Your discussion of the ways that these frames appeal to different audiences seems broadly accurate to me. However, I feel as though your Singer/Pogge comparison leaves out a couple of important details:
1. Singer had a massive head start. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” was published in 1972, and “Animal Liberation” in 1975, while the “Global Justice” page of Pogge’s website only includes one pre-2000 publication. This seems important when considering how each view spread among intellectuals and philosophers.
2. As far as the relative prominence of each thinker within early EA, I don’t know much about the dynamics of how Giving What We Can formed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Singer and Pogge (and others) wound up using Singer’s framing for reasons that weren’t rigorously examined.
(I personally prefer Singer’s framing, and I’m glad that it’s the dominant frame within EA, but I could imagine the movement developing from a justice/fairness perspective in some alternative timeline.)
3. Most importantly, neither view is very popular in the grand scheme of things.
Singer’s main-stage TED talk has been viewed nearly two million times on TED’s website alone, but the number of people who have taken even moderate action as a result of his views seems like it’s at least an order of magnitude lower. Even this very popular altruistic argument, which has been taught in universities since it was first proposed, is quite niche by the standards of “popular ideas”. (Compare the number of people who protested Trump’s “Muslim ban” in airports or advocated against Nixon’s bombings of Cambodia, neither of which had any direct effect on most of those who took action.)
Historically, justice-oriented arguments seem to have had a much greater chance of going “viral” than altruistic arguments; if some version/framing of EA eventually catches on with the mainstream, my prior is that it will be more justice-oriented than the way the average EA thinks about the movement today. This isn’t necessarily good, but it’s something to think about—there may be more value than we’d think in finding the best justice-oriented frame to promote “officially” (there are many options).
Also, beyond justice and altruism, there are plenty of other ways to talk about EA. Two examples:
Efficiency/”hack the system”. Appeal to Lifehacker and Wired readers by positing EA as the best way to do charity “right” while avoiding bloated megacharities and mainstream causes. Tim Ferriss, one of this mentality’s exemplars, had Will MacAskill on his podcast (which has something like a million subscribers) because Will fit into his bucket of “system hackers” and “top performers”.
Humanity/”we are one”. Blends the friendly neutrality of altruism with the value-driven approach of “justice”. Frame EA as the best way to live as though you are a member of the human race, rather than a particular country/race/creed/etc. Talk about how there are fundamental things that everyone wants, and that EA goes after some of the deepest, more important fundamentals (health, security, self-determination through GiveDirectly...). My favorite EA-aligned film, Life in a Day, uses this perspective to (inadvertently) make a strong case for moral cosmopolitanism and location-neutral donations.
No single frame needs to dominate discussions of EA, and I suspect that an ideal introductory resource for a broad audience would make use of several different frames.
Your discussion of the ways that these frames appeal to different audiences seems broadly accurate to me. However, I feel as though your Singer/Pogge comparison leaves out a couple of important details:
1. Singer had a massive head start. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” was published in 1972, and “Animal Liberation” in 1975, while the “Global Justice” page of Pogge’s website only includes one pre-2000 publication. This seems important when considering how each view spread among intellectuals and philosophers.
2. As far as the relative prominence of each thinker within early EA, I don’t know much about the dynamics of how Giving What We Can formed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Singer and Pogge (and others) wound up using Singer’s framing for reasons that weren’t rigorously examined.
(I personally prefer Singer’s framing, and I’m glad that it’s the dominant frame within EA, but I could imagine the movement developing from a justice/fairness perspective in some alternative timeline.)
3. Most importantly, neither view is very popular in the grand scheme of things.
Singer’s main-stage TED talk has been viewed nearly two million times on TED’s website alone, but the number of people who have taken even moderate action as a result of his views seems like it’s at least an order of magnitude lower. Even this very popular altruistic argument, which has been taught in universities since it was first proposed, is quite niche by the standards of “popular ideas”. (Compare the number of people who protested Trump’s “Muslim ban” in airports or advocated against Nixon’s bombings of Cambodia, neither of which had any direct effect on most of those who took action.)
Historically, justice-oriented arguments seem to have had a much greater chance of going “viral” than altruistic arguments; if some version/framing of EA eventually catches on with the mainstream, my prior is that it will be more justice-oriented than the way the average EA thinks about the movement today. This isn’t necessarily good, but it’s something to think about—there may be more value than we’d think in finding the best justice-oriented frame to promote “officially” (there are many options).
Also, beyond justice and altruism, there are plenty of other ways to talk about EA. Two examples:
Efficiency/”hack the system”. Appeal to Lifehacker and Wired readers by positing EA as the best way to do charity “right” while avoiding bloated megacharities and mainstream causes. Tim Ferriss, one of this mentality’s exemplars, had Will MacAskill on his podcast (which has something like a million subscribers) because Will fit into his bucket of “system hackers” and “top performers”.
Humanity/”we are one”. Blends the friendly neutrality of altruism with the value-driven approach of “justice”. Frame EA as the best way to live as though you are a member of the human race, rather than a particular country/race/creed/etc. Talk about how there are fundamental things that everyone wants, and that EA goes after some of the deepest, more important fundamentals (health, security, self-determination through GiveDirectly...). My favorite EA-aligned film, Life in a Day, uses this perspective to (inadvertently) make a strong case for moral cosmopolitanism and location-neutral donations.
No single frame needs to dominate discussions of EA, and I suspect that an ideal introductory resource for a broad audience would make use of several different frames.