Thanks for writing up your thoughts Isaac! You present some thought-provoking perspectives that I have not yet considered.
I particularly resonate with your first point of disagreement that individuals can derive personal benefits from being altruistic simply by choosing some cause. Your argument that striving for cause-neutrality and maximizing positive impact may be less fulfilling is a valid one. However, I am unsure why working on a less neglected cause would necessarily be less emotionally fulfilling. In fact, pursuing something “unique” may be quite exciting. Nonetheless, I agree that cause-neutrality may be less fulfilling, as we all have unconscious biases that may favor certain causes due to personal experiences or connections. This may make steering against these inclinations more difficult, perhaps even unpleasant.
I also agree that targeting “already-altruistic people” who care about the magnitude of their impact probably is very promising. Social impact is heavy tailed so it is likely that these individuals could contribute to most of the net impact generated. I just think that EA university groups should not be the stakeholder group that make this trade-off.
In my view, it is important to carefully consider how to differentiate and vary the strategies of EA university, city, and national groups.
With the target audience of university groups being very young adults, I believe it is detrimental to exclude those who may not yet be “there yet”. As I have previously argued, there are many young and ambitious individuals who have not yet determined their life’s direction, and they could be easily nudged towards becoming “already-altruistic”. The loss of counterfactual impact would be huge.
I would agree, however, that for city or national groups, a narrower focus might be a better strategy.
What are your thoughts on having a broader focus for EA university groups, but a narrower one for city groups?
Oh to be clear, I think that almost all altruistic people do not much care about the magnitude of their impact (in practice).
So I think the approach I’d suggest is to focus on altruistic people, and helping them realise that they probably do really care about the magnitude of their impact on reflection.
That’s a much larger group than the people who are already magnitude-sensitive, and I think the intervention is probably more feasible at the moment than for people who have no existing interest in altruism.
I haven’t thought much about strategy for city/national groups, but I think I agree that later in life, people are much more set on their existing path, so if any stage is to focus on people who aren’t altruistic yet, it would be university or high-school groups.
Thanks for writing up your thoughts Isaac! You present some thought-provoking perspectives that I have not yet considered.
I particularly resonate with your first point of disagreement that individuals can derive personal benefits from being altruistic simply by choosing some cause. Your argument that striving for cause-neutrality and maximizing positive impact may be less fulfilling is a valid one. However, I am unsure why working on a less neglected cause would necessarily be less emotionally fulfilling. In fact, pursuing something “unique” may be quite exciting. Nonetheless, I agree that cause-neutrality may be less fulfilling, as we all have unconscious biases that may favor certain causes due to personal experiences or connections. This may make steering against these inclinations more difficult, perhaps even unpleasant.
I also agree that targeting “already-altruistic people” who care about the magnitude of their impact probably is very promising. Social impact is heavy tailed so it is likely that these individuals could contribute to most of the net impact generated. I just think that EA university groups should not be the stakeholder group that make this trade-off.
In my view, it is important to carefully consider how to differentiate and vary the strategies of EA university, city, and national groups.
With the target audience of university groups being very young adults, I believe it is detrimental to exclude those who may not yet be “there yet”. As I have previously argued, there are many young and ambitious individuals who have not yet determined their life’s direction, and they could be easily nudged towards becoming “already-altruistic”. The loss of counterfactual impact would be huge.
I would agree, however, that for city or national groups, a narrower focus might be a better strategy.
What are your thoughts on having a broader focus for EA university groups, but a narrower one for city groups?
Oh to be clear, I think that almost all altruistic people do not much care about the magnitude of their impact (in practice).
So I think the approach I’d suggest is to focus on altruistic people, and helping them realise that they probably do really care about the magnitude of their impact on reflection.
That’s a much larger group than the people who are already magnitude-sensitive, and I think the intervention is probably more feasible at the moment than for people who have no existing interest in altruism.
I haven’t thought much about strategy for city/national groups, but I think I agree that later in life, people are much more set on their existing path, so if any stage is to focus on people who aren’t altruistic yet, it would be university or high-school groups.