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I like this framing a lot. I particularly like the idea of replacing the phrase “doing good” with “helping others” and “maximization” with “prioritization.”
I understand the impulse to mention volunteering before donations and careers because people naturally connect it with doing good. But I think it would be misleading for the following reasons:
As you said, there is currently very little emphasis on volunteering in EA
In most cases, individuals can do much more good by changing their career path or donating
I think we should be as accurate as we can when communicating EA. Being inaccurate might give people the wrong idea and make the movement seem dishonest.
I help a run a university group and in that context mentioning careers first is probably best choice, because
American undergrads often want to have an impactful career, so “helping others with your career” isn’t a strange concept to them
It’s probably the most important thing for individuals to focus on
It’s what our club focuses on the most
But things might be different if you aren’t talking to undergrads.
Yup, this also lines up with how (American) undergrads empirically seem to get most enthusiastic about career-centered content (maybe because they’re starved for good career guidance/direction).
And a nitpick:
I initially nodded along as I read this, but then I realized that intuition came partly from comparing effective donations with ineffective volunteering, which might not be comparing apples to apples. Do effective donations actually beat effective volunteering? I suspect many people can have more impact through highly effective volunteering, e.g.:
Volunteering in movement-building/fundraising/recruitment
High-skill volunteering for orgs focused on having positive long-term impacts, or potentially for animal advocacy orgs (since these seem especially skill-constrained)
Volunteering with a mainstream policy org to later land an impactful job there (although this one’s iffy as an example since it’s kind of about careers)
(Still agree that emphasizing volunteering wouldn’t be very representative of what the movement focuses on.)
Fair enough. I would guess you can usually have a higher impact through your career since you are doing something you’ve specialized in. But the first two examples you bring up seem valid.
Controversial opinion, butI think most volunteers are probably fairly ineffective, enough to round down to zero.However, it’s super easy to be an effective volunteer. Simply: A) Be autonomous/self-motivated B) Put in some significant amount of effort per week C) Be consistent over a long period of time (long enough to climb up the skill curve for the tasks at hand)
I agree with you. See Volunteering Isn’t Free as one example of elucidation for why taking on volunteers is hard, often net negative.
That said, I do not think this is a controversial opinion, whether within EA or overall. :)
Fair enough, perhaps it just feels a little risky for me to say “out-loud”
Thank you for this feedback lukasberglund and Maricio, I think I underestimated the misrepresentation argument, so I highly appreciate this.
About your second argument on the impact of volunteer guidance, and the discussion with Mauricio: I entirely agree with your opinion on the impact of volunteering, but I think that the main case for including volunteering in the pitch (and in general, investing in guidance for effective volunteering) is that it for specific individuals, who are interested in volunteering, this can be the entry point that would attract them to learn more about EA—whether we eventually help them with prioritizing volunteer opportunities or with career/donation decisions.
For this reason (and because specific volunteering opportunities can be highly impactful, as you both discussed), I still think it’s beneficial to include volunteering on EA pitches. I believe that the argument about misrepresentation makes a good case for not mentioning volunteering as the first on the list, but I don’t think that the order is of high significance.
I’ll soon make some updates to the post about that. Thank you both again for your feedback!
This was very helpful for me. I am half way through an 8 week intro session and this article was a well needed correction to the drift I was caught up in.
[This is my first real Forum post; please have pity, folks, ’specially if I spend time on something self-evident. :-) ]
This is such an important post, and timely as new charities arising from EA turn ever more outwards to engage the public. Gidon, it’s like you’ve been IN MY BRAIN, because I have been pondering a number of these issues for months, as some of my EA contacts can attest. I appreciate how clearly you have explained the issues and your conclusions.
In a conversation to today with Jack Lewars at One for the World, I concurred with his observation of the abundance of long, detailed explanations of EA that are available, and the lack of more accessible resources. Someone orienting to EA may well find this daunting: Plenty of six-hour podcasts, or articles that begin with the note that they are a 30-plus-minute read, or much longer, like when they include 95 pages of thoughtful comments. (Jack said something to the effect of, “I’ve had good night’s sleeps that were shorter than reading some of these articles.) Not to mention dozens of specialized Forums and Slacks devoted to intricate discussion of abstract ideas.
