Assuming that the EA forum is mostly read by EAs, I would concede that it’s rather redundant here, but I think it’s written with a different audience in mind anyway.
I see great potential in the typical EA messaging that signals being scientific, objective, and cerebral, which is probably also what I found attractive from the start. This sets it apart from the usual charity fundraising messaging. Whereas the usual charity pamphlet would show one child or cat and give them a name and a story, the EA pamphlet would cite papers on the identified victim effect and scope neglect.
But most EA outreach already follows that strategy, and it has been working well, for example for the EA Foundation, for recruiting the sort of people to whom this type of messaging appeals. What Gleb is trying here – or at least that is one aspect of InIn’s current experiments as I understood it – is to appeal to the people for whom this messaging doesn’t work, because all these other charities would probably have given up on their strategy long ago if it weren’t sufficiently effective. This type of audience is probably not found in this forum (and good arguments have been put forward that it’s not the right messaging for growing the movement), but they are probably the majority of the readership of the newspaper outlets that InIn is publishing in. Thus the article can build rapport with people whose instrumental value for EA is probably lower but who maybe make up for it with their numbers. I’m highly unsure about whether this is the case, but it’s the context in which I read the article.
And from that perspective I think it works. Romantic is probably for many people (at least for me ^^) not an unchanging attribute but something that is susceptible to social proof. When an author first manages to signal to the readers that they’re like them (and some degree of authority comes automatically with publishing in a newspaper), and then relates their experiences with romantic donation situations, it’s not so much a suspicious, spurious observation about supposed convergence but a normative influence. If this influence is net good in the end, I’m all for it. There may still be an opportunity cost to Gleb’s work, but if there is, I think Gleb is well qualified to find out, so that the value of information should make up for it.
In this context I don’t see a great danger of spamminess reflecting badly on EA either; rather I’m worried that the article won’t stand out among all the other messaging from charities and for-profits that product X and activity Y are sooo romantic according to the most relateable celebrity they could hire. People already get so much of that that it’ll get mentally spam-filtered long before they read to the EA part or even past the headline, and if they do it won’t stand out either.
Also upvoted, mostly because I’m curious about the result of InIn’s experiment.
Indeed, the purpose of the InIn experiment is to use research-based marketing strategies to promote giving to effective charities. Notably, we are not pursuing explicit EA outreach, so as not to attract people to the movement who are not really value-aligned, but just leaving hooks to the EA movement in the article for those who want to follow them. This is why we at InIn prefer to talk about promoting effective giving rather than explicitly effective altruism for what we do.
I hear you about the concern of the article not standing out. I think what helps it stand out is the combination of emotional engagement, authentic narrative, and scientific backing, with the latter an element not typically found in nonprofit messaging. I think that’s the only reason the newspaper accepted the article—it stands out in a distinct way. So hopefully that will have the intended impact.
The Plain Dealer reaches over 400,000 people with its Sunday edition, which is the only venue where editorials are printed, and has 5,000,000 unique visitors online per month. Making a rough Fermi estimate, if even .1% of the Sunday edition readers and .01% of the monthly website visitors try out this strategy, this is 400 50 2 + 500 50 2 money redirected toward charity from consumerism.
The asterisks in the comment got interpreted as Markdown. 400 * 50 * 2 + 500 * 50 * 2 = 90k. Cool! Maybe the newspaper has some estimates on the number of people that read a given article on a certain page of the print version; they’ll surely have that data for the the online version. Then you can make a more precise estimate.
In terms of the ability-motivation-trigger framework, the article provides ability (links to charities) is deliberately cautious about the motivation, and uses Valentine’s Day as trigger. Providing a credible trigger is always a bit tricky, since it’s almost necessarily contrived and often overused.
Maybe a meta approach may work too, where you explain the need people have for such triggers for behavior change, pick something funny for them, and ask them to try it out?
I will think about the meta approach. My intuition suggests that meta works only for people who are already meta, and won’t work for the broad populace, but something to think about.
