I’m looking for more concrete suggestions that orgs could (and would hopefully be willing to) A/B test. Most of the charities EAs are encouraged to support do help sick/suffering children/animals, but I don’t think they’re taking advantage of it in the same ways the mainstream orgs are (nor are the meta-charities/evaluators that are pitching them).
About five years ago, a family member donated to SmileTrain on my behalf. I received a sheet of before-and-after photos of a child who’d had the cleft palate surgery with his first name and the date of his surgery written underneath. I had an extremely positive emotional response to this and ended up pinning it to my fridge, where roommates and house guests saw it on a daily basis. I still have more visceral happy-feels for SmileTrain than for most of the charities I support now.
I’d love to see EA groups running experiments on that sort of thing.
Evoking warm fuzzies from others rather than feelings of guilt or being overwhelmed probably works better.
Effective altruism doesn’t work best by mechanically telling others ‘look how effective this altruism is!’. Promoting effectiveness among donors is important as well, and doing so with positive reinforcement could be more effective than what we’re currently doing.
Effective altruists should run experiments with this to figure out what works best.
Mason, yours is a worthy concern, and it’s not enough to have it buried in a comment thread. The problem isn’t getting solved, so let’s make an open call for effective altruists to experiment. I’ll write a post about this. If anyone wants to get involved, or provide feedback, send me a private message.
I’m looking for more concrete suggestions that orgs could (and would hopefully be willing to) A/B test. Most of the charities EAs are encouraged to support do help sick/suffering children/animals, but I don’t think they’re taking advantage of it in the same ways the mainstream orgs are (nor are the meta-charities/evaluators that are pitching them).
About five years ago, a family member donated to SmileTrain on my behalf. I received a sheet of before-and-after photos of a child who’d had the cleft palate surgery with his first name and the date of his surgery written underneath. I had an extremely positive emotional response to this and ended up pinning it to my fridge, where roommates and house guests saw it on a daily basis. I still have more visceral happy-feels for SmileTrain than for most of the charities I support now.
I’d love to see EA groups running experiments on that sort of thing.
I understand what’s going on:
Evoking warm fuzzies from others rather than feelings of guilt or being overwhelmed probably works better.
Effective altruism doesn’t work best by mechanically telling others ‘look how effective this altruism is!’. Promoting effectiveness among donors is important as well, and doing so with positive reinforcement could be more effective than what we’re currently doing.
Effective altruists should run experiments with this to figure out what works best.
Mason, yours is a worthy concern, and it’s not enough to have it buried in a comment thread. The problem isn’t getting solved, so let’s make an open call for effective altruists to experiment. I’ll write a post about this. If anyone wants to get involved, or provide feedback, send me a private message.