The very well written Notes on Effective Altruism coheres some thoughts I’ve had over the years, and makes me think we should potentially drop the “how to do good in the best way possible framing” when introducing EA for the “be more effective when trying to help others” framing. This honestly seems straightforwardly good to me from a number of different angles, and I think we should seriously be thinking about changing our overall branding to this as a tagline instead.
But am I missing something here? Is there a reason the latter is worse than I think? Or some hidden benefits to the former that I’m not weighing?
I think there’s a big difference between “more effective” and “most effective”, and one of the most important and counterintuitive principles of EA is that trying to find the best option rather than just a good option can make a huge difference to how much good you do—we have to prioritise between different goods, and this is painful to do (hence easy to avoid) but really important.
Yeah, I think the tension here is between finding a way to put the motivation that can appeal to all people, and watering it down a bit, or putting it fully in such a manner and accepting that you’re only ever going to be speaking to a small portion of people.
Taking only the “most effective” path towards doing good, when that looks like working on top causes or donating a significant amount, just isn’t open to 90% or more of the population. Is it really wise to focus a movement so narrowly that you rule out most people in the world being able to find a place in it?
Perhaps a compromise is something like the below, where “do more good” is the motto, but with an emphasis on how big that difference can be.
The context might vary and make me reconsider in certain instances, but I generally think it’s important to say that there are ways to act that are orders of magnitude more effective than others. So yes, insist on “more” rather than on “the most possible”… But with an emphasis on the fact that there are resources to help you and guide you towards options that are likely to be immensely more impactful than most actions.
The very well written Notes on Effective Altruism coheres some thoughts I’ve had over the years, and makes me think we should potentially drop the “how to do good in the best way possible framing” when introducing EA for the “be more effective when trying to help others” framing. This honestly seems straightforwardly good to me from a number of different angles, and I think we should seriously be thinking about changing our overall branding to this as a tagline instead.
But am I missing something here? Is there a reason the latter is worse than I think? Or some hidden benefits to the former that I’m not weighing?
I think there’s a big difference between “more effective” and “most effective”, and one of the most important and counterintuitive principles of EA is that trying to find the best option rather than just a good option can make a huge difference to how much good you do—we have to prioritise between different goods, and this is painful to do (hence easy to avoid) but really important.
Yeah, I think the tension here is between finding a way to put the motivation that can appeal to all people, and watering it down a bit, or putting it fully in such a manner and accepting that you’re only ever going to be speaking to a small portion of people.
Taking only the “most effective” path towards doing good, when that looks like working on top causes or donating a significant amount, just isn’t open to 90% or more of the population. Is it really wise to focus a movement so narrowly that you rule out most people in the world being able to find a place in it?
Perhaps a compromise is something like the below, where “do more good” is the motto, but with an emphasis on how big that difference can be.
The context might vary and make me reconsider in certain instances, but I generally think it’s important to say that there are ways to act that are orders of magnitude more effective than others. So yes, insist on “more” rather than on “the most possible”… But with an emphasis on the fact that there are resources to help you and guide you towards options that are likely to be immensely more impactful than most actions.