As I mentioned, it depends on the tactics used. I think we can divide spreading EA into spreading EA as a set of ideas and spreading EA as a community. If you just spread a set of ideas with no engagement with your audience (as traditional marketers do) that is unlikely to have much of a downside.
However, if you think that your audience will be engaged in shaping the ideas, in being on the front lines of spreading the ideas, and in creating a community around those ideas (as is true in EA today), then who you target with the ideas matters a great deal. My intuition is that EA is at a very early stage of development, and the people we attract now are likely to have a powerful influence on what the movement looks like in 5 or 10 years. We should expect that the ideas discussed in EA will be a product of the people in the community and that not all ideas are equally valuable. So, adding people to the movement without thinking seriously about whether this will influence the movement’s trajectory in a positive way seems pretty dangerous to me.
Perhaps you’ve already thought about the downsides of growing the EA community. If so, I’d be interested to hear your ideas.
Kerry, I missed your comments here until now, my apologies.
To respond, we at Intentional Insights focus on spending our resources on spreading the message of effective giving, as we believe that getting ten more people to give effectively is more impactful than us giving of our resources to effective charities ourselves. This does not necessarily mean getting people to join the EA movement, as I fully acknowledge there are dangers to rapid movement growth.
Let’s go specific and concrete. Here’s an example of what I mean: an article in The Huffington Post that encourages people to give effectively, and only briefly mention Effective Altruism. Doing so balances the benefits of using marketing tactics to channel money to effective charities, while not heavily promoting EA itself to ameliorate the dangers of rapid movement growth.
Check out the sharing buttons on it, and you’ll see it was shared quite widely. As you’ll see from this Facebook comment on my personal page, it helped convince someone to decide to donate to effective charities. Furthermore, this comment is someone who is the leader of a large secular group in Houston, and he thus has an impact on a number of other people. Since people rarely make actual comments, and far from all are fans of my Facebook page, we can estimate that many more made similar decisions but chose not to comment about it.
We are also working to spread effective giving ideas to the secular and skeptic community, as we have strong ties with organizations in these communities. For example, here is a link to the outcome of an Intentional Insights collaboration with The Life You Can Save to spread effective giving to the secular community through Giving Games. We have launched a pilot program with the Secular Student Alliance to bring Giving Games to over 300 secular student groups throughout the world, with The Life You Can Save dedicating $10,000 to the pilot program, and easily capable of raising more if it works well.
Neither the Giving Games nor the article promote Effective Altruism as a movement heavily. They only briefly mention EA for those curious enough to follow the breadcrumbs, but do not use emotional engagement techniques to promote EA explicitly.
What are your thoughts on these concrete InIn activities?
As I mentioned, it depends on the tactics used. I think we can divide spreading EA into spreading EA as a set of ideas and spreading EA as a community. If you just spread a set of ideas with no engagement with your audience (as traditional marketers do) that is unlikely to have much of a downside.
However, if you think that your audience will be engaged in shaping the ideas, in being on the front lines of spreading the ideas, and in creating a community around those ideas (as is true in EA today), then who you target with the ideas matters a great deal. My intuition is that EA is at a very early stage of development, and the people we attract now are likely to have a powerful influence on what the movement looks like in 5 or 10 years. We should expect that the ideas discussed in EA will be a product of the people in the community and that not all ideas are equally valuable. So, adding people to the movement without thinking seriously about whether this will influence the movement’s trajectory in a positive way seems pretty dangerous to me.
Perhaps you’ve already thought about the downsides of growing the EA community. If so, I’d be interested to hear your ideas.
Kerry, I missed your comments here until now, my apologies.
To respond, we at Intentional Insights focus on spending our resources on spreading the message of effective giving, as we believe that getting ten more people to give effectively is more impactful than us giving of our resources to effective charities ourselves. This does not necessarily mean getting people to join the EA movement, as I fully acknowledge there are dangers to rapid movement growth.
Let’s go specific and concrete. Here’s an example of what I mean: an article in The Huffington Post that encourages people to give effectively, and only briefly mention Effective Altruism. Doing so balances the benefits of using marketing tactics to channel money to effective charities, while not heavily promoting EA itself to ameliorate the dangers of rapid movement growth.
Check out the sharing buttons on it, and you’ll see it was shared quite widely. As you’ll see from this Facebook comment on my personal page, it helped convince someone to decide to donate to effective charities. Furthermore, this comment is someone who is the leader of a large secular group in Houston, and he thus has an impact on a number of other people. Since people rarely make actual comments, and far from all are fans of my Facebook page, we can estimate that many more made similar decisions but chose not to comment about it.
We are also working to spread effective giving ideas to the secular and skeptic community, as we have strong ties with organizations in these communities. For example, here is a link to the outcome of an Intentional Insights collaboration with The Life You Can Save to spread effective giving to the secular community through Giving Games. We have launched a pilot program with the Secular Student Alliance to bring Giving Games to over 300 secular student groups throughout the world, with The Life You Can Save dedicating $10,000 to the pilot program, and easily capable of raising more if it works well.
Neither the Giving Games nor the article promote Effective Altruism as a movement heavily. They only briefly mention EA for those curious enough to follow the breadcrumbs, but do not use emotional engagement techniques to promote EA explicitly.
What are your thoughts on these concrete InIn activities?