becomes angry and depressed and their marriage falls apart. His business fails too. In his despair, he too manages to summon the genie. The genie says that to undo the dead baby currency phenomenon, he has to find the lady who caused it all to happen in the first place. On his journey to find her, he learns more about life for people in the bottom billion, and works out that a way out of the dead baby apparitions is to donate the money to good causes, e.g. to Malaria Consortium* . Finally in order to get this undone, the genie makes him wait for one year. After one year, he decides that he doesn't want to change anything, and the dead baby currency remains.

* cost per infant's life saved for Malaria Consortium = c £3,000; this ignores benefits to mortality rates among over 5s and development benefits; source GiveWell's CEA.

Lady with scope-sensitive empathy

The story tracks a lady whose empathy is quite normal when she considers something at the level of an individual. However she is someone for whom one death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a million times as bad. 
This has several consequences for her. For example, when someone explains the concept of hell to her as a child, she cries non-stop for a week, and can only be calmed once someone tells her that hell is not real. History lessons at school are tough for her. She is frequently bullied because of her odd behaviour.
The plot: she has been living her life for some time, just thinking she is an odd person, when an eerie warning suggests she is not safe. As the action-packed plot develops, she realises that she needs to look deep into her own psyche in order to understand the way her brain works, and ultimately to work out who are the people who genetically engineered her, and how can she keep herself safe from them.


Computer game with in-app donations
This is a Mario-style game, with in-app purchases that serve as "power-ups" for your character. The money then actually goes to a charity which the player can choose. Gameplay is paused briefly for the donation, but defaults to the same charity choice as last time, and is initially defaulted to a cost-effective choice of charity. Players are not coerced into choosing cost-effective charities. The effectiveness of the power-up is determined by the cost-effectiveness of the charity. E.g. if the power-up makes the character go faster, then the speed varies according to the charity's impactfulness. Doing this obviously requires data about the cost-effectiveness of lots of charities, however my organisation SoGive has such a database. Interested game players have the option to follow a link which will provide them with the justification for the power-up varying in effectiveness according to the choice of charity.

Comments17
Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 7:54 AM

I suspect that straightforwardly taking specific EA ideas and putting them into fiction is going to be very hard to do in a non-cringeworthy way (as pointed out by elle in another comment). I'd be more interested in attempts to write fiction that conveys an EA mindset without being overly conceptual.

For instance, a lot of today's fiction seems cynical and pessimistic about human nature; the characters frequently don't seem to have goals related to anything other than their immediate social environment; and they often don't pursue those goals effectively (apparently for the sake of dramatic tension). Fiction demonstrating people working effectively on ambitious, broadly beneficial goals, perhaps with dramatic tension caused by something other than humans being terrible to each other, could help propagate EA mindset.

Fiction demonstrating people working effectively on ambitious, broadly beneficial goals, perhaps with dramatic tension caused by something other than humans being terrible to each other, could help propagate EA mindset.

+1.

Any fiction that believably shows a bunch of disparate folks solving coordination problems seems really good on this dimension. (Children of Men comes to mind...)

elle
5y23
0
0

I like your encouragement to create more art. However, I noticed cringing at some of your ideas in the appendix. I worry that they would end up being "poorly executed cultural artefacts [that] may put EA into disrepute" as you put it.

I do not feel capable of explaining exactly where the cringe reaction is coming from, but a few examples:

I do not like the idea in Beautopia of equating physical appearance with moral goodness, given that a) it is already an issue that people assume positive personality traits when they see physically attractive people and b) it assumes there is some objective and real "good" that can be calculated. And the final plot line implying that it is good to kill people we think are evil seems like a bad meme to spread.

Dead baby currency seems overly simplistic and insensitive, although I am having a hard time putting words to why. It also triggers scrupulosity concerns (for example, see http://www.givinggladly.com/2012/03/tradeoffs.html ).

Finally, I am wary of how you refer to "Africa" monolithically. For more, see https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/confusing-country-continent-how-we-talk-about-africa/311621/.

There is so much art already in the world that remixes and reinterpretations seem like the most promising sources of "EA art". For example, I got into effective altruism largely due to the influence of the film Life in a Day, which has nothing to do with EA but is very good at cultivating the notion that every person's life has value, no matter where they live -- it makes everyone seem equally "real".

I've shown this movie to multiple EA groups after speaking about its influence on me, and it seems like people are often able to view it through the lens I've suggested, taking away the same message I did (if not with the same level of intensity).

