Adding that when I first did EV estimates of successful protest/activist movement that:
Activism is never really convenient or “high-EV”. I think the public generally holds contradictory and unrealistic expectations of activism. For one, it’s very easy to put off activism as “not a priority” because it doesn’t lead to obvious career/monetary benefit and always costs time and poses perceived reputation risk. Whenever I hear someone say they care about a cause but don’t have time to advocate for it, I just tell them they’ll never find a better time. A busy, career-focused 20 year old becomes a busy, career-focused 30 year old becomes and busy, career-focused 40 year old then they forget whatever they cared about. There’s a reason EA skews so young, time works against wanting to do meaningful things.
Activism is almost always either controversial/untractable or unnecessary. For the simple reason that if everyone’s already convinced of an idea, you don’t really need activism. Progress would, by definition, be crucial on issues that seem controversial or so niche that it seems people will “never understand”. So when someone tells me that issue [X] is unpopular/controversial/too obscure, I’m like … yeah, that’s the point. Of course the current discourse makes progress seem untractable, that’s how all activism starts out and aims too induce beliefs away from. Perhaps more annoying is when activists spend years being harassed and dismissed, then when the Overton Window finally shifts, people just accept the ideas as obvious/default and go back to dismissing the value of activism for the next topical issue, without acknowledging the work done to raise the sanity waterline.
I think these paradoxes are hard to explain to people, because if one never engages/participates in activism, it’s very easy to be cynical and dismiss activism as frivolous/misguided/performative. Which is as true as dismissing EA orgs with “I read somewhere that nonprofits are just a way for rich people to launder money while claiming admin costs”.
I agree that activism in particular has a lot of idiosyncrasies, even within the broader field of systems change, that make it harder to model or understand but do not invalidate its worth. I think that it is worthwhile to attempt to better understand the realms of activism or systems change in general, and to do so, EA methodology would need to be comfortable engaging in much looser expected value calculations than it normally does. Particularly, I think a separate system from ITN may be preferable for this context, because “scope, neglectedness, and tractability” may be less useful for the purpose of deciding what kind of activism to do than other concepts like “momentum, potential scope, likely impact of a movement at maximum scope and likely impact at minimum or median scope/success, personal skill/knowledge fit, personal belief alignment” etc.
I think it’s worth attempting to do these sorts of napkin calculations and invent frameworks for things in the category of “things that don’t usually meet the minimum quantifiability bar for EA” as a thought exercise to clarify one’s beliefs if nothing else, but besides, regardless of whether moderately rigorous investigation endorses the efficacy of various systems change mechanisms or not, it seems straightforwardly good to develop tools that help those interested in systems change to maximize their positive impact. Even if the EA movement itself remained less focused on systems change, I think people in EA are capable of producing accurate and insightful literature/research on the huge and extremely important fields of public policy and social change, and those contributions may be taken up by other groups, hopefully raising the sanity waterline on the meta-decision of which movements to invest time and effort into. After all, there are literally millions of activist groups and systems-change-focused movements out there, and developing tools to make sense out of that primordial muck could aid many people in their search to engage with the most impactful and fulfilling movements possible.
We may never know whether highly-quantifiable non-systems change interventions or harder-to-quantify systems change interventions are more effective, but it seems possible that to develop an effectiveness methodology for both spheres is better than to restrict one’s contributions to one. For example, spreading good ideas in the other sphere may boost the general influence of a group’s set of ideals and methodologies, and also provide benefits in the form of cross-pollination from advances in the other sphere. If EA maximizes for peak highly-quantifiable action, ought there to be a subgroup that maximizes for peak implementation of “everything that doesn’t make the typical minimum quantifiability bar for EA”?
Adding that when I first did EV estimates of successful protest/activist movement that:
Activism is never really convenient or “high-EV”. I think the public generally holds contradictory and unrealistic expectations of activism. For one, it’s very easy to put off activism as “not a priority” because it doesn’t lead to obvious career/monetary benefit and always costs time and poses perceived reputation risk. Whenever I hear someone say they care about a cause but don’t have time to advocate for it, I just tell them they’ll never find a better time. A busy, career-focused 20 year old becomes a busy, career-focused 30 year old becomes and busy, career-focused 40 year old then they forget whatever they cared about. There’s a reason EA skews so young, time works against wanting to do meaningful things.
Activism is almost always either controversial/untractable or unnecessary. For the simple reason that if everyone’s already convinced of an idea, you don’t really need activism. Progress would, by definition, be crucial on issues that seem controversial or so niche that it seems people will “never understand”. So when someone tells me that issue [X] is unpopular/controversial/too obscure, I’m like … yeah, that’s the point. Of course the current discourse makes progress seem untractable, that’s how all activism starts out and aims too induce beliefs away from. Perhaps more annoying is when activists spend years being harassed and dismissed, then when the Overton Window finally shifts, people just accept the ideas as obvious/default and go back to dismissing the value of activism for the next topical issue, without acknowledging the work done to raise the sanity waterline.
I think these paradoxes are hard to explain to people, because if one never engages/participates in activism, it’s very easy to be cynical and dismiss activism as frivolous/misguided/performative. Which is as true as dismissing EA orgs with “I read somewhere that nonprofits are just a way for rich people to launder money while claiming admin costs”.
Sigh, oh well.
I agree that activism in particular has a lot of idiosyncrasies, even within the broader field of systems change, that make it harder to model or understand but do not invalidate its worth. I think that it is worthwhile to attempt to better understand the realms of activism or systems change in general, and to do so, EA methodology would need to be comfortable engaging in much looser expected value calculations than it normally does. Particularly, I think a separate system from ITN may be preferable for this context, because “scope, neglectedness, and tractability” may be less useful for the purpose of deciding what kind of activism to do than other concepts like “momentum, potential scope, likely impact of a movement at maximum scope and likely impact at minimum or median scope/success, personal skill/knowledge fit, personal belief alignment” etc.
I think it’s worth attempting to do these sorts of napkin calculations and invent frameworks for things in the category of “things that don’t usually meet the minimum quantifiability bar for EA” as a thought exercise to clarify one’s beliefs if nothing else, but besides, regardless of whether moderately rigorous investigation endorses the efficacy of various systems change mechanisms or not, it seems straightforwardly good to develop tools that help those interested in systems change to maximize their positive impact. Even if the EA movement itself remained less focused on systems change, I think people in EA are capable of producing accurate and insightful literature/research on the huge and extremely important fields of public policy and social change, and those contributions may be taken up by other groups, hopefully raising the sanity waterline on the meta-decision of which movements to invest time and effort into. After all, there are literally millions of activist groups and systems-change-focused movements out there, and developing tools to make sense out of that primordial muck could aid many people in their search to engage with the most impactful and fulfilling movements possible.
We may never know whether highly-quantifiable non-systems change interventions or harder-to-quantify systems change interventions are more effective, but it seems possible that to develop an effectiveness methodology for both spheres is better than to restrict one’s contributions to one. For example, spreading good ideas in the other sphere may boost the general influence of a group’s set of ideals and methodologies, and also provide benefits in the form of cross-pollination from advances in the other sphere. If EA maximizes for peak highly-quantifiable action, ought there to be a subgroup that maximizes for peak implementation of “everything that doesn’t make the typical minimum quantifiability bar for EA”?