We’re at a too early stage for evaluating that. I’m just saying there seems to be something in between a “win” in the sense of immediate conversion, and a “loss” in the sense that the person is now less likely to join the EA movement. Therefore, I find these words unwarranted:
Every exposure that isn’t a win is indeed a loss.
Josh continues:
I believe EA organizations and individuals should immediately & drastically stop being so attention seeking, realize the danger of what we’re doing, and focus much more on being experimental, measuring our results, and optimizing for conversion in every single form of outreach that we do. Only once we’re measuring and unable to improve on our conversion rates should we go back to our awareness-building, attention-seeking strategies.
I also think this strategy is hard to get to work from an organizational point of view. Today, people are working enthusiastically to grow the movement in a highly decentralized way. This strategy would need much more centralized planning, and it’s not clear to me how we would pull that off. Also, there is a risk that the grass-roots would lose a bit of their entusiasm if they had to co-ordinate all of their outreach activities with someone measuring their activities.
That’s interesting—what’s your best guess or evidence as to how many change their actions as a result, and in what ways they do so?
We’re at a too early stage for evaluating that. I’m just saying there seems to be something in between a “win” in the sense of immediate conversion, and a “loss” in the sense that the person is now less likely to join the EA movement. Therefore, I find these words unwarranted:
Josh continues:
I also think this strategy is hard to get to work from an organizational point of view. Today, people are working enthusiastically to grow the movement in a highly decentralized way. This strategy would need much more centralized planning, and it’s not clear to me how we would pull that off. Also, there is a risk that the grass-roots would lose a bit of their entusiasm if they had to co-ordinate all of their outreach activities with someone measuring their activities.