I certainly agree that we should be careful to make sure that we don’t over-optimise short-term appeal at the cost of other things that matter (e.g. long-term engagement, accuracy and fidelity of the message, etc.). I don’t think we’re calling for people to only consider this dimension: we explicitly say that we “think that people should assess particular cases on the basis of all the details relevant to the particular case in question.”
That said, I think that there are many cases where those other dimensions won’t, in fact, be diminished by selecting messages which are more appealing.[1] For example:
In some cases, like this one, we’re selecting within taglines that had already been selected as suitable candidates based on other factors (such as accuracy). We’re then additionally considering data on how people actually respond.
Relatedly, we might have messages available which seem equally good on the other key dimensions which we care about, but which we know to have higher appeal. For example, in this case, I think “the most good you can do” is at least as accurate and likely to encourage long-term engagement as “doing good better”. So, if this phrasing performs better in terms of initially appealing to people, this is a pro tanto consideration in its favour.
In many contexts, we are only considering the question of which ~5 word tagline to include on a website. So the common tradeoff between shorter, more initially appealing messages and longer but higher-fidelity ones may not apply.
In some cases, like short website taglines, most of the effect of the messages may be whether the person continues reading at all (in which case they read the rest of the website and learn a lot more content) or whether they are instantly turned off. We might not expect the short taglines to have a long-term effect on people’s understanding of EA (dominating all the later content they read) themselves.
While initial appeal and long-term engagement could diverge, in many cases, there’s no particular reason to think that they do. This framing suggests a tradeoff between what is merely superficially appealing vs what promotes long-term engagement. But, often, one message might just appeal less to people simpliciter, e.g. because people find it confusing or off-putting, without promoting any longterm benefits.
More generally, I think that we can often think of plausible ways that a message might appear more appealing, but actually be sub-optimal, when taking into account long-term second order effects or divergent effects across different subgroups and so on. But in such cases I think we typically need more investigation of how people respond, not less.
All that said, I certainly think that we should be careful not to over-optimise any single dimension, but instead carefully weigh all the relevant factors.
Though note that these are not arguments that we should assume that other considerations don’t matter. We should still assess each case on its merits and weigh all the considerations directly.
Thanks David.
I certainly agree that we should be careful to make sure that we don’t over-optimise short-term appeal at the cost of other things that matter (e.g. long-term engagement, accuracy and fidelity of the message, etc.). I don’t think we’re calling for people to only consider this dimension: we explicitly say that we “think that people should assess particular cases on the basis of all the details relevant to the particular case in question.”
That said, I think that there are many cases where those other dimensions won’t, in fact, be diminished by selecting messages which are more appealing.[1] For example:
In some cases, like this one, we’re selecting within taglines that had already been selected as suitable candidates based on other factors (such as accuracy). We’re then additionally considering data on how people actually respond.
Relatedly, we might have messages available which seem equally good on the other key dimensions which we care about, but which we know to have higher appeal. For example, in this case, I think “the most good you can do” is at least as accurate and likely to encourage long-term engagement as “doing good better”. So, if this phrasing performs better in terms of initially appealing to people, this is a pro tanto consideration in its favour.
In many contexts, we are only considering the question of which ~5 word tagline to include on a website. So the common tradeoff between shorter, more initially appealing messages and longer but higher-fidelity ones may not apply.
In some cases, like short website taglines, most of the effect of the messages may be whether the person continues reading at all (in which case they read the rest of the website and learn a lot more content) or whether they are instantly turned off. We might not expect the short taglines to have a long-term effect on people’s understanding of EA (dominating all the later content they read) themselves.
While initial appeal and long-term engagement could diverge, in many cases, there’s no particular reason to think that they do. This framing suggests a tradeoff between what is merely superficially appealing vs what promotes long-term engagement. But, often, one message might just appeal less to people simpliciter, e.g. because people find it confusing or off-putting, without promoting any longterm benefits.
More generally, I think that we can often think of plausible ways that a message might appear more appealing, but actually be sub-optimal, when taking into account long-term second order effects or divergent effects across different subgroups and so on. But in such cases I think we typically need more investigation of how people respond, not less.
All that said, I certainly think that we should be careful not to over-optimise any single dimension, but instead carefully weigh all the relevant factors.
Though note that these are not arguments that we should assume that other considerations don’t matter. We should still assess each case on its merits and weigh all the considerations directly.
Understood, and reasonable. The problem is that I’m uncomfortable with “the most good” as the goal anyways, as I explained a few years ago; https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f9NpDx65zY6Qk9ofe/doing-good-best-isn-t-the-ea-ideal
So moving from ‘doing good better’ to ‘do the most good’ seems explicitly worse on dimensions I care about, even if it performs better on approval.