Perhaps the most important way to improve cause re-prioritization is for more people to write publicly about why they donate to the causes they do. I don’t see many people doing this, and the ones who do don’t usually offer much detail. I’d like it to become normal and even expected for EAs to give public justifications to wherever they donate.
One possible concern with this is it may pressure people to donate to popular causes. Hopefully people who write up their reasoning like this can get sufficiently rational feedback that they won’t feel this pressure. I expect that even with this pressure, people will end up making better decisions than if they didn’t talk publicly about their donation choices.
Of course, I don’t really know if this would help. What we need to do is run an RCT where people try different cause re-prioritization strategies and see which ones work best.
The risk of having people write about their donation choices online is that discussion devolves in to a flame war. Any such discussions should be conducted with the highest levels of collegiality, to prevent slipping in to the “my cause is better than your cause” degenerate case.
Perhaps the most important way to improve cause re-prioritization is for more people to write publicly about why they donate to the causes they do. I don’t see many people doing this, and the ones who do don’t usually offer much detail. I’d like it to become normal and even expected for EAs to give public justifications to wherever they donate.
One possible concern with this is it may pressure people to donate to popular causes. Hopefully people who write up their reasoning like this can get sufficiently rational feedback that they won’t feel this pressure. I expect that even with this pressure, people will end up making better decisions than if they didn’t talk publicly about their donation choices.
Of course, I don’t really know if this would help. What we need to do is run an RCT where people try different cause re-prioritization strategies and see which ones work best.
The risk of having people write about their donation choices online is that discussion devolves in to a flame war. Any such discussions should be conducted with the highest levels of collegiality, to prevent slipping in to the “my cause is better than your cause” degenerate case.