Furthermore, the image of an elitist movement is very likely to scare off people like Hilary Clinton and Angela Merkel. It would be close to political suicide for them to engage with something perceived as above the masses.
Perhaps, but they already do take advice from groups of bankers, Christians, solicit advice from think tanks and so on. I think it’s be more accurate to say that poliyicians generally avoid affiliating with grassroots activist groups in general, outside of their party’s narrow ideology, but instead mostly take advice from elite individuals or (occasionally) focused lobby groups.
Now, I quite agree that the effectiveness of people is quite diverse. However, those people who are potentially the most effective—Hilary Clinton, Angela Merkel, etc. - would take way more resources to recruit than would a typical person. So the return on investment, accounting for the cost of recruitment, may well be quite a bit better for ordinary people than for elites.
Given that the EA movement has divided its limited resources between personal and collective outreach, I’d imagine the best way to bring this debate down to the realm of facts would be to look at the returm on each of these kinds of outreach so far. Consider, GWWC has attracted $0.6b of pledges. Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna have together pledged over $3b, or half their net worth. In 2015, Givewell raised a record $2.5m from <$5k donors. In contrast, Elon Musk donated $10 million to impactful AI research as a lump sum for important research grants. And yet the amount of time dedicated to recruiting these people is small compared to the amount of broad-based outreach done, even accepting that private outreach can piggy-back somewhat on public branding and outreach efforts.
An advocate of public outreach can argue that the recruitment of the likes of Moskovitz required an enormous amount of political and social capital of other high-profile scientists or business leaders. But this would just concede the point being argued in the first place—that recruiting such leaders is both a critical and achievable project (since of course it has already been achieved).
On an admittedly cursory look at the evidence, the angle that some influential people are much more cost-effective to recruit seems supported.
Reading this discussion a month or two ago prompted me to, a couple of times, consider whether there were very wealthy people I know and could talk to about EA (not really) or people I’m connected with in some way (quite certainly). One of those people, some weeks later, let’s say something like a 3rd or 4th degree connection (but with a publicly known penchant for meritocracy and preference for intelligent discourse on all things) made a plan to give away a huge sum of wealth (arguably too big for GiveWell’s existing processes). Because of this discussion I prioritized attempting some modest action, drafted an email with former, related colleagues and friends, and sent it yesterday. The goal was just to nudge her in the right direction. I got a reply back about 10 hours later—I’m too excited to read it right now but wanted to share the seeming success, at least in one step towards making a better impact. Insofar as there is any impact, which is surely highly uncertain still, it’s in part due to this thread. http://youtu.be/Wcz_kDCBTBk
Thanks, Ryan—numbers are helpful. I think, though, that the value of the collective outreach is considerably larger than the value of the GWWC pledges, via various indirect effects.
An advocate of public outreach can argue that the recruitment of the likes of Moskovitz required an enormous amount of political and social capital of other high-profile scientists or business leaders. But this would just concede the point being argued in the first place—that recruiting such leaders is both a critical and achievable project (since of course it has already been achieved).
Is it really to concede the point? The question is how valuable “collective outreach” to broader groups is relative to “personal outreach” to rich individuals, and how much of these two kinds of outreach we should do. If collective outreach indirectly makes personal outreach more effective, it would seem that that is an argument for putting more resources into collective outreach than we otherwise should have, ceteris paribus.
The original question wasn’t just about the rich vs non-rich, but whether to focus on elites. The high-profile scientists and business leaders surely count as elite, even if they’re not hyper-wealthy.
Perhaps, but they already do take advice from groups of bankers, Christians, solicit advice from think tanks and so on. I think it’s be more accurate to say that poliyicians generally avoid affiliating with grassroots activist groups in general, outside of their party’s narrow ideology, but instead mostly take advice from elite individuals or (occasionally) focused lobby groups.
What I gathered the OP to be saying here is for Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel not to take advice but publicly identifying with the movement, in the way that Dustin Moskovitz did. Clinton and Merkel, it seems to me, do identify with various activist groups, for instance by attending their gatherings, etc., and through their presence “bless” the movement.
Let’s take for example EA Global. In one world, the EA movement is broadly perceived as a movement of elitists dedicated to advancing human and other species flourishing in the most effective ways. In another world, the EA movement is broadly perceived as a broad movement dedicated to advancing human and other species flourishing in the most effective ways. In which scenario is Clinton more likely to come to the EA Global, everything else being equal? I post that the second scenario is more likely to advance Clinton’s political career, and the first scenario would harm her political career, and the same for any other politician of her stature.
