Re: Shut Up and Divide. I haven't read the other comments here but…
For me, effective-altruism-like values are mostly second-order, in the sense that a lot of my revealed behavior shows that a lot of the time I don't want to help strangers, animals, future people, etc. But I think I "want to want to" help strangers, and sometimes the more goal-directed rational side of my brain wins out and I do the thing consistent with my second-order desires, something to help strangers at personal sacrifice to myself (though I do this less than e.g. Will MacAskill). But I don't really detect in myself a symmetrical second-order want to NOT want to help strangers. So that's one thing that "Shut up and multiply" has over "shut up and divide," at least for me.
That said, I realize now that I'm often guilty of ignoring this second-orderness when e.g. making the case for effective altruism. I will often appeal to my interlocutor's occasional desire to help strangers and suggest they generalize it, but I don't symmetrically appeal to their clearer and more common disinterest in helping strangers and suggest they generalize THAT. To be more honest and accurate while still making the case for EA, I should be appealing to their second-order desires, though of course that's a more complicated conversation.
In response to “Shut Up and Divide:”
I think you should be in favor of caring more (shut up and multiply) over caring less (shut up and divide) because your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small. A tribe might have at most a few hundred people, which happens to be ~where your naive intuition stops scaling linearly.
So it seems like your default behavior should be extended to your new circumstances instead of extending your new circumstances to default state.
(Although, I think SUAD might be useful for not getting trapped in caring too much about unimportant news, for example).
(I’m writing this on my phone, please correct typos more than you otherwise would. For the same reason, this is fairly short, please steelman in additional details as necessary to convince yourself)
Your argument proves too much:
I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.
Specifically:
As Wei Dai mentioned, tribes in the EEA weren't particularly fond of other tribes. Why should people's ingroup-compassion scale up, but their outgroup-contempt shouldn't? Your argument supports both conclusions.
This is a good point, I guess.
I don't think I understand what your argument is.
Even in our EEA we had influence beyond the immediate tribe, e.g., into neighboring tribes, which we were evolved to care much less about, hence inter-tribal raids, warfare, etc.
I'm just not sure what you mean here. Can you explain with some other examples? (Are Daniel Kirmani's extrapolations of your argument correct?)
From my (new since you asked this) reply to Kirmani’s comment:
Honestly, its a pretty specific argument/recommendation so I’m having trouble thinking of another example that adds something. Maybe the difference between how I feel about my dog vs farmed animals, or near vs far people. If you’d like/it would help you or someone else, I can spend some more time thinking of one.