To continue the metaphor, suppose EA is the dairy industry, and realizes markedly higher profits (impact) the weirder up the dairy ladder a consumer goes (e.g., makes 5x as much from a cheddar consumer as milk, 5x as much from a bleu consumer than a cheddar one, etc.).
What does the extended metaphor suggest about how to market to maximize profit/impact? Obviously you want to make milk, cheddar, bleu, and casu marzu customers feel like welcome members of the dairy empire. Given that the potential market size substantially diminishes as you step up the weird-dairy latter, and the cost of customer acquisition increases, how much of your marketing resources will be spent on promoting each type of dairy?
My guess is that the EA ecosystem under-emphasizes acquiring new cheddar consumers, but I could easily be wrong. My theory is that that the potential market for cheddar is still very large, and that most conversions to bleu will come from the cheddar crowd anyway.
I imagine there are many more people interested in AI Safety, Biosecurity, Nuclear Risks who would be put off if they had to start by learning about the GWWC pledge.
Kelsey Piper writing about Vox analytics - ‘Global poverty stuff doesn’t do very well. This is something that makes me very sad, and it makes my mother very sad. She reads all my articles, and she’s like, “The global poverty stuff is the best, you should do more of that.” I also would love to do more of that. I think it’s a really important topic, but it doesn’t get nearly as many views or as much attention as both the existential risk stuff and sort of the animal stuff and the weird big ideas sort of content.’
Fair point (although Vox’s readers may not be representative of all or even most audiences, and pageviews may be only loosely correlated with willingness to commit. I find many things interesting to read and even write about that I wouldnt devote my career or serious money to.).
Maybe it’s not true of all potential cause areas, but I think most of them have a range of options from cheddar to maggot cheese. So cheddar does not necessarily imply global health, and maggots don’t necessarily imply x-risk.
I think you’re maybe treating the “clearly good” / mild end of this spectrum as being specific to global poverty? But I think there’s a lot of x-risk work that’s towards this end too: reducing the risk of nuclear war, reducing airborne pathogen spread, etc.
But with Jason’s extension of the metaphor, I also think maybe Kelsey’s audience on Vox wants to be challenged a bit, and the clearly-good stuff is less interesting. But that doesn’t mean hitting them with the weirdest ideas anyone within EA is playing with is going to work well! You still need to match your offering to your audience, and balance wanting to introduce stranger things against not overwhelming them with something too different.
I think every cause can be presented normally/weirdly depending on how you do it, it was just in that example Kelsey was discussing global dev and I think a lot of people in EA assume that more people are interested in global development as they are just looking outside their bubble into a slightly larger bubble.
I would agree that it’s usually best to introduce people to ideas closer to their interests (in any cause area) before moving onto related ones. Although sometimes they’ll be more interested in the ‘weird’ ideas before getting involved in EA, and EA helps them approach it practically.
To continue the metaphor, suppose EA is the dairy industry, and realizes markedly higher profits (impact) the weirder up the dairy ladder a consumer goes (e.g., makes 5x as much from a cheddar consumer as milk, 5x as much from a bleu consumer than a cheddar one, etc.).
What does the extended metaphor suggest about how to market to maximize profit/impact? Obviously you want to make milk, cheddar, bleu, and casu marzu customers feel like welcome members of the dairy empire. Given that the potential market size substantially diminishes as you step up the weird-dairy latter, and the cost of customer acquisition increases, how much of your marketing resources will be spent on promoting each type of dairy?
My guess is that the EA ecosystem under-emphasizes acquiring new cheddar consumers, but I could easily be wrong. My theory is that that the potential market for cheddar is still very large, and that most conversions to bleu will come from the cheddar crowd anyway.
I’m not sure the metaphor holds up.
I imagine there are many more people interested in AI Safety, Biosecurity, Nuclear Risks who would be put off if they had to start by learning about the GWWC pledge.
Kelsey Piper writing about Vox analytics - ‘Global poverty stuff doesn’t do very well. This is something that makes me very sad, and it makes my mother very sad. She reads all my articles, and she’s like, “The global poverty stuff is the best, you should do more of that.” I also would love to do more of that. I think it’s a really important topic, but it doesn’t get nearly as many views or as much attention as both the existential risk stuff and sort of the animal stuff and the weird big ideas sort of content.’
Fair point (although Vox’s readers may not be representative of all or even most audiences, and pageviews may be only loosely correlated with willingness to commit. I find many things interesting to read and even write about that I wouldnt devote my career or serious money to.).
Maybe it’s not true of all potential cause areas, but I think most of them have a range of options from cheddar to maggot cheese. So cheddar does not necessarily imply global health, and maggots don’t necessarily imply x-risk.
I think you’re maybe treating the “clearly good” / mild end of this spectrum as being specific to global poverty? But I think there’s a lot of x-risk work that’s towards this end too: reducing the risk of nuclear war, reducing airborne pathogen spread, etc.
But with Jason’s extension of the metaphor, I also think maybe Kelsey’s audience on Vox wants to be challenged a bit, and the clearly-good stuff is less interesting. But that doesn’t mean hitting them with the weirdest ideas anyone within EA is playing with is going to work well! You still need to match your offering to your audience, and balance wanting to introduce stranger things against not overwhelming them with something too different.
I think every cause can be presented normally/weirdly depending on how you do it, it was just in that example Kelsey was discussing global dev and I think a lot of people in EA assume that more people are interested in global development as they are just looking outside their bubble into a slightly larger bubble.
I would agree that it’s usually best to introduce people to ideas closer to their interests (in any cause area) before moving onto related ones. Although sometimes they’ll be more interested in the ‘weird’ ideas before getting involved in EA, and EA helps them approach it practically.