I don’t strictly disagree with the above piece, and I think it’s actually quite reasonable (upvoted), but I have a number of reasons which tilt me in the opposite direction. I don’t believe in shaming softcore EAs, and I don’t think that anyone would, but here is a list of my countervailing reasons why I would strongly value efforts that would increase the involvement and motivation of existing EAs (and why I am less excited about getting more people lightly on board):
-I’m highly skeptical of the frequency and severity of “burnout” accounts, which are rare and often appear insignificant (thanks to Gleb for providing a solid one)
-The difference between donating, say, 10% of one’s income and 20% of one’s income is effectively just as good as adding another “10%’er” to the movement, but people seem to overlook the significance of this difference. Depending on career possibilities and income I’d guesstimate that a fully committed altruist usually accomplishes about as much as three to six people who do little beyond pledging
-I am wary of the risks of movement drifting and losing intellectual focus, and think that bringing too many non-aligned people on board can detract from our values and epistemic capabilities
-I think that broadcasting the appearance of being more strongly committed to altruism would have some secondary PR and image benefits by making the movement look stronger and more serious (to countervail against the negative PR which people already talk about)
-Tightness/loyalty norms have benefits for the in-group which shouldn’t be underestimated; so do other close community ties and activities (EA houses etc) which are less achievable with people on the softcore side of the spectrum
-I’m highly skeptical/uncertain of the long run impact of most EA efforts, and think that adding more donors into the generic poverty alleviation pool is unlikely to make the world significantly better
-Conversely, I strongly value a smaller, more specific set of efforts, and some of these causes are unlikely to get funded by softcore EAs because they are “weird” whereas they are more likely to get funded by hardcore EAs who put more time and thought into their cause prioritization
Fortunately, efforts which extend ‘sub-communities’ such as GWWC’s pledge and InIn’s effective giving can spread the movement without actuating a tradeoff.
The difference between donating, say, 10% of one’s income and 20% of one’s income is effectively just as good as adding another “10%’er” to the movement, but people seem to overlook the significance of this difference.
I disagree with this. All pledgers are likely to increase the chances of new people taking the pledge. For instance, they might make their friends somewhat more likely to take the pledge. Also, I think that the mere fact that Giving What We Can can put one more pledge-taker on their site makes people more likely to take the pledge.
In short, social proof—one of Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion—is likely to be much more dependent on the number of donors than on the amount each individual donor gives.
Stefan: I think I mostly agree with your point, but not entirely.
“All pledgers are likely to increase the chances of new people taking the pledge. For instance, they might make their friends somewhat more likely to take the pledge.” Yes, but I think this is also somewhat proportionate to how dedicated people are. In general, I would expect people who are obsessed with effective altruism to do more recruitment than people who are dedicated, but do not consider it to be the driving urge in their life, dedicated people to be better at recruitment than lightly interested people, etc. So expected donations isn’t the only metric in which pouring more resources and mental bandwith into will have positive marginal returns (as you would expect!!) I think the bounds Kbog gave -- 3-6x for very dedicated vs. dedicated EAs—is roughly reasonable for what I expect to be variance from person to person on the grounds of dedication alone (though as the other recent post noted, certain traits other than dedication, especially the ability to generate wealth, can extend the difference from person to person to somewhat beyond 6x).
“Also, I think that the mere fact that Giving What We Can can put one more pledge-taker on their site makes people more likely to take the pledge.” Yes I think that’s a point that belongs in the other thread as well. Quantity has a quality all on its own, and even anonymous social proof can be incredibly valuable. Anecdotally, a friend of mine is doing significant outreach at a large company mostly by persuading people that EA is a lot bigger than it actually is. :P
I don’t know about dedicated people being better at recruitment. I have found my friends to be more receptive to me as a ‘softcore EA’ because we can relate to each others’ lifestyles easily and they are more likely to make small changes than large ones. If I donated a really high proportion of my income (say 50%), I think I would not talk about that with them as they would find it instinctively off-putting to consider such a large change. I actually don’t talk about the pledge at all with them unless they already seem keen for fear of sounding too ‘hardcore’.
Of course, maybe if you’re super dedicated you’re going to try and recruit more often and with more people, so you may have better results. My point is just that I think ‘softcore’ may be more relatable for non EAs and that can be good to start conversations.
