Indeed, I think the biggest challenge in terms of spreading EA is what I call “extended responsibility.” Many people have difficulty taking responsibility for their own lives, let alone their family or community. EA asks you to take responsibility for the whole world, and then carry that responsibility with you for your whole life. Holy crap.
After that, the next big ask is for rational methodologies. Even if people take responsibility for their kids, they probably will rely on intuition and availability heuristics.
So discussion around EA advocacy (which is what I believe to be the topic here) could be better focused around “how to move people towards extended responsibility and rational methodologies”.
Of course, that could seem like a soft approach that doesn’t immediately get donations to GiveDirectly. Some of the strategies I outlined in my other comment can be used in an instance where you’d like to hard sell.
Perhaps I’m not thinking this through or I’m simply being unambitious but I don’t view effective altruism as asking you to take responsibility for the whole world. I certainly don’t feel an enormous weight on my shoulders. I view it more as taking responsibility for the difference between what you would ordinarily do and what you could do if you maximised your impact, which does admittedly require consideration of the whole world.
If valid, maybe that can make effective altruism a little more palatable.
Nice summary Ryan.
Indeed, I think the biggest challenge in terms of spreading EA is what I call “extended responsibility.” Many people have difficulty taking responsibility for their own lives, let alone their family or community. EA asks you to take responsibility for the whole world, and then carry that responsibility with you for your whole life. Holy crap.
After that, the next big ask is for rational methodologies. Even if people take responsibility for their kids, they probably will rely on intuition and availability heuristics.
So discussion around EA advocacy (which is what I believe to be the topic here) could be better focused around “how to move people towards extended responsibility and rational methodologies”.
Of course, that could seem like a soft approach that doesn’t immediately get donations to GiveDirectly. Some of the strategies I outlined in my other comment can be used in an instance where you’d like to hard sell.
Perhaps I’m not thinking this through or I’m simply being unambitious but I don’t view effective altruism as asking you to take responsibility for the whole world. I certainly don’t feel an enormous weight on my shoulders. I view it more as taking responsibility for the difference between what you would ordinarily do and what you could do if you maximised your impact, which does admittedly require consideration of the whole world.
If valid, maybe that can make effective altruism a little more palatable.