Can anyone think of a way effective altruists, as a group, or as individuals, can playtest (their own) different approaches to spreading effective altruism, whether among the people they know personally, or to the public at large? Also, how could any of us go about about assessing and comparing the impact of such a thing? Is there an experimental design in this we could set up?
Absolutely. This is how all marketing campaigns work, and I am going to be starting on this shortly, it would be great to have you involved. In terms of the approach as Peter Singer said—Effective Altruism is a movement for the head and the heart. In outreach you need to use the head to capture the heart. I am working on the outreach strategy for Sustainable Human which has a following of 1.3 million on Facebook—all done by two guys over the last two years. Their top post is here—https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151541387192909&set=a.258016217908.138579.117609792908&type=1. Once you have that size of movement then you can normalise generous giving by creating a strong supporter network of local meet ups, most people once they are comfortable Give Well is honest will probably be content to just give to the top charities.
The point of departure has to be most people don’t think like Effective Altruists (you conduct mkt research to figure out how they do think and base your strategy on that research) but very many people want a happier fairer world and will be willing to pay generously to work towards achieving that, especially if they are part of a community that endorses and gives status to generous giving.
Good idea. Generals use wargames for the same purposes, which essentially are a kind of simulations. Perhaps some sort of analogous simulations can be constructed.
Another idea is of course to launch a mini version of your idea, if that’s possible. This version has to be sufficiently similar to your main one for this to be a good strategy, however.
Can anyone think of a way effective altruists, as a group, or as individuals, can playtest (their own) different approaches to spreading effective altruism, whether among the people they know personally, or to the public at large? Also, how could any of us go about about assessing and comparing the impact of such a thing? Is there an experimental design in this we could set up?
Absolutely. This is how all marketing campaigns work, and I am going to be starting on this shortly, it would be great to have you involved. In terms of the approach as Peter Singer said—Effective Altruism is a movement for the head and the heart. In outreach you need to use the head to capture the heart. I am working on the outreach strategy for Sustainable Human which has a following of 1.3 million on Facebook—all done by two guys over the last two years. Their top post is here—https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151541387192909&set=a.258016217908.138579.117609792908&type=1. Once you have that size of movement then you can normalise generous giving by creating a strong supporter network of local meet ups, most people once they are comfortable Give Well is honest will probably be content to just give to the top charities.
The point of departure has to be most people don’t think like Effective Altruists (you conduct mkt research to figure out how they do think and base your strategy on that research) but very many people want a happier fairer world and will be willing to pay generously to work towards achieving that, especially if they are part of a community that endorses and gives status to generous giving.
Good idea. Generals use wargames for the same purposes, which essentially are a kind of simulations. Perhaps some sort of analogous simulations can be constructed.
Another idea is of course to launch a mini version of your idea, if that’s possible. This version has to be sufficiently similar to your main one for this to be a good strategy, however.