Congratulations on having friends who’re receptive to you! And thank you so much for sharing, we definitely need more data points as the movement grows. :)
I wrote on Facebook before that I think while being normal and relatable is a good hook to get people interested in EA, I don’t think it will actually make it more likely to make your friends interested than if you’re very dedicated. In particular, I think there is a confusion between “emulatable” and “marketable” efforts:
Put another way, if Person A, who is truly obsessed with making the world a better place is just as good (or, it sometimes implied, worse) at persuading other people to make the world a better place than Person B, who is only moderately interested in doing so, then this should come across as a huge surprise. It should not be tacitly assumed. Rather, Person A is doing something Very Wrong, and figuring out ways to correct this mistake should become a huge priority in EA.
Also, any new pledger has some non-zero chance of breaking the pledge (see the GWWC fundraising prospectus for their current estimates, though some people have argued these are under-estimates). The chance of different people is probably largely independent. If this is true, then at the margin, two 10% pledgers have a lower chance of both defaulting and would probably lead to more money being moved (ie narrower 95% confidence interval on the amount moved).
“If this is true, then at the margin, two 10% pledgers have a lower chance of both defaulting and thus have a higher expected value.”
I don’t think this is true, at least not taken naively. Ie, 70%20%=70%10%*2. Decreasing variance isn’t quite the same thing as expected value, and there are so many problems in the world that needs money that decreasing variance just isn’t that important relatively to channeling as much (expected) income as possible to the most effective causes.
“The difference between donating, say, 10% of one’s income and 20% of one’s income is effectively just as good as adding another “10%’er” to the movement, but people seem to overlook the significance of this difference” I agree with you that people overlook it, but I think we disagree on the direction. :)
“Depending on career possibilities and income I’d guesstimate that a fully committed altruist usually accomplishes about as much as three to six people who do little beyond pledging” This seems reasonable. However, this will also lead to the conclusion that if you can recruit 10 people a year (or slightly less than one per month), who are at least as effective as yourself and who are about 1⁄6 to 1⁄3 as dedicated as you are, to join 1 year earlier than they otherwise would have, then your efforts should be focused on recruitment rather than increasing your own effectiveness. There are so few people familiar with EA now that this is very plausible, especially if you’re obsessed with recruitment.
“-I am wary of the risks of movement drifting and losing intellectual focus, and think that bringing too many non-aligned people on board can detract from our values and epistemic capabilities.” People complain about this all the time, but I don’t really see a plausible connection between “more people bringing down the average rationality” and “magically, worse analysis by EA organizations.”
“Fortunately, efforts which extend ‘sub-communities’ such as GWWC’s pledge and InIn’s effective giving can spread the movement without actuating a tradeoff.” Yes, I think this is true and a very important point.
I’m quite familiar with burnout accounts, but perhaps that’s because my wife and I both burned out, and we tend to have more people in our surroundings who share about their experience. A broader study would be quite useful.
Agreed about the value of 10% vs. 20%. The follow-up post will address this question using some actual Fermi estimates.
The movement already looks pretty serious in current PR.
Loyalty norms and tightness at the same time result in a smaller movement, of course. Many people choose to avoid engaging with the movement due to the general unspoken feeling of “you’re not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations”—in fact, one commented exactly this in response to this post. You and I probably have different estimates on the consequences of this to the EA movement.
My general take is that getting more donors to think about the question of “how can I do the most good with my dollars” is going to make the world significantly better.
Agreed on weird cause funding likely being better
Very much agreed about the dangers of bringing in non-aligned people. For the sake of this post, I’m presuming that softcore EAs are value-aligned.
Appreciate your comments about Intentional Insights’ focus on effective giving spreading the movement (or rather its ideas) without that tradeoff, means I didn’t have to bring it up and appear potentially self-promotiony :-)
Many people choose to avoid engaging with the movement due to the general unspoken feeling of “you’re not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations”—in fact, one commented exactly this in response to this post.
Datapoint—I too have felt unsure whether I’m doing enough to justifiedly call myself EA. (I have both worked for and donated to MIRI, ran a birthday fundraiser for EA causes, organized an introductory EA event where I was the main speaker, and organized a few EA meetups. But my regular donations are pretty tiny and I’m not sure of how much impact the-stuff-that-I’ve-done-so-far will have in the end, so I still have occasional emotional doubts about claiming the label.)
Kaj, thank you for sharing! You totally deserve to call yourself an EA and you are indeed a datapoint indicating one of the reasons I’m writing this piece :-) Thank you for all you do and consider sharing about it on the Accomplishments thread.
Hi Julia. My interpretation of the two links is that Gleb was using you and Jeff as examples of “hardcore EAs,” and would like more articles about celebrating softcore EAs along the same lines as that article.