Assuming that the EA forum is mostly read by EAs, I would concede that it’s rather redundant here, but I think it’s written with a different audience in mind anyway.
I see great potential in the typical EA messaging that signals being scientific, objective, and cerebral, which is probably also what I found attractive from the start. This sets it apart from the usual charity fundraising messaging. Whereas the usual charity pamphlet would show one child or cat and give them a name and a story, the EA pamphlet would cite papers on the identified victim effect and scope neglect.
But most EA outreach already follows that strategy, and it has been working well, for example for the EA Foundation, for recruiting the sort of people to whom this type of messaging appeals. What Gleb is trying here – or at least that is one aspect of InIn’s current experiments as I understood it – is to appeal to the people for whom this messaging doesn’t work, because all these other charities would probably have given up on their strategy long ago if it weren’t sufficiently effective. This type of audience is probably not found in this forum (and good arguments have been put forward that it’s not the right messaging for growing the movement), but they are probably the majority of the readership of the newspaper outlets that InIn is publishing in. Thus the article can build rapport with people whose instrumental value for EA is probably lower but who maybe make up for it with their numbers. I’m highly unsure about whether this is the case, but it’s the context in which I read the article.
And from that perspective I think it works. Romantic is probably for many people (at least for me ^^) not an unchanging attribute but something that is susceptible to social proof. When an author first manages to signal to the readers that they’re like them (and some degree of authority comes automatically with publishing in a newspaper), and then relates their experiences with romantic donation situations, it’s not so much a suspicious, spurious observation about supposed convergence but a normative influence. If this influence is net good in the end, I’m all for it. There may still be an opportunity cost to Gleb’s work, but if there is, I think Gleb is well qualified to find out, so that the value of information should make up for it.
In this context I don’t see a great danger of spamminess reflecting badly on EA either; rather I’m worried that the article won’t stand out among all the other messaging from charities and for-profits that product X and activity Y are sooo romantic according to the most relateable celebrity they could hire. People already get so much of that that it’ll get mentally spam-filtered long before they read to the EA part or even past the headline, and if they do it won’t stand out either.
Also upvoted, mostly because I’m curious about the result of InIn’s experiment.
Indeed, the purpose of the InIn experiment is to use research-based marketing strategies to promote giving to effective charities. Notably, we are not pursuing explicit EA outreach, so as not to attract people to the movement who are not really value-aligned, but just leaving hooks to the EA movement in the article for those who want to follow them. This is why we at InIn prefer to talk about promoting effective giving rather than explicitly effective altruism for what we do.
I hear you about the concern of the article not standing out. I think what helps it stand out is the combination of emotional engagement, authentic narrative, and scientific backing, with the latter an element not typically found in nonprofit messaging. I think that’s the only reason the newspaper accepted the article—it stands out in a distinct way. So hopefully that will have the intended impact.
The Plain Dealer reaches over 400,000 people with its Sunday edition, which is the only venue where editorials are printed, and has 5,000,000 unique visitors online per month. Making a rough Fermi estimate, if even .1% of the Sunday edition readers and .01% of the monthly website visitors try out this strategy, this is 400 50 2 + 500 50 2 money redirected toward charity from consumerism.
The asterisks in the comment got interpreted as Markdown. 400 * 50 * 2 + 500 * 50 * 2 = 90k. Cool! Maybe the newspaper has some estimates on the number of people that read a given article on a certain page of the print version; they’ll surely have that data for the the online version. Then you can make a more precise estimate.
In terms of the ability-motivation-trigger framework, the article provides ability (links to charities) is deliberately cautious about the motivation, and uses Valentine’s Day as trigger. Providing a credible trigger is always a bit tricky, since it’s almost necessarily contrived and often overused.
Maybe a meta approach may work too, where you explain the need people have for such triggers for behavior change, pick something funny for them, and ask them to try it out?
Oh, thanks for catching the asterisks issue!
I will check with the newspaper.
I will think about the meta approach. My intuition suggests that meta works only for people who are already meta, and won’t work for the broad populace, but something to think about.