Excellent point, upvoted. Thanks for constructive criticism of the points made here, it’s really helpful! This is exactly the kind of dialogue we were hoping for :-)
Peter and I wrestled with a number of issues you brought up, and ended up deciding to write an essay that went against the grain in the EA movement itself of focusing only on statistics, since there is so much literature on this topic already. We didn’t want to deal with the ground that was previously covered, but I recognize it would have been helpful to make more of an effort to describe the tradeoffs involved.
Several of the things discussed in this comment were touched on in the essay. For instance, the difference between communicating to people more oriented toward effectiveness, the small minority of EA participants, versus those more oriented toward emotions, the large majority of those who give, was covered in these sections: “while fact and statistics are often an effective way to convince potential donors, it is important to recognize that different people are persuaded by different things. While some individuals are best persuaded to do good deeds through statistics and facts, others are most influenced by the closeness and vividness of the suffering” and also “experiments and other forms of prospect research to better understand their donors’ reasons for giving.” I acknowledge this could have been made more explicit.
Regarding messaging to different groups, we intended this essay to show folks fundraising for effective charities how to speak to non-EA participants. At the same time, this essay has the meta-function of helping EA participants not be put off by emotionally engaging messages conveyed by effective charities. As EA members, we believe we should optimize for money flowing to effective causes, and be happy about effective charities using such strategies in their fundraising, while ourselves relying on GiveWell and other well-reputed charity evaluators. In general, charities should use segmented messaging, with different messages for different audiences.
To Peter and I, this is a matter of the inference gap. If we can encourage people to give to effective charities and use GiveWell and similar EA-themed charity evaluators such as Animal Charity Evaluators, folks will likely grow in their epistemic rigor in assessing charities, slowly crossing the inference gap. However, this is something that deserves a much larger treatment to uncover similar issues.
Good point about the challenges involved in optimizing for individual victims! Notice that Peter and I did not suggest that charities should change their programming in any way, but simply adjust their messaging. I do see the danger you point to, and it’s something to watch out for.
Thanks again for your helpful comments, and Peter, please jump in if you have further thoughts.
What I would be interested in is a follow-up post where you discuss the various trade-offs, how one might make them, what the implications of each are, etc. As it stands now, your post just doesn’t seem very useful or actionable. But it may be a nice starting point that you can build on in the future.
I also think that some of the stylistic simplifications that you engage in might be well-optimized for publishing in mass media like Time Magazine or Huffington Post, but potentially hurt your credibility when posted in a narrower context like the Effective Altruism Forum (or LessWrong, where you cross-posted this). I would recommend setting higher standards both for epistemic rigor and for the level of detail of your actual content when posting here, and preempting objections better (something that may not matter when you are writing for an audience that is totally new to your ideas and have limited space).
Excellent point, upvoted. Thanks for constructive criticism of the points made here, it’s really helpful! This is exactly the kind of dialogue we were hoping for :-)
Peter and I wrestled with a number of issues you brought up, and ended up deciding to write an essay that went against the grain in the EA movement itself of focusing only on statistics, since there is so much literature on this topic already. We didn’t want to deal with the ground that was previously covered, but I recognize it would have been helpful to make more of an effort to describe the tradeoffs involved.
Several of the things discussed in this comment were touched on in the essay. For instance, the difference between communicating to people more oriented toward effectiveness, the small minority of EA participants, versus those more oriented toward emotions, the large majority of those who give, was covered in these sections: “while fact and statistics are often an effective way to convince potential donors, it is important to recognize that different people are persuaded by different things. While some individuals are best persuaded to do good deeds through statistics and facts, others are most influenced by the closeness and vividness of the suffering” and also “experiments and other forms of prospect research to better understand their donors’ reasons for giving.” I acknowledge this could have been made more explicit.
Regarding messaging to different groups, we intended this essay to show folks fundraising for effective charities how to speak to non-EA participants. At the same time, this essay has the meta-function of helping EA participants not be put off by emotionally engaging messages conveyed by effective charities. As EA members, we believe we should optimize for money flowing to effective causes, and be happy about effective charities using such strategies in their fundraising, while ourselves relying on GiveWell and other well-reputed charity evaluators. In general, charities should use segmented messaging, with different messages for different audiences.
To Peter and I, this is a matter of the inference gap. If we can encourage people to give to effective charities and use GiveWell and similar EA-themed charity evaluators such as Animal Charity Evaluators, folks will likely grow in their epistemic rigor in assessing charities, slowly crossing the inference gap. However, this is something that deserves a much larger treatment to uncover similar issues.
Good point about the challenges involved in optimizing for individual victims! Notice that Peter and I did not suggest that charities should change their programming in any way, but simply adjust their messaging. I do see the danger you point to, and it’s something to watch out for.
Thanks again for your helpful comments, and Peter, please jump in if you have further thoughts.
What I would be interested in is a follow-up post where you discuss the various trade-offs, how one might make them, what the implications of each are, etc. As it stands now, your post just doesn’t seem very useful or actionable. But it may be a nice starting point that you can build on in the future.
I also think that some of the stylistic simplifications that you engage in might be well-optimized for publishing in mass media like Time Magazine or Huffington Post, but potentially hurt your credibility when posted in a narrower context like the Effective Altruism Forum (or LessWrong, where you cross-posted this). I would recommend setting higher standards both for epistemic rigor and for the level of detail of your actual content when posting here, and preempting objections better (something that may not matter when you are writing for an audience that is totally new to your ideas and have limited space).
Good points, will keep these in mind!