Other examples (besides Schindler's List, which is probably the clearest one I've seen):

  • This essay on Dorothea Brooke, a fictional character who first appeared in 1871 but still pursued the same goals as the EA movement.
  • This document, which contains a few different examples, including writeups from me on the films Eye in the Sky and The Act of Killing.
  • The book Stargirl (by Jerry Spinelli), which contains this quote.

--

Regarding your examples: I find most of these unappealing, either because they are viscerally unpleasant ("dead baby currency") or far too didactic (power-ups based on charity effectiveness). Few of the world's most successful stories were created to teach someone a lesson; instead, the lesson "rides along" with the story. If we follow a good system of ethics, telling stories about the world should naturally carry an ethical message.

(Harry Potter isn't about loyalty or courage; it's about children trying to do the right thing, which naturally requires loyalty and courage as a side effect. HPMOR is about rationality, but still places the character in a world where rationality is naturally useful, not a world where making rational decisions makes you look more handsome. Ethical actions are good in the same way rational actions are useful; a story about ethics can be a story about people doing good for its own sake.)

I liked the first part of the scope-sensitive ethics story the most; it relies on real-world events and real cognitive biases. I don't think "genetic engineering" is necessary if we focus on the struggle of an empathetic person to navigate an awful world; by understanding her mind, we may naturally move closer to EA.

--

An example of a story you could write about EA without being too didactic or visceral:

A new kid shows up at school. It's an ordinary school, and students are cruel to each other in ordinary ways (but realistic -- teasing and gossip and an occasional shove, not fistfights that would result in expulsion from any actual public school).

The kid comes from a homeschool-ish background where she learned in a small, tightly-knit group of children who liked and supported each other. She views the state of the school as horrible. She decides she's going to fix it by helping her classmates to cooperate and focus on problems that aren't nearly as petty. She assembles a motley crew of altruistic allies from the school's various cliques, and together they bring about relative harmony.

There are many directions in which one could take the story from there:

  • The kids could try to reform the school board, learning about how to fix broken systems in the process.
  • They could research the best education/public policy reforms in the world and try to reform the city in that direction.
  • If you want to be a bit more explicit, they could get involved in charity and start a high-school EA group (perhaps under a different name), occasionally hanging out with visitors from the EA world (like Bob Riblin, who offers career advice, or journalist Kelsie Pyle, who wants to learn how this particular town became so... effective). It's best if they do this after realizing how hard it is to make incremental progress on entrenched social issues -- after all, that's how plenty of people actually become interested in EA.

The key is that you need to show people using an EA mindset (thinking about consequences and counterfactuals, remembering that everyone is valuable), even if they aren't working on EA causes. Show people characters who do incredible things and invite them to contemplate the virtues of those characters, and you don't need to hammer too hard on the philosophy.

Have you heard of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (http://www.hpmor.com/) and/or http://unsongbook.com ? I think they serve some of this role for the community already.

It's interesting they are both long-form web fiction; we don't have EA tv shows or rock bands that I know of.

Can we come up with a list of existing pieces of art that come close to this? I don't expect good ideas to come from first principles, but there might be some type of art out there that is non-cringy and conveys elements of EA thinking properly.

I'll start with Schindler's list, and especially this scene, where the protagonist breaks down while calculating just how many more lives he could have saved if he had sold his car, his jewelry, etc.

The book this is based on, Schindler's Ark by Thomas Kenneally, is also great if you want to delve more into character psychology.

I am not an artist, but it seems like visual art could illustrate scope insensitivity and neglectedness. For instance, represent a relatively small amount of current lives and a huge amount of money going towards them, and then a huge number of future lives in a very small amount of money going towards them. Similarly with pets versus livestock (like ACE's graphs posted about recently on the forum). Poverty would be a little more difficult, but maybe one could use the number of people in developed countries making under $10 a day and the amount of money that flows towards them, versus the number of people in less-developed countries making under $10 a day and the amount of money that flows towards them.

A few nice examples I've seen along these lines:

ACE's graphs on how relatively neglected farm animal welfare is.

Wait But Why on putting time in perspective.

A bunch of art on space, of which this clip of the virgo supercluster is an example.

And my favourite - 'If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel - a tediously accurate scale model of the solar system'.

Kurzgesagt communicates some complex ideas using visualisations and reframing which are also quite effective, and possibly could learn from. Their video on time is a good example of this.


Thank you for posting this. I massively laud giving slightly 'left field' approaches a go, and I think you've raised an important issue about communicating about EA movement and thinking generally.