So you are so right. We need good, targeted pitches and definitions that are carefully crafted to characterize the movement as effectively as possible for the person who may be unfamiliar with or have the wrong impression about EA…and then to take action and use these religiously in presentations, videos and so on. (The “concise” quality of these messages is also key to engaging the listener in that carefully phrased message.)
A few thoughts:
First, in regards to #1, in my months of describing EA to others I find I rely often on pinning down the ultimate goal of EA a little more specifically than merely “doing good” or “helping others”, for example, “supporting life and health and reducing suffering,” or “saving lives, reducing suffering, and helping others live the fullest lives they can, free of poverty.” Might such a phrase be part of a fuller explanation or pitch on EA? It makes the helping more specific and immediate, providing a hook for the emotions.
Second, in regards to Bonus #1 on evidence and reason, to me these are important to mention in explaining that decisions of effectiveness generally deemphasize emotion, proximity, and prominence in the news of the day. My thinking about altruism has changed since encountering EA in part as I now see how causes “close to my heart” loomed large in my past giving. So, as another motivation for mentioning evidence and reasoning, should this be more explicitly mentioned in longer pitches?
And one suggestion: As an example of a concrete example of effective altruism, Deworm the World might rate a mention (Bonus #3). It brings with it a great narrative about schools and books and teachers, while forcing the listener to consider that the most effective charities may not be the ones that are the most intuitive or best publicized.
As I have learned more about EA, I started to create a table to help me get a broad picture of its many parts and to phrase it ways of thinking effectively. I have showed this to a few people and they thought it *might* be something that could be turned into a resource of some sort. Alternatively, maybe it will be seen as simply rehashing all the introductory materials on EA and therefore not worth much.
So I will link to the diagram here (edit access!) and invite people to make comments on it and/or hack away at it, especially to improve it in light of the considerations in this article. (I will also post it in the Editing and Review Forum.) It’s here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZUcoJ5yP1448TtKZnFD1tRIk7f2Og6qYI7nhNprY494/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks!
Hi Gidon,
Thanks for this, a really interesting way to think about the problem!
I think one rule of thumb that can help people simplify the framing problem is to know who your audience is. I am not sure that there is a universal framing that can be applied to all situations, and trying to abstract explanations to the points of having a framework of explanations might lead to some over-efficient explanations.
I think your criticism of the website is right fair, but I believe it has more to do with writing to the wrong audience rather than giving a poor explanation. You mention this when you say that the wording might not appeal to someone who does not tend to think very analytically in daily life, but I do not think that the problem is not that it is not clear enough. The problem is that the text does not capture the reader.
I do not think that the point of a lot of our introductory pitches should to transfer the most bits of information, but rather to get people on the right track, interested and attracted to the idea.
I might argue this is more of a copywriting issue than a clarity issue.
I dont think that there is a 1st degree understanding of EA, and then further degrees of complexity that you understand as you go along. To be able to parse your explanations in this forum post to the degree that you do already requires a high degree of EA expertise. If someone understands all of the information you are trying to transmit in your explanation here, then they are already long past the point of requiring an introduction to EA.
Thank you Charlie!
I totally agree with this! Let me clarify my opinion:
I distinguish between a pitch and an explanation.
I think that pitches should maximize attraction, but also need to satisfy some level of explanations for the concept discussed.
I think that the common EA pitches are quite good at attracting people, but I believe we’re pretty bad at explaining what EA is (I’d love to hear if you’re not sharing this belief!)
I hope that being able to explain EA better:
will also improve our pitches by improving the explanation component of our pitches.
will help onboarding individuals once they were initially attracted by a good pitch.
