As I explore EA, I especially love provocative, thoughtful, introspective posts like this.
There are always opportunities to improve. The EA philosophy supports data-based, science-based decision-making, so absolutely this should be applied to communication as well.
This is a great example.
There is a massive amount of research out there, often done cynically by political parties or advertisers, but no less scientifically valid for that. We can learn from it. We could also, at very low-cost or even free, run research ourselves—if it’s well-designed, the results would be reliable and reproducible, and could support (or, I suppose, in theory, refute!) what you’re saying, and so help us communicate better and attract more people.
I believe there is one very tangible opportunity, which you and also @Vanessa in her comments below, are capturing. We in EA tend to be self-selected as rational, logical thinkers—I don’t want to overgeneralize, but IMHO if you looked at how each of us would describe ourselves in terms of Myers-Briggs*, most of us would be T’s rather than F’s.
So part of what you’re saying here is that our message may be a great way to attract “people who think like us” to work on X-risk, but may miss out some others, who “don’t think like us” who would be more effectively convinced by a different approach.
For decades, communication experts have been studying how to use different messages to communicate and convince different people. Again, we see the ugly, cynical side of this in politics and FoxNews and so on. But there is also a good side, which is about communicating an idea to someone in a form that makes it clear and appealing to them.
If you’re interested in pursuing this further, I’d be happy to share some of what I’ve learned about this over the years of doing quantitative and qualitative research on communication.
*I believe the science behind the Myers-Briggs test is very dubious, BUT the categories themselves can be very helpful for communicating concepts like this. T’s tend to think rationally—if they are good people (like us!), they think rationally about how to do the most good for the most people. F’s are more driven by emotional reactions—they see someone crying, they see a danger to their loved ones, they decide to do something about it.
As I explore EA, I especially love provocative, thoughtful, introspective posts like this.
There are always opportunities to improve. The EA philosophy supports data-based, science-based decision-making, so absolutely this should be applied to communication as well.
This is a great example.
There is a massive amount of research out there, often done cynically by political parties or advertisers, but no less scientifically valid for that. We can learn from it. We could also, at very low-cost or even free, run research ourselves—if it’s well-designed, the results would be reliable and reproducible, and could support (or, I suppose, in theory, refute!) what you’re saying, and so help us communicate better and attract more people.
I believe there is one very tangible opportunity, which you and also @Vanessa in her comments below, are capturing. We in EA tend to be self-selected as rational, logical thinkers—I don’t want to overgeneralize, but IMHO if you looked at how each of us would describe ourselves in terms of Myers-Briggs*, most of us would be T’s rather than F’s.
So part of what you’re saying here is that our message may be a great way to attract “people who think like us” to work on X-risk, but may miss out some others, who “don’t think like us” who would be more effectively convinced by a different approach.
For decades, communication experts have been studying how to use different messages to communicate and convince different people. Again, we see the ugly, cynical side of this in politics and FoxNews and so on. But there is also a good side, which is about communicating an idea to someone in a form that makes it clear and appealing to them.
If you’re interested in pursuing this further, I’d be happy to share some of what I’ve learned about this over the years of doing quantitative and qualitative research on communication.
*I believe the science behind the Myers-Briggs test is very dubious, BUT the categories themselves can be very helpful for communicating concepts like this. T’s tend to think rationally—if they are good people (like us!), they think rationally about how to do the most good for the most people. F’s are more driven by emotional reactions—they see someone crying, they see a danger to their loved ones, they decide to do something about it.