I don’t strictly disagree with the above piece, and I think it’s actually quite reasonable (upvoted), but I have a number of reasons which tilt me in the opposite direction. I don’t believe in shaming softcore EAs, and I don’t think that anyone would, but here is a list of my countervailing reasons why I would strongly value efforts that would increase the involvement and motivation of existing EAs (and why I am less excited about getting more people lightly on board):
-I’m highly skeptical of the frequency and severity of “burnout” accounts, which are rare and often appear insignificant (thanks to Gleb for providing a solid one)
-The difference between donating, say, 10% of one’s income and 20% of one’s income is effectively just as good as adding another “10%’er” to the movement, but people seem to overlook the significance of this difference. Depending on career possibilities and income I’d guesstimate that a fully committed altruist usually accomplishes about as much as three to six people who do little beyond pledging
-I am wary of the risks of movement drifting and losing intellectual focus, and think that bringing too many non-aligned people on board can detract from our values and epistemic capabilities
-I think that broadcasting the appearance of being more strongly committed to altruism would have some secondary PR and image benefits by making the movement look stronger and more serious (to countervail against the negative PR which people already talk about)
-Tightness/loyalty norms have benefits for the in-group which shouldn’t be underestimated; so do other close community ties and activities (EA houses etc) which are less achievable with people on the softcore side of the spectrum
-I’m highly skeptical/uncertain of the long run impact of most EA efforts, and think that adding more donors into the generic poverty alleviation pool is unlikely to make the world significantly better
-Conversely, I strongly value a smaller, more specific set of efforts, and some of these causes are unlikely to get funded by softcore EAs because they are “weird” whereas they are more likely to get funded by hardcore EAs who put more time and thought into their cause prioritization
Fortunately, efforts which extend ‘sub-communities’ such as GWWC’s pledge and InIn’s effective giving can spread the movement without actuating a tradeoff.
I disagree with this. All pledgers are likely to increase the chances of new people taking the pledge. For instance, they might make their friends somewhat more likely to take the pledge. Also, I think that the mere fact that Giving What We Can can put one more pledge-taker on their site makes people more likely to take the pledge.
In short, social proof—one of Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion—is likely to be much more dependent on the number of donors than on the amount each individual donor gives.
Stefan: I think I mostly agree with your point, but not entirely.
“All pledgers are likely to increase the chances of new people taking the pledge. For instance, they might make their friends somewhat more likely to take the pledge.” Yes, but I think this is also somewhat proportionate to how dedicated people are. In general, I would expect people who are obsessed with effective altruism to do more recruitment than people who are dedicated, but do not consider it to be the driving urge in their life, dedicated people to be better at recruitment than lightly interested people, etc. So expected donations isn’t the only metric in which pouring more resources and mental bandwith into will have positive marginal returns (as you would expect!!) I think the bounds Kbog gave -- 3-6x for very dedicated vs. dedicated EAs—is roughly reasonable for what I expect to be variance from person to person on the grounds of dedication alone (though as the other recent post noted, certain traits other than dedication, especially the ability to generate wealth, can extend the difference from person to person to somewhat beyond 6x).
“Also, I think that the mere fact that Giving What We Can can put one more pledge-taker on their site makes people more likely to take the pledge.” Yes I think that’s a point that belongs in the other thread as well. Quantity has a quality all on its own, and even anonymous social proof can be incredibly valuable. Anecdotally, a friend of mine is doing significant outreach at a large company mostly by persuading people that EA is a lot bigger than it actually is. :P
I don’t know about dedicated people being better at recruitment. I have found my friends to be more receptive to me as a ‘softcore EA’ because we can relate to each others’ lifestyles easily and they are more likely to make small changes than large ones. If I donated a really high proportion of my income (say 50%), I think I would not talk about that with them as they would find it instinctively off-putting to consider such a large change. I actually don’t talk about the pledge at all with them unless they already seem keen for fear of sounding too ‘hardcore’.
Of course, maybe if you’re super dedicated you’re going to try and recruit more often and with more people, so you may have better results. My point is just that I think ‘softcore’ may be more relatable for non EAs and that can be good to start conversations.
Congratulations on having friends who’re receptive to you! And thank you so much for sharing, we definitely need more data points as the movement grows. :)
I wrote on Facebook before that I think while being normal and relatable is a good hook to get people interested in EA, I don’t think it will actually make it more likely to make your friends interested than if you’re very dedicated. In particular, I think there is a confusion between “emulatable” and “marketable” efforts:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/933455813377443/?comment_id=934292356627122&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R1%22%7D
Put another way, if Person A, who is truly obsessed with making the world a better place is just as good (or, it sometimes implied, worse) at persuading other people to make the world a better place than Person B, who is only moderately interested in doing so, then this should come across as a huge surprise. It should not be tacitly assumed. Rather, Person A is doing something Very Wrong, and figuring out ways to correct this mistake should become a huge priority in EA.
