This is great research! But to me it looks like the “fact” message you gave was really an “opportunity” message, and the “opportunity” message was really… well, I don’t know how to describe it! I think the takeaway, for talking to people with bachelor’s degrees, is that opportunity is an effective mode of communication as long as it’s “opportunity to make the world better”, not “opportunity to be a great person”.
This is great research! But to me it looks like the “fact” message you gave was really an “opportunity” message, and the “opportunity” message was really… well, I don’t know how to describe it! I think the takeaway, for talking to people with bachelor’s degrees, is that opportunity is an effective mode of communication as long as it’s “opportunity to make the world better”, not “opportunity to be a great person”.
Thanks!
I adapted that framing from Will MacAskill (example of this starting 12:45 in the podcast with Sam Harris here: https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/being-good-and-doing-good). MacAskill refers to the framing as “Excited Altruism” It might come across as better when he tells it than in a web survey. But I think it’s pretty similar. I grouped this in with “opportunity”, which I’ve also seen called “exciting opportunity” in the ea community (http://lukemuehlhauser.com/effective-altruism-as-opportunity-or-obligation/).
But, regardless of what it’s called, I agree with you on the takeaway.