I think this is exactly right. Encouraging people to do more is of course great, but while in theory excluding people for not meeting a certain standard might nudge people up to that standard, I think in practice it’s likely to result in a much smaller movement. Positive feedback for taking increasingly significant actions seems like a better motivator.
If we did spread the idea of effectiveness very widely but it didn’t have a high level of altruism attached to it, I think that would already achieve a lot, and I think it would also be a world in which it was easier to persuade many people to be more altruistic.
“while in theory excluding people for not meeting a certain standard might nudge people up to that standard, I think in practice it’s likely to result in a much smaller movement.”
What makes you think that? I just have no idea which of the effects (encouraging people do to more; discouraging them from taking a greater interest) dominates.
Thanks for asking this question. I found it helpful to introspect on my reasons for thinking this.
Roughly, I picture a model where I have huge uncertainty over how far the movement will spread (~ 5 orders of magnitude), and merely large uncertainty over how much the average person involved will do (< 2 orders of magnitude). This makes it more important right now to care about gaining percentile improvements in movement breadth than commitment. Additionally, the growth model likely includes an exponential component, so nudging up the rate has compounding effects.
To put that another way, I see a lot of the expected value of the movement coming from scenarios where it gets very big (even though these are unlikely), so it’s worth trying to maximise the chance of that happening. If we get to a point where it seems with high likelihood that it will become very big, it seems more worthwhile to start optimising value/person.
Two caveats here:
(i) It might be that demanding standards will help growth rather than hinder it. My intuition says not and that it’s important to make drivers feel positive rather than negative, but I’m not certain.
(ii) My reasoning suggests paying a lot more attention at the margin to the effects on growth than on individual altruism than you might first think, but it doesn’t say the ratio is infinite. We should err in both directions, taking at least some actions which push people to do more even if they hinder growth. The question is where we are on the spectrum right now. My perception is that we’re already making noticeable trade-offs in this direction, so perhaps going too far, but I might be persuadable otherwise.
I have a different reason for thinking this is true, which involves fewer numbers and more personal experience and intuition.
Having a high standard—either you make major changes in your life or your not an effective altruist—will probably fail because people aren’t used to or willing to make big, sudden changes in their lives. It’s hard to imagine donating half your income from the point of view of someone currently donating nothing; it’s much easier to imagine doing that if you’re already donating 20% or 30%. When I was first exposed to EA, I found it very weird and vaguely threatening, and I could definitely not have jumped from that state to earning to give. Not that I have since gone that far, but I do donate 10% and the idea of donating more is at least contemplatable. Even if you mostly care about the number of people who end up very highly committed, having low or medium standards gives people plausible first steps on a ladder towards that state.
As an analogy, take Catholics and nuns. There are many Catholics and very few nuns, and even fewer of those nuns were people who converted to Catholicism and then immediately became nuns. If there was no way to be Catholic except being a nun, the only people who could possibly be nuns would be the people who converted and then immediately became nuns.
Giving What We Can finds that the 10% bar is tough for people but not unimaginable. Certainly we shouldn’t be unfriendly to people who don’t do that—I’m not unfriendly even to people who don’t do anything to help strangers—but we could set it as the bar people should aspire to, and a bar most people in the community are achieving most of the time.
Yeah, it’s also a useful observation that when they talk to the general public, most charities ask for a small regular committment of funds, like $30 per month. If you’re asking people who already identify as effective altruists, it might make sense to ask for more but if you’re approaching new people, this would seem like a sensible starting point.
I think this is exactly right. Encouraging people to do more is of course great, but while in theory excluding people for not meeting a certain standard might nudge people up to that standard, I think in practice it’s likely to result in a much smaller movement. Positive feedback for taking increasingly significant actions seems like a better motivator.
If we did spread the idea of effectiveness very widely but it didn’t have a high level of altruism attached to it, I think that would already achieve a lot, and I think it would also be a world in which it was easier to persuade many people to be more altruistic.
“while in theory excluding people for not meeting a certain standard might nudge people up to that standard, I think in practice it’s likely to result in a much smaller movement.”
What makes you think that? I just have no idea which of the effects (encouraging people do to more; discouraging them from taking a greater interest) dominates.
Thanks for asking this question. I found it helpful to introspect on my reasons for thinking this.
Roughly, I picture a model where I have huge uncertainty over how far the movement will spread (~ 5 orders of magnitude), and merely large uncertainty over how much the average person involved will do (< 2 orders of magnitude). This makes it more important right now to care about gaining percentile improvements in movement breadth than commitment. Additionally, the growth model likely includes an exponential component, so nudging up the rate has compounding effects.
To put that another way, I see a lot of the expected value of the movement coming from scenarios where it gets very big (even though these are unlikely), so it’s worth trying to maximise the chance of that happening. If we get to a point where it seems with high likelihood that it will become very big, it seems more worthwhile to start optimising value/person.
Two caveats here:
(i) It might be that demanding standards will help growth rather than hinder it. My intuition says not and that it’s important to make drivers feel positive rather than negative, but I’m not certain.
(ii) My reasoning suggests paying a lot more attention at the margin to the effects on growth than on individual altruism than you might first think, but it doesn’t say the ratio is infinite. We should err in both directions, taking at least some actions which push people to do more even if they hinder growth. The question is where we are on the spectrum right now. My perception is that we’re already making noticeable trade-offs in this direction, so perhaps going too far, but I might be persuadable otherwise.
I have a different reason for thinking this is true, which involves fewer numbers and more personal experience and intuition.
Having a high standard—either you make major changes in your life or your not an effective altruist—will probably fail because people aren’t used to or willing to make big, sudden changes in their lives. It’s hard to imagine donating half your income from the point of view of someone currently donating nothing; it’s much easier to imagine doing that if you’re already donating 20% or 30%. When I was first exposed to EA, I found it very weird and vaguely threatening, and I could definitely not have jumped from that state to earning to give. Not that I have since gone that far, but I do donate 10% and the idea of donating more is at least contemplatable. Even if you mostly care about the number of people who end up very highly committed, having low or medium standards gives people plausible first steps on a ladder towards that state.
As an analogy, take Catholics and nuns. There are many Catholics and very few nuns, and even fewer of those nuns were people who converted to Catholicism and then immediately became nuns. If there was no way to be Catholic except being a nun, the only people who could possibly be nuns would be the people who converted and then immediately became nuns.
Giving What We Can finds that the 10% bar is tough for people but not unimaginable. Certainly we shouldn’t be unfriendly to people who don’t do that—I’m not unfriendly even to people who don’t do anything to help strangers—but we could set it as the bar people should aspire to, and a bar most people in the community are achieving most of the time.
Yeah, it’s also a useful observation that when they talk to the general public, most charities ask for a small regular committment of funds, like $30 per month. If you’re asking people who already identify as effective altruists, it might make sense to ask for more but if you’re approaching new people, this would seem like a sensible starting point.