If we have more modest numbers we might get to a similar conclusion though.
e.g. suppose the distribution of cost-benefit ratios looks like this:
Typical US charity: 1
Good US charity: 10
Typical international charity: 20
GiveDirectly: 30
Biomedical research, US policy advocacy: 100
Best international charities (i.e. AMF): 300
Good meta-charity, xrisk, advocacy etc: 1500+
Then, moving someone from a typical US focused charity to a good one produces an extra 9 units of impact per dollar; whereas moving them to the best international charity produces 299.
So you need to persuade 33 times as many people (299/9) to switch to the best thing within the US vs number of people you can persuade to switch to the best international development charity.
At the current margin, it seems substantially easier to me to persuade one person to change cause towards international health and support the best charity in the area, than to persuade 33 US focused donors to choose the best thing in their area.
So, it seems like finding people willing to switch cause should be the community’s key priority until we’re at least 1-2 orders of magnitude bigger.
There are some other important strategic priorities that tell in favor of focus, such as (i) community building—it’s easier and safer to form the community around a well-coordinated, dedicated core of people rather than a wider base that is more vulnerable to dilution and fracturing (ii) delayability—it seems possible to add in cause-specific efforts in the future.
However, I think there are good arguments for putting a small amount of resources into a wider range of causes—such as (i) information value (i.e. learning about a wider range of areas) (ii) building expertise (we want to learn about lots of areas and skills since we’ll need this knowledge in the future) (iii) improving the brand (having some material for a wide range of areas makes it clear that we really do care about all ways of doing good (iv) creating stepping stones (you might be able to get some people involved with cause-specific content who will switch cause later on). Fortunately, this is already happening to some degree.
(First, really stupid question—not sure I understand the math here? Why wouldn’t switching from typical US to good US produce 9 extra units of impact per your assumption, not 4?)
Anyway, regarding this:
At the current margin, it seems substantially easier to me to persuade one person to change cause towards international health and support the best charity in the area, than to persuade 49 US focused donors to choose the best thing in their area.
I think one thing you’re not taking into account is that not all EA community members are interchangeable; different people have different leverage within their communities. It would be trivial for me to motivate 49 arts enthusiasts to switch donations to a better US charity in the arts, given that I run a publication with roughly 10k total followers and several hundred “true fans.” There are analogous people in other domains across the spectrum. So one approach to outreach could largely involve finding and forming partnerships with aligned, influential individuals in those domains.
Sorry I changed some of the numbers mid-way while writing then forgot to change the others to be in line. The’re updated now.
I think one thing you’re not taking into account is that not all EA community members are interchangeable; different people have different leverage within their communities. It would be trivial for me to motivate 49 arts enthusiasts to switch donations to a better US charity in the arts, given that I run a publication with roughly 10k total followers and several hundred “true fans.” There are analogous people in other domains across the spectrum. So one approach to outreach could largely involve finding and forming partnerships with aligned, influential individuals in those domains.
I agree—I was focusing on what the core focus of the community should be, but if people have a comparative advantage in an area that gives them 10-100x more leverage, it could outweigh. I can also see we might have underweighted the size of these differences in the past.
These are great points.
If we have more modest numbers we might get to a similar conclusion though.
e.g. suppose the distribution of cost-benefit ratios looks like this:
Typical US charity: 1
Good US charity: 10
Typical international charity: 20
GiveDirectly: 30
Biomedical research, US policy advocacy: 100
Best international charities (i.e. AMF): 300
Good meta-charity, xrisk, advocacy etc: 1500+
Then, moving someone from a typical US focused charity to a good one produces an extra 9 units of impact per dollar; whereas moving them to the best international charity produces 299.
So you need to persuade 33 times as many people (299/9) to switch to the best thing within the US vs number of people you can persuade to switch to the best international development charity.
At the current margin, it seems substantially easier to me to persuade one person to change cause towards international health and support the best charity in the area, than to persuade 33 US focused donors to choose the best thing in their area.
So, it seems like finding people willing to switch cause should be the community’s key priority until we’re at least 1-2 orders of magnitude bigger.
There are some other important strategic priorities that tell in favor of focus, such as (i) community building—it’s easier and safer to form the community around a well-coordinated, dedicated core of people rather than a wider base that is more vulnerable to dilution and fracturing (ii) delayability—it seems possible to add in cause-specific efforts in the future.
However, I think there are good arguments for putting a small amount of resources into a wider range of causes—such as (i) information value (i.e. learning about a wider range of areas) (ii) building expertise (we want to learn about lots of areas and skills since we’ll need this knowledge in the future) (iii) improving the brand (having some material for a wide range of areas makes it clear that we really do care about all ways of doing good (iv) creating stepping stones (you might be able to get some people involved with cause-specific content who will switch cause later on). Fortunately, this is already happening to some degree.
Edited to change some of the numbers
(First, really stupid question—not sure I understand the math here? Why wouldn’t switching from typical US to good US produce 9 extra units of impact per your assumption, not 4?)
Anyway, regarding this:
I think one thing you’re not taking into account is that not all EA community members are interchangeable; different people have different leverage within their communities. It would be trivial for me to motivate 49 arts enthusiasts to switch donations to a better US charity in the arts, given that I run a publication with roughly 10k total followers and several hundred “true fans.” There are analogous people in other domains across the spectrum. So one approach to outreach could largely involve finding and forming partnerships with aligned, influential individuals in those domains.
Sorry I changed some of the numbers mid-way while writing then forgot to change the others to be in line. The’re updated now.
I agree—I was focusing on what the core focus of the community should be, but if people have a comparative advantage in an area that gives them 10-100x more leverage, it could outweigh. I can also see we might have underweighted the size of these differences in the past.