Totally. I’ll do some elaboration on why I found it useful [we discussed some of this on Facebook, but I thought it worthwhile to post publicly :-)]:
When I table for EA causes, I get a lot of pushback from left-leaning people that are worried (both justifiably and not) about histories of paternalistic and imperialistic aid in the developing world. Specifically, a lot of grad students (where I am) are already quite committed to using a social justice framework to evaluate potential interventions, which puts a lot of emphasis on avoiding these things.
I think EA as such does a good job of mitigating this at the object level by focusing on demonstrable impact. But I don’t think we currently do a great job communicating this to people with those worries, which in my experience are quite popular. Adopting better messaging can be a cheap signal that we take these concerns seriously, or moral trade with people who care about donor side attitudes more than effectiveness. My prediction is that this would potentially open them up to both global giving and further engagement with EA. Otherwise, it’s hard for us to distinguish ourselves from the reference class of potential white-savior-y people who want to do good overseas.
Totally. I’ll do some elaboration on why I found it useful [we discussed some of this on Facebook, but I thought it worthwhile to post publicly :-)]:
When I table for EA causes, I get a lot of pushback from left-leaning people that are worried (both justifiably and not) about histories of paternalistic and imperialistic aid in the developing world. Specifically, a lot of grad students (where I am) are already quite committed to using a social justice framework to evaluate potential interventions, which puts a lot of emphasis on avoiding these things.
I think EA as such does a good job of mitigating this at the object level by focusing on demonstrable impact. But I don’t think we currently do a great job communicating this to people with those worries, which in my experience are quite popular. Adopting better messaging can be a cheap signal that we take these concerns seriously, or moral trade with people who care about donor side attitudes more than effectiveness. My prediction is that this would potentially open them up to both global giving and further engagement with EA. Otherwise, it’s hard for us to distinguish ourselves from the reference class of potential white-savior-y people who want to do good overseas.