I agree that the intrinsic benefit of people joining who have said on here that it wouldn’t change their behaviour would likely be minimal. You might think there would be community benefits (both for them and others), or commitment benefits. But the main reason I’m asking this question is the fact that if we want this to become the standard action people who hear about effective altruism take, and want people to feel they are working toward a common aim even if they differ on what they think the very most effective cause is, then it’s important that most people currently affiiliated with effective altruism are members.
Poverty does seem to be a good cause for engaging people, which is one of the reasons we’d continue with the vision, mission and overall focus we currently have. I think I would be somewhat surprised if people who wholly agreed with our charity recommendations etc were put off from signing the pledge because it wasn’t narrow enough. That might be a difficult thing to measure though, so we’ll probably try to do some testing of it, talking to people who don’t know much about gwwc yet.
Yes, it would be really problematic if the pledge started being taken less seriously. We’re trying hard to have more contact with our members than previously, and are currently in the process of following up with people as to whether they’ve been keeping up with the pledge. Hopefully having increased personal contact with members will help to keep people committed, and will allow us to discuss with people whether they really seem to be fulfilling the pledge.
I agree that the intrinsic benefit of people joining who have said on here that it wouldn’t change their behaviour would likely be minimal. You might think there would be community benefits (both for them and others), or commitment benefits. But the main reason I’m asking this question is the fact that if we want this to become the standard action people who hear about effective altruism take, and want people to feel they are working toward a common aim even if they differ on what they think the very most effective cause is, then it’s important that most people currently affiiliated with effective altruism are members. Poverty does seem to be a good cause for engaging people, which is one of the reasons we’d continue with the vision, mission and overall focus we currently have. I think I would be somewhat surprised if people who wholly agreed with our charity recommendations etc were put off from signing the pledge because it wasn’t narrow enough. That might be a difficult thing to measure though, so we’ll probably try to do some testing of it, talking to people who don’t know much about gwwc yet. Yes, it would be really problematic if the pledge started being taken less seriously. We’re trying hard to have more contact with our members than previously, and are currently in the process of following up with people as to whether they’ve been keeping up with the pledge. Hopefully having increased personal contact with members will help to keep people committed, and will allow us to discuss with people whether they really seem to be fulfilling the pledge.