You argue that some guidance about “What does longtermism recommend doing in all sorts of everyday situations?” could help people become inclined towards and motivated by EA/longtermism. You also argue that aligning/packaging longtermism with (aspects of) commonsense morality could help achieve a similar objective, partly via signalling good things about longtermists/longtermism in a way that’s expensive to fake.
I agree with these points, and might add two somewhat related points:
These things could also help prevent people from becoming inclined against, or even hostile to—EA/longtermism
So I imagine you already had this in mind. But at least to me, it didn’t seem that this point was made very explicit in this post (which if fair enough—you made a lot of other points already!)
One reason this seems important is that it seems plausible that “the movement might plateau at a wide range of sizes, depending on how well-perceived it is” (quoting from your post)
And levels of inclination against/hostility towards the movement at relatively early stages might play a key role in what size the movement plateaus at
This seems to provide an extra push in favour of thinking more about this “everyday longtermism” stuff now, while the movement is still relatively small, so we avoid salting the earth by spreading in a form that will turn some people off (e.g., by seeming to lack practical guidance, be elitist, or fly in the face of commonsense morality)
Aspects of commonsense morality could also serve as expensive-to-fake signals that we are the kinds of people/orgs/communities that can be trusted and cooperated with (not just joined)
Vague example of where this could be relevant: Let’s say we and some scientific or political community could each benefit from mutual cooperation. But in the short-term, we might each individually benefit from defecting (e.g., to save resources) while the other party cooperates. Credible signals of trustworthiness and cooperativeness might then be necessary for getting the other party to cooperate with us.
You argue that some guidance about “What does longtermism recommend doing in all sorts of everyday situations?” could help people become inclined towards and motivated by EA/longtermism. You also argue that aligning/packaging longtermism with (aspects of) commonsense morality could help achieve a similar objective, partly via signalling good things about longtermists/longtermism in a way that’s expensive to fake.
I agree with these points, and might add two somewhat related points:
These things could also help prevent people from becoming inclined against, or even hostile to—EA/longtermism
Here my thinking is influenced by your own post on How valuable is movement growth?
So I imagine you already had this in mind. But at least to me, it didn’t seem that this point was made very explicit in this post (which if fair enough—you made a lot of other points already!)
One reason this seems important is that it seems plausible that “the movement might plateau at a wide range of sizes, depending on how well-perceived it is” (quoting from your post)
And levels of inclination against/hostility towards the movement at relatively early stages might play a key role in what size the movement plateaus at
This seems to provide an extra push in favour of thinking more about this “everyday longtermism” stuff now, while the movement is still relatively small, so we avoid salting the earth by spreading in a form that will turn some people off (e.g., by seeming to lack practical guidance, be elitist, or fly in the face of commonsense morality)
Aspects of commonsense morality could also serve as expensive-to-fake signals that we are the kinds of people/orgs/communities that can be trusted and cooperated with (not just joined)
Vague example of where this could be relevant: Let’s say we and some scientific or political community could each benefit from mutual cooperation. But in the short-term, we might each individually benefit from defecting (e.g., to save resources) while the other party cooperates. Credible signals of trustworthiness and cooperativeness might then be necessary for getting the other party to cooperate with us.
Thanks, I agree with both of those points.