Can we do a high-variance strategy (appealing strongly to the few humans who are already value-aligned) at the same time as we do a low variance strategy (appealing weakly to everyone using the same warm words as every other charity)?
What drew me to EA was its massive appeal to my utilitarian values and words like “evidence” and “rationality” just fuelled that appeal. I would hesitate to advocate communication strategies that could reduce this niche-market appeal.
This isn’t a rebuke of your idea to use more warm words, I’m just emphasising one consideration amongst many. : ) Great article !
I was drawn to EA because of people that combine compassion and rationality. Brian Tomasik and David Pearce come to mind. They often speak warmly. Even when they don’t, it’s easy to tell that they are moved by strong feelings of empathy.
We should keep talking about evidence and rationality with all the audiences, but I think that making an effort to transmit our feelings to the general public is important and useful. A lot of the things that we promote are unusual and counter-intuitive, so we can easily be misunderstood.
I think that sometimes smart people avoid saying warm words because they don’t want to be underestimated. They want to signal that they are intelligent, so they limit themselves to a very formal language.
Formal language is perfect when we are doing theory, but when we want to communicate with a general audience, I think we should transmit our arguments carefully and rationally while connecting with the audience from the heart. For example, I wrote a text in Spanish that started by talking about the lives of the extreme poor. I wanted to make it real. I wanted to make people feel why solving this matters. Once they feel it, It’s much easier to explain that rationality is necessary to solve important problems.
Most of us cried while thinking about all the suffering in the world. I’m not ashamed of it, and I think people will understand me more if I express it. I like talking openly about the enthusiasm that I feel for all that we can accomplish to improve the world.
Of course, each person has It’s own style. Some aren’t comfortable with talking about their feelings too much, and that is perfect.
Can we do a high-variance strategy (appealing strongly to the few humans who are already value-aligned) at the same time as we do a low variance strategy (appealing weakly to everyone using the same warm words as every other charity)?
What drew me to EA was its massive appeal to my utilitarian values and words like “evidence” and “rationality” just fuelled that appeal. I would hesitate to advocate communication strategies that could reduce this niche-market appeal.
This isn’t a rebuke of your idea to use more warm words, I’m just emphasising one consideration amongst many. : ) Great article !
:) I agree with this.
I was drawn to EA because of people that combine compassion and rationality. Brian Tomasik and David Pearce come to mind. They often speak warmly. Even when they don’t, it’s easy to tell that they are moved by strong feelings of empathy.
We should keep talking about evidence and rationality with all the audiences, but I think that making an effort to transmit our feelings to the general public is important and useful. A lot of the things that we promote are unusual and counter-intuitive, so we can easily be misunderstood.
I think that sometimes smart people avoid saying warm words because they don’t want to be underestimated. They want to signal that they are intelligent, so they limit themselves to a very formal language.
Formal language is perfect when we are doing theory, but when we want to communicate with a general audience, I think we should transmit our arguments carefully and rationally while connecting with the audience from the heart. For example, I wrote a text in Spanish that started by talking about the lives of the extreme poor. I wanted to make it real. I wanted to make people feel why solving this matters. Once they feel it, It’s much easier to explain that rationality is necessary to solve important problems.
Most of us cried while thinking about all the suffering in the world. I’m not ashamed of it, and I think people will understand me more if I express it. I like talking openly about the enthusiasm that I feel for all that we can accomplish to improve the world.
Of course, each person has It’s own style. Some aren’t comfortable with talking about their feelings too much, and that is perfect.