Hi, thanks for the detailed reply. I mostly agree with the main thrust of your comment, but I think I feel less optimistic about what happens when you actually try to implement it.
Like, we’ve had discussions in my group about how to prioritize cause areas and in principle everyone agrees with how we should work on causes that are bigger, more neglected and tractable, but when it comes to specific causes it turns out that the unmeasured effects are the most important thing and the flow through effects of the intervention I’ve always liked turn out to compensate for its lack of demonstrated impact.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to have those discussions, just that for a group constrained on people who’ve engaged with EA cause priorization arguments, being able to rely on the arguments that others have put forward (like we can often do for international causes) makes the job much easier. However, I’m open to the possibility that that the best compromise might be to simply to let people focus on local causes and double down on cultivating better epistemics.
(P.s.: I now realize that answering to every comment on your post might be quite demanding, so feel free to not answer. I’ll make sure to still update on the fact that you weren’t convinced by my initial comment. If anything at least your comment is making me consider alternatives that don’t restrict the growth and avoid the epistemic consequences I delineated. I’m not sure if I’ll find something that pleases me, but I’ll muse on it a little further)
You don’t need to convince everyone of everything you think in a single event. 🙂 You probably didn’t form your worldview in the space of two hours either. 😉
When someone says they think giving locally is better, ask them why. Point out exactly what you agree with (e.g. it is easier to have an in-depth understanding of your local context) and why you still hold your view (e.g. that there are such large wealth disparities between different countries that there are some really low hanging fruit, like basic preventative measures of diseases like malaria, that you currently guess that you can still make more of a difference by donating elsewhere).
If you can honestly communicate why you think what you do, the reasons your view differs from the person you are talking to, in a patient and kind way, I think your local group will be laying the groundwork for a much larger movement of people who care deeply about helping others as much as they can with some of their resources. A movement that also thinks about the hard but important questions in a really thoughtful and intelligent way.
The best way to change other people’s minds for me is to keep in mind that I haven’t got everything figured out and this person might be able to point to nuance I’ve missed.
These really are incredibly challenging topics that no-one in this community or in any community has fully figured out yet. It didn’t always happen in the first conversation, but every person whose mind I have ever ended up changing significantly over many conversations added nuance to my views too.
Each event, each conversation, can be a small nudge or shift (for you or the other person). If your group is a nice place to hang out, some people will keep coming back for more talks and conversations.
Changing people’s mind overnight is hard. Changing their minds and your mind over a year, while you all develop more nuanced views on these complicated but still important questions, is much more tractable and, I think, impactful.
If it’s a question of giving people either a sense of this community’s epistemics or the bottom line conclusion, I strongly think you are doing a lot more good if you choose epistemics.
Every objection is an opportunity to add nuance to your view and their view.
If you successfully demonstrate great epistemics and people keep coming back, your worldviews will converge based on the strongest arguments from everyone involved in the many conversations happening at your local group.
Focus on epistemics and you’ll all end up with great conclusions (and if they are different to the existing commonly held views in the community, that’s even better, write a forum post together and let that insight benefit the whole movement!).
Oh, I totally agree that giving people the epistemics is mostly preferable to hanging them the bottom line. My doubts come more from my impression that forming good epistemics in a relatively unexplored environment (e.g. cause prioritization within Colombia) is probably harder than in other contexts.
I know that at least our explicit aim with the group was to exhibit the kind of patience and rigour you describe and that I ended up somewhat underwhelmed with the results. I initially wanted to try to parse out where our differing positions came from, but this comment eventually got a little long and rambling.
For now I’ll limit myself to thanking you for making what I think it’s a good point.
I don’t know if this is what you mean by cultivating better epistemics, but it seems super plausible to me that the comparative advantage of a Colombian EA university group is to work towards effective solutions to problems in Colombia. If you think most of your members will continue to stay in Colombia, and some of them might go into careers that could potentially be high impact for solving Colombian issues, that seems like a much more compelling thing to do than be the Nth group talking about AI or which GiveWell charity is better.