I think it’s great to frame the quality of a pitch by its fit to its audience. Yet what I’m missing in this framing is the size of the audience in question:
Many of my criticisms in this post can be thought of as “this articulation aims for a too narrow audience”, for instance, to an audience that tends to think very analytically.
Many of my suggestions in this post are trying to broaden the audience so it can be clearer and more convincing to a wider audience, without relying on their background or prior knowledge.
In addition, many of my suggestions are about explicitly and simplification (e.g. saying “time and money” instead of “resources”, or explicitly saying “donating, volunteering, and career choices”) and I think are relevant regardless to the audience we’re aiming to attract.
In general, I think that pitches should change drastically according to the audience in hand, while explanations should be (a bit) more audience-neutral.
Hi Gidon! Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
Sorry if I got lost in the difference between a pitch and an explanation in your post. When we talk about one minute or equally short explanations of EA, I tend to think of them as pitches. In the EA world, I tend to think of long form education and discussion such as a fellowship program as an explanation. I like the distinction, but I would also suggest the line between the two isn’t clear cut. I think this is also indicated when your suggested guidelines are directed to both pitches and explanations.
My interpretation of what you wrote was that you felt that EA pitches were neither very good at attracting people nor explaining EA very well to them either, so its interesting to hear you think the pitches are good.
I like you suggestions, and I love the example of buying a car in your one minute pitch. Its a wonderful illumination of the idea that it’s “the thought that counts” in being kind, but in little else.
If I was to take a step back, though, I would also argue that knowing your audience is very important for even when explaining EA, as not every person looking to learn about EA is interested in all aspects of EA. Lots of people want to do more with their donations, but dont care about epistemics or consequentialism.
Lots of students want to figure out how to use their time and energy best, but dont worry about earning to give just yet.
Others are completely preoccupied by the philosophy of the far future, and couldnt care less about giving what we can.
Some people only care about the fact that EA is so strong on factory farming, but think AI is a fantasy.
There are not that many people who are concerned with knowing the whole of EA and being able to chart it. Most of those people participate in this forum. Knowing the true state of EA is a meta question more than anything to me, and not always useful to the average supporter. (I can talk about this more, but it would take some sapce.)
What the people who need an explanation to EA probably need most an explanation of how EA is relevant to what they care about. We need to frame EA for the audience we are addressing, and until they become fully engaged in EA, a true complete charting of EA for them is probably unnecessary, and for many I suspect overwhelming.
So for me, it goes back to knowing your audience. How can EA help them be better at what they want to do? How can they help us be a better movement? That is a key to building greater engagement, in my opinion.
Also, does anyone have an up-to-date mapping of EA right now?
Are you hoping to appeal to people who don’t think very analytically, or just to explain clearly that this is a very analytical community and it might not be as accessible or useful or fun for them if they are not also very analytical?
I actually think that some of the offputting words might help prevent bycatch.
Hey, would you share more raw information from the user interviews, if you have it? Even from memory?
I wish I had some organized interviews written down, and I hope to see more serious market testing work like that within the movement—unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to document my interactions explaining about EA.
Generally speaking, I tried out different pitches whenever I had the chance to speak about EA, tried to be attentive to responses, asked what do they think about the concept (which is important, because most of the time people would just be supportive or say “wow” while clearly not understanding what EA is about), and shared these experiences with other community builders in Israel and abroad.
The vast majority of the responses I received was either very basic questions that show confusion about the concept (“so what does the movement actually do?”, “what do people in the movement do?”), responses that show very little understanding, or responses that was kind of OK but then later I realized didn’t account for much comprehension (as happened a lot with volunteers—I found myself often explaining critical nuances of EA to people who were involved for quite a while, even if they had actually read our list of intro materials).
In addition, I quite often expected people I (even slightly) know to be more excited about EA, and their lack of excitement showed me that our pitches are far from optimal. Once we’ve developed the current pitch and placed it on our website, I found that:
Volunteers and individuals who seek career advice approached us with far better understanding of EA (far from perfect, but it feels like going from 20% of understanding to 60%)
Within a minute of explanation I get the feeling the person I speak with actually has a general understanding of what I’m talking about
Informal conversations I have about EA make people much more excited
That said—much more research is needed, I don’t think this is the most optimal pitch we can come up with, and I can’t really quantify these experiences as much as I’d hope to.
