I’m an undergrad, and I’ve been juggling EA and non-EA activism for several years.[1] I always felt EA could benefit more from research on social movements, because activism can yield very cost-effective results with shockingly little expenditure. I do get why it’s not a big focus for the broader movement (protests being hard to quantify, controversy, EAs not really being activist types), but I’d certainly consider it neglected.
For example, climate activism is, in my opinion, a successful example of global activism bringing a niche x-risk into the mainstream, resulting in real policy change. Climate support suffers from pluralistic ignorance, where individuals underestimate public support for certain beliefs, and hence publicly understate their own support. Essentially, “I support climate action but don’t believe others do.” is an incredibly common concern I’ve heard, and it seems the only consistent way to bypass this is frequent public displays of widespread support.
More research on how public opinion for important issues can be funneled into solutions is very valuable.
I ended up on BBC, Al Jazeera and others for climate activism. It was very interesting to watch people say “I agree climate change is a big deal but I disagree with your methods” in a thousand different ways.
activism can yield very cost-effective results with shockingly little expenditure.
I wish there were more examples of cost-effectiveness estimates for activism that I can use to discuss with skeptics. I am convinced myself that the most impactful historical examples of activism are world-changing, but I’m usually at a loss when challenged to fermi estimate them.
One example I know of is this post (by one of the OP’s authors, James Ozden) suggesting that Extinction Rebellion (XR) has abated 16 tonnes of GHGs per pound spent on advocacy, using median estimates, which is 7x more cost-effective than Clean Air Task Force (CATF), the top-recommended climate change charity (90% CI of 0.2x − 18x). There are valid criticisms of Ozden’s estimates, but a good quantitative estimate is usually better than just a verbal argument; I wish there were more such estimates to reference in conversation.
(Also, to be honest, it makes me look bad when I claim something is cost-effective but can’t provide a single real-world example with numbers to back up that claim.)
I definitely agree with you that it would be great to have more research on how public opinion for important issues can be funneled into solutions – for instance, all the policy change and public support in the world wouldn’t matter if greenhouse gas emissions weren’t actually being averted (relative to the no-activism counterfactual world).
(Also, to be honest, it makes me look bad when I claim something is cost-effective but can’t provide a single real-world example with numbers to back up that claim.)
I think it’s an epistemic issue inherent to impacts caused by influencing decision making.
For example, let’s say I present a very specific, well-documented question: “Did dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki save more lives than it took?”
The costs here are specific: Mainly deaths caused by the atomic bombs (roughly 200k people)
The lives saved are also established: Deaths caused by each day the Japanese forces continued fighting, projections of deaths caused by the planned invasion of mainland Japan and famines caused the naval blockade of Japan.
There are detailed records of the entire decision making process at both a personal and macro level. In fact, a lot of the key decision makers were alive post-war to give their opinions. However, the question remains controversial in public discourse because it’s hard to pin a number to factors influencing policy decisions. Could you argue that since the Soviet declaring war was the trigger for surrender, mayyyybe the surrender would have happened without the bombs?
Activism is way more nebulous and multivariate, so even significant impacts would be hard to quantify in an EA framework. Personally, I do see the case for underweighing activism within EA. So many other movement already prioritise activism, and in my experience it’s super difficult to make quantitative arguments when a culture centres around advocacy. However, I would really like to see some exploration, if only so I don’t have to switch gears between my diff friend groups.
The question remains though – especially when talking to funders and nonprofit leaders skeptical of advocacy (a lot of them jaded from personal experience), I’m unpersuasive when I claim something is cost-effective but can’t provide a single real-world example with numbers to back up that claim, so I’ve stopped doing that. Sure activism is nebulous and multivariate; so are many business decisions (to analogize), and yet it’s still useful to do quantitative estimation if you keep in mind that
the point isn’t to “pin a number”, it’s to reduce uncertainty to improve decision-making (Doug Hubbard corrects this misconception in How to Measure Anything, which is mainly about business decisions)
the main value of quantitative estimation (to me) is in surfacing and prioritizing new key questions that merely verbal argumentation wouldn’t highlight, cf. Holden Karnofsky on the value of GiveWell’s CEAs, more so than just ranking stuff
I have no idea honestly if activism should be over- or underweighted in EA; I suspect the answer is the economist’s favorite: “it depends”. I’d like to see more research on what makes some advocacy efforts more effective that’s adaptable to other efforts/contexts. And as a (small) donor myself I’m interested in allocating part of my “bets” capital to advocacy-related orgs like XR if I see / can make a persuasive marginal cost-effectiveness estimate for their efforts.
