On âlarge returns to reasonâ: My favorite general-purpose example of this is to talk about looking for a good charity, and then realizing how much better the really good charities were than others I had supported. I bring up real examples of where I donated before and after discovering EA, with a few rough numbers to show how much better I think Iâm now doing on the metric I care about (âamount that people are helpedâ).
I like this approach because it frames EA as something that can help a person make a common decisionââwhich charity to support?â or âshould I support charity X?ââbut without painting them as ignorant or preferring less good (in these conversations, I acknowledge that most people donât think much about decisions like this, and that not thinking much is reasonable given that they donât know how huge the differences in effectiveness can be).
On âlarge returns to reasonâ: My favorite general-purpose example of this is to talk about looking for a good charity, and then realizing how much better the really good charities were than others I had supported. I bring up real examples of where I donated before and after discovering EA, with a few rough numbers to show how much better I think Iâm now doing on the metric I care about (âamount that people are helpedâ).
I like this approach because it frames EA as something that can help a person make a common decisionââwhich charity to support?â or âshould I support charity X?ââbut without painting them as ignorant or preferring less good (in these conversations, I acknowledge that most people donât think much about decisions like this, and that not thinking much is reasonable given that they donât know how huge the differences in effectiveness can be).