My reply rests on a few some assumptions, which I hope are not too unfair - happy for critique / challenge on them.

The OP's point about art is worth considering in the context of another question: how can we communicate our thinking (in all its diversity and complexity) accurately and effectively to people outside the community?

Whilst I laud the OP's ambition, it's worth thinking about the intermediate steps between logical reasoning (which I observe is our default) and art; using metaphor and analogy to illustrate points. (To note: I believe some animal charities do this already, using the Schindler's car example to influence actions regarding factory farming.)
Before giving arguments in favour, here's an example: video explaining a new type of cancer treatment, CAR-T cell therapy


Some brief arguments in favour:

1) Metaphors / analogies can create an 'aha' moment where the outline of a complex idea is grasped easily and retained by the listener, which they can then layer nuance on top of. People might otherwise not grasp certain complex EA ideas so easily.

2) Whilst explaining a position in logical sequence with great attention to detail is often effective for influencing (and is the main communication approach observed in this forum), I assume that lots of people are not 'hooked' by that approach, or find the line of reasoning too abstract to wish to change their mindset of behaviour in response to it.

3) Metaphors / analogies can be more memorable, and therefore transfer from person to person or 'spread' better than prosaic reasoning.

4) If you assume that people often have weak attention spans and inaccurate recollection memory, then 1-3 are even stronger arguments in favour of using metaphors more.

The examples the OP chooses (e.g. Dr Strangelove) prove that communicating an idea through art requires the artist's ambition to be matched with huge skill, so this strikes me as 'high risk, high gain' territory. But we can probably make some decent gains by developing some metaphorical or allegorical ways of communicating EA thinking, testing them out and iterating.....and THEN seeing if people who we want to communicate our messages to apprehend them better.

I like this idea a lot. I've been playing with the idea of writing a bildungsroman around some of my insights into personal development, which of course touches on topics related to EA and rationality, so I'm quite fond of seeing others do this as well.

What's worth noting is that I haven't done it because I'm constantly pulled by other things that seem higher priority. This is maybe the big challenge for making more EA art: its comparative benefit. I'm tempted to say "maybe there will be more time for EA art when EA is bigger", but if that's the case it's a chicken-and-egg problem because EA art seems to be a great way to grow the movement.

So on the whole my guess is we can't directly go for EA art beyond making sure folks in the community are more aware that it's a thing they could maybe do so that on the margin we might get more EA art replacing EA-relevant art that would have otherwise been produced.

Interesting post with a good angle, thank you for taking the time to write about this!

I've also been playing around with the idea of using art or some kind of interactive medium to convey EA concepts. I completely agree that it's important that ideas are not "pushed" as EA, but rather the work allows room for the viewer to discover the benefits of these ideas for themselves.

One idea I've had that I haven't seen explored elsewhere is a video/board game about welfare and existential risk. For example, the player(s) might step into the shoes of a world leader, drafting policies to limit risks while maximizing global happiness. They would be gradually introduced to various concepts regarding existential risk, while having interesting and challenging game systems to play against.

One of the benefits with this approach is that it doesn't have to be EA branded at all, yet can introduce difficult concepts with ease and nudge people to study or discuss these topics on their own. It would also be niche enough that market validation is important, but the costs for that could greatly be reduced through building a prototype and running a crowdfunding campaign.

In fact, I had some free time last weekend and built a functional prototype with realistic data. It's obviously at a very early stage, but could be expanded in a variety of directions. In my opinion the interactivity can bring an immersive extra dimension to a work, and can help users realize new ways to think about the causality of something.

https://imgur.com/85XanzS

I was surprised not to see documentaries on the list. I recognize the show, don't tell aim. But you can do a lot of showing with documentaries. The price point is higher and also harder to create, but it has potentially large reach and is easily shareable. It also has a lower commitment for consumption than a book and can have a clear call to action. Perhaps this approach misses the premise of what you're aiming at though.

Next up would be a fictional movie, but that's potentially even higher cost.

Note on Forum images: You can click and drag images when you're in your post editor to expand them to the full width of the post. I've done this for the images in your post; you may want to remove the written-out text of the table.

Thanks Aaron, I have removed the written out text of the table. Expanding them was useful, thank you for doing that.

Forum owners may be interested to know that I had assumed that clicking the corner of the image and dragging to expand would be possible, but after many many attempts I gave up.

If you hover over the left or right edge of an image, you should see an arrow appear rather than your mouse pointer. Images can only be expanded by dragging horizontally, not vertically, which may be why trying to click the corner wasn't working for you.