Thanks!
Just saying, from my point of view, that it’s useful to also hear specific ways in which people misunderstand EA. Every time you give an example of that kind, like “what do people in the movement do?”, I feel like my brain is updating and will pay attention to this failure mode next time I have such a conversation.
I’m differentiating (1) “concrete examples of misunderstandings” from (2) sentences like “20% of understanding” or “explaining critical nuances of EA”: The latter isn’t actionable for me personally. (Though I understand why you said it and I’m excited for this improvement that you’re able to get, and I’m happy that someone like you is focusing on this project).
I totally agree. Though it’s not concrete examples, these two resources (1,2) are helpful.
Just thinking out loud: Diving deeper into each misconception and providing concrete examples (or even “simulations” for practice) might be a good idea for an EA pitching workshop
I agree with your point of “career decisions”—I’m replacing “career choices” in my post with “career decisions”, thank you!
Regarding evidence and reason—I think that the idea of prioritizing social action is already unique and doesn’t require differentiation, and I think that individuals would assume that by prioritizing we mean to apply some serious thinking into this process (but I think this argument requires some testing, and would be easy to test)
Thanks for this—I have often wished I had a better elevator pitch for EA.
One thing I might add is some mention of just how wide the disparity can be amongst possible interventions, since this seems to be one of the most overlooked key ideas.
Great post, I totally agree that we need more work in this area. Also agree with other commenters that volunteering isn’t a main focus of EA advice, but it probably should be – given the points Mauricio made.
Nitpicky, but it would have been nice to have a summary at the start of the post.
I want to second Bonus #2, I think EA is significantly about a toolkit for helping others effectively, and using examples of tools seems helpful for an engaging pitch. Is anybody familiar with a post or article listing the main EA tools? One of my side-projects is developing a workshop on these, because I think it could be a really good first introduction to EA for newcomers; even if they don’t want to get further involved, they’ve learned something (we’ve added value to their life) and therefore (hopefully) have a positive attitude toward EA.
The phrasing “helping others” will turn off some progressives. I’m not sure how to deal with this, but it is worth being aware of. This might help explain why (tho I only skimmed it): https://sojo.net/articles/mutual-aid-changing-way-we-help-each-other
Can you (or someone) write a TLDR of why “helping others” would turn off “progressives”?
Here you go: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GKSYJ9rLnBdtXGAog/aaron_scher-s-shortform?commentId=LLiK7vLmaTdYmev4E
“Help” sounds paternalistic or presumptuous to progressives.
If you end up with a list of tools, you could add ’em to the chart I link to in the comment above. It’s meant to collect just about everything important. If you’d like.
Thanks Gidon—I really like this post. A few reactions:
I think “helping others” sounds like it’s exclusively about humans. I agree “doing good” is hard to picture, but part of this is out of genuine uncertainty on the human/animal trade-offs
What made prioritization really click for me was an example, I agree with you that this is the most central idea, and as a result, I think in an intro it is worth giving an example of two interventions intended to help the same target population, where one is way more effective (for me it was comparing two health interventions that both naively sounded like “good” things to do)
Thanks Oldman! I totally agree with your point on examples.
Regarding ‘helping others’ and animals—I think it’s a great question whether individuals who are interested in animal welfare and hear about EA for the first time would be put off by this expression.
If it’s not the case, then I think the benefits of using ‘helping others’ are still relevant, and it’s not that ‘doing good’ would signal to these individuals that the movement also cares about animals. Nevertheless, in some contexts, I think it can be beneficial to say explicitly ‘helping other people and animals’ even though it makes this sentence a bit longer.
Anyhow, in terms of accuracy, I think that ‘others’ can refer to animals as well (though I’m not sure of that).
I’ve said “helping other beings” before. It sounds a bit odd to some people but is more accurate.