Hi, thanks for the detailed reply. I mostly agree with the main thrust of your comment, but I think I feel less optimistic about what happens when you actually try to implement it.
Like, we’ve had discussions in my group about how to prioritize cause areas and in principle everyone agrees with how we should work on causes that are bigger, more neglected and tractable, but when it comes to specific causes it turns out that the unmeasured effects are the most important thing and the flow through effects of the intervention I’ve always liked turn out to compensate for its lack of demonstrated impact.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to have those discussions, just that for a group constrained on people who’ve engaged with EA cause priorization arguments, being able to rely on the arguments that others have put forward (like we can often do for international causes) makes the job much easier. However, I’m open to the possibility that that the best compromise might be to simply to let people focus on local causes and double down on cultivating better epistemics.
(P.s.: I now realize that answering to every comment on your post might be quite demanding, so feel free to not answer. I’ll make sure to still update on the fact that you weren’t convinced by my initial comment. If anything at least your comment is making me consider alternatives that don’t restrict the growth and avoid the epistemic consequences I delineated. I’m not sure if I’ll find something that pleases me, but I’ll muse on it a little further)
You don’t need to convince everyone of everything you think in a single event. 🙂 You probably didn’t form your worldview in the space of two hours either. 😉
When someone says they think giving locally is better, ask them why. Point out exactly what you agree with (e.g. it is easier to have an in-depth understanding of your local context) and why you still hold your view (e.g. that there are such large wealth disparities between different countries that there are some really low hanging fruit, like basic preventative measures of diseases like malaria, that you currently guess that you can still make more of a difference by donating elsewhere).
If you can honestly communicate why you think what you do, the reasons your view differs from the person you are talking to, in a patient and kind way, I think your local group will be laying the groundwork for a much larger movement of people who care deeply about helping others as much as they can with some of their resources. A movement that also thinks about the hard but important questions in a really thoughtful and intelligent way.
The best way to change other people’s minds for me is to keep in mind that I haven’t got everything figured out and this person might be able to point to nuance I’ve missed.
These really are incredibly challenging topics that no-one in this community or in any community has fully figured out yet. It didn’t always happen in the first conversation, but every person whose mind I have ever ended up changing significantly over many conversations added nuance to my views too.
Each event, each conversation, can be a small nudge or shift (for you or the other person). If your group is a nice place to hang out, some people will keep coming back for more talks and conversations.
Changing people’s mind overnight is hard. Changing their minds and your mind over a year, while you all develop more nuanced views on these complicated but still important questions, is much more tractable and, I think, impactful.
If it’s a question of giving people either a sense of this community’s epistemics or the bottom line conclusion, I strongly think you are doing a lot more good if you choose epistemics.
Every objection is an opportunity to add nuance to your view and their view.
If you successfully demonstrate great epistemics and people keep coming back, your worldviews will converge based on the strongest arguments from everyone involved in the many conversations happening at your local group.
Focus on epistemics and you’ll all end up with great conclusions (and if they are different to the existing commonly held views in the community, that’s even better, write a forum post together and let that insight benefit the whole movement!).
Oh, I totally agree that giving people the epistemics is mostly preferable to hanging them the bottom line. My doubts come more from my impression that forming good epistemics in a relatively unexplored environment (e.g. cause prioritization within Colombia) is probably harder than in other contexts.
I know that at least our explicit aim with the group was to exhibit the kind of patience and rigour you describe and that I ended up somewhat underwhelmed with the results. I initially wanted to try to parse out where our differing positions came from, but this comment eventually got a little long and rambling.
For now I’ll limit myself to thanking you for making what I think it’s a good point.
I don’t know if this is what you mean by cultivating better epistemics, but it seems super plausible to me that the comparative advantage of a Colombian EA university group is to work towards effective solutions to problems in Colombia. If you think most of your members will continue to stay in Colombia, and some of them might go into careers that could potentially be high impact for solving Colombian issues, that seems like a much more compelling thing to do than be the Nth group talking about AI or which GiveWell charity is better.