This is very valuable!
I’m an undergrad, and I’ve been juggling EA and non-EA activism for several years.[1] I always felt EA could benefit more from research on social movements, because activism can yield very cost-effective results with shockingly little expenditure. I do get why it’s not a big focus for the broader movement (protests being hard to quantify, controversy, EAs not really being activist types), but I’d certainly consider it neglected.
For example, climate activism is, in my opinion, a successful example of global activism bringing a niche x-risk into the mainstream, resulting in real policy change. Climate support suffers from pluralistic ignorance, where individuals underestimate public support for certain beliefs, and hence publicly understate their own support. Essentially, “I support climate action but don’t believe others do.” is an incredibly common concern I’ve heard, and it seems the only consistent way to bypass this is frequent public displays of widespread support.
More research on how public opinion for important issues can be funneled into solutions is very valuable.
I ended up on BBC, Al Jazeera and others for climate activism. It was very interesting to watch people say “I agree climate change is a big deal but I disagree with your methods” in a thousand different ways.
I wish there were more examples of cost-effectiveness estimates for activism that I can use to discuss with skeptics. I am convinced myself that the most impactful historical examples of activism are world-changing, but I’m usually at a loss when challenged to fermi estimate them.
One example I know of is this post (by one of the OP’s authors, James Ozden) suggesting that Extinction Rebellion (XR) has abated 16 tonnes of GHGs per pound spent on advocacy, using median estimates, which is 7x more cost-effective than Clean Air Task Force (CATF), the top-recommended climate change charity (90% CI of 0.2x − 18x). There are valid criticisms of Ozden’s estimates, but a good quantitative estimate is usually better than just a verbal argument; I wish there were more such estimates to reference in conversation.
(Also, to be honest, it makes me look bad when I claim something is cost-effective but can’t provide a single real-world example with numbers to back up that claim.)
I definitely agree with you that it would be great to have more research on how public opinion for important issues can be funneled into solutions – for instance, all the policy change and public support in the world wouldn’t matter if greenhouse gas emissions weren’t actually being averted (relative to the no-activism counterfactual world).
I think it’s an epistemic issue inherent to impacts caused by influencing decision making.
For example, let’s say I present a very specific, well-documented question: “Did dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki save more lives than it took?”
The costs here are specific: Mainly deaths caused by the atomic bombs (roughly 200k people)
The lives saved are also established: Deaths caused by each day the Japanese forces continued fighting, projections of deaths caused by the planned invasion of mainland Japan and famines caused the naval blockade of Japan.
There are detailed records of the entire decision making process at both a personal and macro level. In fact, a lot of the key decision makers were alive post-war to give their opinions. However, the question remains controversial in public discourse because it’s hard to pin a number to factors influencing policy decisions. Could you argue that since the Soviet declaring war was the trigger for surrender, mayyyybe the surrender would have happened without the bombs?
Activism is way more nebulous and multivariate, so even significant impacts would be hard to quantify in an EA framework. Personally, I do see the case for underweighing activism within EA. So many other movement already prioritise activism, and in my experience it’s super difficult to make quantitative arguments when a culture centres around advocacy. However, I would really like to see some exploration, if only so I don’t have to switch gears between my diff friend groups.
The question remains though – especially when talking to funders and nonprofit leaders skeptical of advocacy (a lot of them jaded from personal experience), I’m unpersuasive when I claim something is cost-effective but can’t provide a single real-world example with numbers to back up that claim, so I’ve stopped doing that. Sure activism is nebulous and multivariate; so are many business decisions (to analogize), and yet it’s still useful to do quantitative estimation if you keep in mind that
the point isn’t to “pin a number”, it’s to reduce uncertainty to improve decision-making (Doug Hubbard corrects this misconception in How to Measure Anything, which is mainly about business decisions)
the main value of quantitative estimation (to me) is in surfacing and prioritizing new key questions that merely verbal argumentation wouldn’t highlight, cf. Holden Karnofsky on the value of GiveWell’s CEAs, more so than just ranking stuff
I have no idea honestly if activism should be over- or underweighted in EA; I suspect the answer is the economist’s favorite: “it depends”. I’d like to see more research on what makes some advocacy efforts more effective that’s adaptable to other efforts/contexts. And as a (small) donor myself I’m interested in allocating part of my “bets” capital to advocacy-related orgs like XR if I see / can make a persuasive marginal cost-effectiveness estimate for their efforts.