I both agree and disagree with you here. I agree that EA should spread, that spreading it could have a great positive impact if done correctly, and that it would require different communication strategies to do so than the ones currently employed.
Where I disagree is that I don't believe this was written with an audience of donors in mind. It reads as an inward facing (toward other EA members) piece to me. I also believe there's a good extension to why some level of warm fuzzies matter: if everyone donated/volunteered with the purest form of EA in mind, we'd lose a lot of important community organizations in the US, and that's not a good thing either. The goal is to divert some-to-many of the marginal warm fuzzies toward more cost-effective programs.
Pulling on my experience in donor development in the general nonprofit space and my degree in communication science, I'd suggest some ideas:
1. Focusing on core ideas: "it's better to save 100 lives than 1", "it's nice to know for sure what your money will do", "it's extremely cheap to save a life," "some organizations will take your money a lot farther than others, so it would be nice to have at least one big win with some-to-many of your donation dollars balanced with investments in initiatives you're personally passionate about"
2. Semi-effective altruism versus EA: The EA community may be strong in some ways because it is niche enough to feel like a community that agrees on certain values to an unconventional degree. And it may make sense to preserve thatwhile expanding "semi-effective" altruism ideas. Partly I feel this way because I don't think most people think as "coldly" (read: rationally) as EA-aligned folks tend to. And that's okay. Another reason is as you explain above: EA works because we embrace complex, sometimes conflicting concepts and care enough to dig deep and criticize research and continuously update our mental models. If most people aren't that way, then EA as EA is would be dangerous. People could easily take pieces of it and misinterpret it. They could have panics about AI, sure, but they could also make well-intentioned but bad giving decisions. An oversimplified risk scenario is as follows: too simple EA thinking may --> well intentioned misunderstandings of EA and how to make EA-driven giving decisions --> EA starting to mean too many things, getting watered down, becoming toxic, or simply people publicly donating money in unideal ways with the EA brand attached to it --> highly EA-minded individuals becoming disillusioned with EA. I'd argue that many existing philanthropies are increasingly caring about evidence, and that could be leveraged to shift the discourse a bit toward thinking seriously about what evidence is well-done and could --> an interest in EA for some philanthropies. For rich donors, I'd suggest splitting giving (EA & local), but less in "EA versus passion" and more, "you're passionate about education in NYC because you believe it delivers X, and this also delivers X but for 10x more people. I know you grew up in NYC, so the lives of others there feels really personal to you, but I also know you want to maximize the impact you can make with the dollars you have to spend. So, what do you think about splitting it?"
3. Some creators are potential good proponents of EA-like thinking already, and their audiences are more exposed to thinking critically. It would be good to start here, and it may be easy to do a partnership/podcast episode or series with these creators. For instance, John and Hank Green.
4. Viewing EA as one framework for giving, and focusing on joining it with other frameworks would be a more likely way to bring in more people, rather than implying to convince well-intentioned, caring, altruistic people that their frames (which may be tied to their identity in strong ways) are insufficient. I think the strength of this post is that it advocates for some proportion of warm fuzzies, but I do not think suggesting to people that donating to their synagogues/churches/mosques/etc., community groups, local soup kitchens, school fundraisers, etc. only serves the purpose of keeping them interested enough in altruism to donate to "important causes." First of all, it undervalues the impact of supporting people in need or supporting a community, and second of all, it'll lead to defensiveness, not changes in giving.
Nikita,
I both agree and disagree with you here. I agree that EA should spread, that spreading it could have a great positive impact if done correctly, and that it would require different communication strategies to do so than the ones currently employed.
Where I disagree is that I don't believe this was written with an audience of donors in mind. It reads as an inward facing (toward other EA members) piece to me. I also believe there's a good extension to why some level of warm fuzzies matter: if everyone donated/volunteered with the purest form of EA in mind, we'd lose a lot of important community organizations in the US, and that's not a good thing either. The goal is to divert some-to-many of the marginal warm fuzzies toward more cost-effective programs.
Pulling on my experience in donor development in the general nonprofit space and my degree in communication science, I'd suggest some ideas:
1. Focusing on core ideas: "it's better to save 100 lives than 1", "it's nice to know for sure what your money will do", "it's extremely cheap to save a life," "some organizations will take your money a lot farther than others, so it would be nice to have at least one big win with some-to-many of your donation dollars balanced with investments in initiatives you're personally passionate about"
2. Semi-effective altruism versus EA: The EA community may be strong in some ways because it is niche enough to feel like a community that agrees on certain values to an unconventional degree. And it may make sense to preserve that while expanding "semi-effective" altruism ideas. Partly I feel this way because I don't think most people think as "coldly" (read: rationally) as EA-aligned folks tend to. And that's okay. Another reason is as you explain above: EA works because we embrace complex, sometimes conflicting concepts and care enough to dig deep and criticize research and continuously update our mental models. If most people aren't that way, then EA as EA is would be dangerous. People could easily take pieces of it and misinterpret it. They could have panics about AI, sure, but they could also make well-intentioned but bad giving decisions. An oversimplified risk scenario is as follows: too simple EA thinking may --> well intentioned misunderstandings of EA and how to make EA-driven giving decisions --> EA starting to mean too many things, getting watered down, becoming toxic, or simply people publicly donating money in unideal ways with the EA brand attached to it --> highly EA-minded individuals becoming disillusioned with EA. I'd argue that many existing philanthropies are increasingly caring about evidence, and that could be leveraged to shift the discourse a bit toward thinking seriously about what evidence is well-done and could --> an interest in EA for some philanthropies. For rich donors, I'd suggest splitting giving (EA & local), but less in "EA versus passion" and more, "you're passionate about education in NYC because you believe it delivers X, and this also delivers X but for 10x more people. I know you grew up in NYC, so the lives of others there feels really personal to you, but I also know you want to maximize the impact you can make with the dollars you have to spend. So, what do you think about splitting it?"
3. Some creators are potential good proponents of EA-like thinking already, and their audiences are more exposed to thinking critically. It would be good to start here, and it may be easy to do a partnership/podcast episode or series with these creators. For instance, John and Hank Green.
4. Viewing EA as one framework for giving, and focusing on joining it with other frameworks would be a more likely way to bring in more people, rather than implying to convince well-intentioned, caring, altruistic people that their frames (which may be tied to their identity in strong ways) are insufficient. I think the strength of this post is that it advocates for some proportion of warm fuzzies, but I do not think suggesting to people that donating to their synagogues/churches/mosques/etc., community groups, local soup kitchens, school fundraisers, etc. only serves the purpose of keeping them interested enough in altruism to donate to "important causes." First of all, it undervalues the impact of supporting people in need or supporting a community, and second of all, it'll lead to defensiveness, not changes in giving.
Wonderful post! I'm curious if you can share the link to "NEST's clever tabling idea" as that would be very helpful for planning tabling!