There’s a fine line here between being perceived as a movement of elites and a movement of elitists. I think the first would generally be seen as positive and more likely to bring people in, whereas the second is generally negative.
I don’t think it’s even that fine a line. Don’t exclude people actively. If you want to talk to your rich friends about EA first, that makes sense, but there should be virtually no reason to keep someone out.
(If it does make sense to exclude people actively it might make sense to use a vehicle that society has decided is acceptable for this—for example, it’s considered relatively acceptable for a university to reject a student applying to it, a business or organization to reject someone applying for a job, etc.)
Perhaps, but they already do take advice from groups of bankers, Christians, solicit advice from think tanks and so on. I think it’s be more accurate to say that poliyicians generally avoid affiliating with grassroots activist groups in general, outside of their party’s narrow ideology, but instead mostly take advice from elite individuals or (occasionally) focused lobby groups.
Given that the EA movement has divided its limited resources between personal and collective outreach, I’d imagine the best way to bring this debate down to the realm of facts would be to look at the returm on each of these kinds of outreach so far. Consider, GWWC has attracted $0.6b of pledges. Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna have together pledged over $3b, or half their net worth. In 2015, Givewell raised a record $2.5m from <$5k donors. In contrast, Elon Musk donated $10 million to impactful AI research as a lump sum for important research grants. And yet the amount of time dedicated to recruiting these people is small compared to the amount of broad-based outreach done, even accepting that private outreach can piggy-back somewhat on public branding and outreach efforts.
An advocate of public outreach can argue that the recruitment of the likes of Moskovitz required an enormous amount of political and social capital of other high-profile scientists or business leaders. But this would just concede the point being argued in the first place—that recruiting such leaders is both a critical and achievable project (since of course it has already been achieved).
On an admittedly cursory look at the evidence, the angle that some influential people are much more cost-effective to recruit seems supported.
Reading this discussion a month or two ago prompted me to, a couple of times, consider whether there were very wealthy people I know and could talk to about EA (not really) or people I’m connected with in some way (quite certainly). One of those people, some weeks later, let’s say something like a 3rd or 4th degree connection (but with a publicly known penchant for meritocracy and preference for intelligent discourse on all things) made a plan to give away a huge sum of wealth (arguably too big for GiveWell’s existing processes). Because of this discussion I prioritized attempting some modest action, drafted an email with former, related colleagues and friends, and sent it yesterday. The goal was just to nudge her in the right direction. I got a reply back about 10 hours later—I’m too excited to read it right now but wanted to share the seeming success, at least in one step towards making a better impact. Insofar as there is any impact, which is surely highly uncertain still, it’s in part due to this thread. http://youtu.be/Wcz_kDCBTBk
Thanks, Ryan—numbers are helpful. I think, though, that the value of the collective outreach is considerably larger than the value of the GWWC pledges, via various indirect effects.
Is it really to concede the point? The question is how valuable “collective outreach” to broader groups is relative to “personal outreach” to rich individuals, and how much of these two kinds of outreach we should do. If collective outreach indirectly makes personal outreach more effective, it would seem that that is an argument for putting more resources into collective outreach than we otherwise should have, ceteris paribus.
The original question wasn’t just about the rich vs non-rich, but whether to focus on elites. The high-profile scientists and business leaders surely count as elite, even if they’re not hyper-wealthy.
What I gathered the OP to be saying here is for Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel not to take advice but publicly identifying with the movement, in the way that Dustin Moskovitz did. Clinton and Merkel, it seems to me, do identify with various activist groups, for instance by attending their gatherings, etc., and through their presence “bless” the movement.
Let’s take for example EA Global. In one world, the EA movement is broadly perceived as a movement of elitists dedicated to advancing human and other species flourishing in the most effective ways. In another world, the EA movement is broadly perceived as a broad movement dedicated to advancing human and other species flourishing in the most effective ways. In which scenario is Clinton more likely to come to the EA Global, everything else being equal? I post that the second scenario is more likely to advance Clinton’s political career, and the first scenario would harm her political career, and the same for any other politician of her stature.
There’s a fine line here between being perceived as a movement of elites and a movement of elitists. I think the first would generally be seen as positive and more likely to bring people in, whereas the second is generally negative.
I don’t think it’s even that fine a line. Don’t exclude people actively. If you want to talk to your rich friends about EA first, that makes sense, but there should be virtually no reason to keep someone out.
(If it does make sense to exclude people actively it might make sense to use a vehicle that society has decided is acceptable for this—for example, it’s considered relatively acceptable for a university to reject a student applying to it, a business or organization to reject someone applying for a job, etc.)
Yes, this is a good way of putting it :-)