That’s a good point maybe I was going a bit far with “strong”. I’ve changed the title to “Decent” I think it’s pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a”win” on, at the right time. For sure proving casualty in activism is rarely possible.
I agree it’s hardly a comprehensive argument, but it’s not bad for a LinkedIn post ;).
pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a”win” on, at the right time.
It may be well established, but given the incentives in that world, it’s unlikely that the belief would need to correlate with truth to have become well established.
I think you’re being too cynical about activists. I would say the strongest incentive for activists is to actually achieve what they want in the world. Sure there are other competing incentives (pride, justification of action etc.) but many activists (maybe a minority but many) do actually really really want to win and optimise for that....
There are loads of clear cut examples where picking one thing to win has just straight up worked. For example my wife (unbiased example) led a big campaign here in Gulu district Northern Uganda to ban the smallest unit of alcohol—they sold spirits in small plastic bags for only 15 cents. The campaign started through a small group at a church, and they built a coalition of the local government, NGOs, churches, mosques etc. and then got the law through regionally and enforced it successfully. Now the smallest unit of alcohol costs twice as much here—getting the lowest unit price of alcohol higher is basically proven to reduce problematic alcohol use.
There’s just no way that would have happened without the careful, targeted campaign over 3 years, the counterfactual is hard to deny given all the difficult steps needed to get the ban and no other district ever did it.
Then 2 years later the whole country banned the alcohol sachets. Now that one might have happened anyway, or their campaign might have contributed its hard to tell.
This is a smaller scale example but I know of a bunch of other similar ones where the causality is pretty clear.
That’s a good point maybe I was going a bit far with “strong”. I’ve changed the title to “Decent” I think it’s pretty well established though in the activist world that is often effective to pick one specific thing to get a”win” on, at the right time. For sure proving casualty in activism is rarely possible.
I agree it’s hardly a comprehensive argument, but it’s not bad for a LinkedIn post ;).
It may be well established, but given the incentives in that world, it’s unlikely that the belief would need to correlate with truth to have become well established.
I think you’re being too cynical about activists. I would say the strongest incentive for activists is to actually achieve what they want in the world. Sure there are other competing incentives (pride, justification of action etc.) but many activists (maybe a minority but many) do actually really really want to win and optimise for that....
There are loads of clear cut examples where picking one thing to win has just straight up worked. For example my wife (unbiased example) led a big campaign here in Gulu district Northern Uganda to ban the smallest unit of alcohol—they sold spirits in small plastic bags for only 15 cents. The campaign started through a small group at a church, and they built a coalition of the local government, NGOs, churches, mosques etc. and then got the law through regionally and enforced it successfully. Now the smallest unit of alcohol costs twice as much here—getting the lowest unit price of alcohol higher is basically proven to reduce problematic alcohol use.
There’s just no way that would have happened without the careful, targeted campaign over 3 years, the counterfactual is hard to deny given all the difficult steps needed to get the ban and no other district ever did it.
Then 2 years later the whole country banned the alcohol sachets. Now that one might have happened anyway, or their campaign might have contributed its hard to tell.
This is a smaller scale example but I know of a bunch of other similar ones where the causality is pretty clear.
https://movendi.ngo/blog/2017/04/05/problem-sachet-alcohol-gulu-uganda/