Also, any new pledger has some non-zero chance of breaking the pledge (see the GWWC fundraising prospectus for their current estimates, though some people have argued these are under-estimates). The chance of different people is probably largely independent. If this is true, then at the margin, two 10% pledgers have a lower chance of both defaulting and would probably lead to more money being moved (ie narrower 95% confidence interval on the amount moved).
“If this is true, then at the margin, two 10% pledgers have a lower chance of both defaulting and thus have a higher expected value.”
I don’t think this is true, at least not taken naively. Ie, 70%20%=70%10%*2. Decreasing variance isn’t quite the same thing as expected value, and there are so many problems in the world that needs money that decreasing variance just isn’t that important relatively to channeling as much (expected) income as possible to the most effective causes.
“The difference between donating, say, 10% of one’s income and 20% of one’s income is effectively just as good as adding another “10%’er” to the movement, but people seem to overlook the significance of this difference” I agree with you that people overlook it, but I think we disagree on the direction. :)
“Depending on career possibilities and income I’d guesstimate that a fully committed altruist usually accomplishes about as much as three to six people who do little beyond pledging” This seems reasonable. However, this will also lead to the conclusion that if you can recruit 10 people a year (or slightly less than one per month), who are at least as effective as yourself and who are about 1⁄6 to 1⁄3 as dedicated as you are, to join 1 year earlier than they otherwise would have, then your efforts should be focused on recruitment rather than increasing your own effectiveness. There are so few people familiar with EA now that this is very plausible, especially if you’re obsessed with recruitment.
“-I am wary of the risks of movement drifting and losing intellectual focus, and think that bringing too many non-aligned people on board can detract from our values and epistemic capabilities.” People complain about this all the time, but I don’t really see a plausible connection between “more people bringing down the average rationality” and “magically, worse analysis by EA organizations.”
“Fortunately, efforts which extend ‘sub-communities’ such as GWWC’s pledge and InIn’s effective giving can spread the movement without actuating a tradeoff.” Yes, I think this is true and a very important point.
Thanks for this thorough response (upvoted)!
I’m quite familiar with burnout accounts, but perhaps that’s because my wife and I both burned out, and we tend to have more people in our surroundings who share about their experience. A broader study would be quite useful.
Agreed about the value of 10% vs. 20%. The follow-up post will address this question using some actual Fermi estimates.
The movement already looks pretty serious in current PR.
Loyalty norms and tightness at the same time result in a smaller movement, of course. Many people choose to avoid engaging with the movement due to the general unspoken feeling of “you’re not doing enough unless you meet our high expectations”—in fact, one commented exactly this in response to this post. You and I probably have different estimates on the consequences of this to the EA movement.
My general take is that getting more donors to think about the question of “how can I do the most good with my dollars” is going to make the world significantly better.
Agreed on weird cause funding likely being better
Very much agreed about the dangers of bringing in non-aligned people. For the sake of this post, I’m presuming that softcore EAs are value-aligned.
Appreciate your comments about Intentional Insights’ focus on effective giving spreading the movement (or rather its ideas) without that tradeoff, means I didn’t have to bring it up and appear potentially self-promotiony :-)
Datapoint—I too have felt unsure whether I’m doing enough to justifiedly call myself EA. (I have both worked for and donated to MIRI, ran a birthday fundraiser for EA causes, organized an introductory EA event where I was the main speaker, and organized a few EA meetups. But my regular donations are pretty tiny and I’m not sure of how much impact the-stuff-that-I’ve-done-so-far will have in the end, so I still have occasional emotional doubts about claiming the label.)
Kaj, thank you for sharing! You totally deserve to call yourself an EA and you are indeed a datapoint indicating one of the reasons I’m writing this piece :-) Thank you for all you do and consider sharing about it on the Accomplishments thread.
I’m confused about how you use the same article as an example of looking “serious” in PR and as giving “softcore EAs the recognition they deserve”.
Linch is right about my perspective, guess it didn’t come off clearly
Hi Julia. My interpretation of the two links is that Gleb was using you and Jeff as examples of “hardcore EAs,” and would like more articles about celebrating softcore EAs along the same lines as that article.