The most interesting point is the last one. Precisely because people are biased in favour of object-level work, object-level work can be very useful in recruiting. You can do an elevator pitch about earning to give in a way you can’t about meta-level work whose rationale hinges on complex chains of reasoning. I think that the marginal value of this effect is rapidly diminishing, though—once you have a few examples of object-level work you can point to, additional examples won’t help movement growth that much.
Peter wrote:
GiveWell is considered a meta-org, but they focus on direct research about which cause is best. Historically, they have not focused much resources on outreach or marketing. Instead, they just focused on doing a very good job on their research and delivering high-quality recommendations. In turn, they attracted many donors, including a big foundation. As GiveWell says, “Much of our most valuable publicity and promotion has come from enthusiastic people who actively sought us out” and that they “have generally felt that improving the quality of [their] research, and [the] existing audience’s understanding of it, has been the most important factor in [their] growth”.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, doing really well on object-level stuff could also be one of the best things we can do to grow a quality movement. People aren’t attracted to marketing, their attracted to people doing a good job. Marketing is only useful in so far as it draws attention to good work.
I think the synthesis of your and Peter’s points is, whether object-level or meta- work, how and how well we do something can be just as important as what we’re trying to do in the first place. This distinction and consideration might be neglected by effective altruists when they’re trying to figure out how to maximize impact.
Peter wrote:
I think the synthesis of your and Peter’s points is, whether object-level or meta- work, how and how well we do something can be just as important as what we’re trying to do in the first place. This distinction and consideration might be neglected by effective altruists when they’re trying to figure out how to maximize impact.