It's not such a hard sell for donors, although many of us feel on some level that protecting toddlers from malaria is more impactful than running EA socials.
The people I could never convince were the community organisers themselves. They had a guaranteed salary from philanthropic foundations; why would they give that up?
I don't have an "in" but I'd love to hear the book discussed on Best Laid Plan (a podcast about planning) or Best of Both Worlds (a podcast about making work and life fit together, primarily aimed at mothers - better fit if someone at HIP can speak to combining parenting with a high impact career).
In the EA space, people like Will sharing every thought they have could in some cases have negative effects because people in EA have a history of deferring (and it gets worse the more Will talks to EAs about EA).
If Will had a weekly podcast where he was like "Does lobster welfare matter? Ehh, probably not" and "I'd love to see an EA working on every nuclear submarine" that wouldn't actually be a good thing, even if he believed both of those points. I predict a small group of EAs would love the podcast, defer to it way too much, and adopt Will's opinions wholesale.
(I notice that all three of your examples are situations where you wanted people to adopt the public intellectual's opinions wholesale)
I find it annoying if people argue for a policy for reasons other than the ones that truly motivate them, although it is very instrumentally useful and I don't think it's necessarily morally wrong.
Declining to share an opinion on a topic (eg Kelsey not telling the public she was proposing for a global pandemic) seems completely fine? Unless I'm missing some context and she was writing about COVID in a way that contradicted her actual beliefs at that time? I agree it would have been better for her to share her beliefs but there is no rule that people, even public intellectuals, need to share every thought!
>If I'm happy to buy you a beer or cover your portion of the Uber, why wouldn't I donate £5 or £10 to your fundraiser for a cause you care a lot about?
Glad to see people engaging with this consultation. My experience when I've done work reviewing consultation responses in UK government:
-put more weight on novel, well-supported arguments (so I'd recommend including a short, clear piece of strong evidence for your arguments)
-put more weight on responses from credible people or organisations with legible qualifications or expertise (so I'd recommend emphasising any legible qualifications, experience or affiliations - or if you don't have that, just presenting yourself as a normal private citizen)
-put less weight on responses that are identical or very similar; I basically considered them as a group
However note that every organisation has its own way of doing things, so other organisations might put more weight on private individuals repeating the same arguments than I did.
It's not such a hard sell for donors, although many of us feel on some level that protecting toddlers from malaria is more impactful than running EA socials.
The people I could never convince were the community organisers themselves. They had a guaranteed salary from philanthropic foundations; why would they give that up?
I've advocated for this in London; I think the incentives are better. But it's obviously a hard sell.
These examples were so helpful! Thank you for writing
I don't have an "in" but I'd love to hear the book discussed on Best Laid Plan (a podcast about planning) or Best of Both Worlds (a podcast about making work and life fit together, primarily aimed at mothers - better fit if someone at HIP can speak to combining parenting with a high impact career).
In the EA space, people like Will sharing every thought they have could in some cases have negative effects because people in EA have a history of deferring (and it gets worse the more Will talks to EAs about EA).
If Will had a weekly podcast where he was like "Does lobster welfare matter? Ehh, probably not" and "I'd love to see an EA working on every nuclear submarine" that wouldn't actually be a good thing, even if he believed both of those points. I predict a small group of EAs would love the podcast, defer to it way too much, and adopt Will's opinions wholesale.
(I notice that all three of your examples are situations where you wanted people to adopt the public intellectual's opinions wholesale)
I find it annoying if people argue for a policy for reasons other than the ones that truly motivate them, although it is very instrumentally useful and I don't think it's necessarily morally wrong.
Declining to share an opinion on a topic (eg Kelsey not telling the public she was proposing for a global pandemic) seems completely fine? Unless I'm missing some context and she was writing about COVID in a way that contradicted her actual beliefs at that time? I agree it would have been better for her to share her beliefs but there is no rule that people, even public intellectuals, need to share every thought!
When on the fence, I ranked smaller and newer charities higher
Same - wrote about it once. https://x.com/kirsten3531/status/1400747953090969602?s=46&t=7jI2LUFFCdoHtZr1AtWyCA
>If I'm happy to buy you a beer or cover your portion of the Uber, why wouldn't I donate £5 or £10 to your fundraiser for a cause you care a lot about?
thanks for sharing! Glad to hear it
Glad to see people engaging with this consultation. My experience when I've done work reviewing consultation responses in UK government:
-put more weight on novel, well-supported arguments (so I'd recommend including a short, clear piece of strong evidence for your arguments)
-put more weight on responses from credible people or organisations with legible qualifications or expertise (so I'd recommend emphasising any legible qualifications, experience or affiliations - or if you don't have that, just presenting yourself as a normal private citizen)
-put less weight on responses that are identical or very similar; I basically considered them as a group
However note that every organisation has its own way of doing things, so other organisations might put more weight on private individuals repeating the same arguments than I did.