Here are some ‘polling data points’ I gave Owen on various questions and claims he included (saying that I thought I should largely list areas where I have negative answers or disagree, leaving aside the many where I agree, and that he could more often than not take me as agreeing with what I haven’t commented on). I’m curious as to other people’s views—I imagine I could guess some!
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“the movement has a natural maximum size that we cannot change”
I wouldn’t be surprised by this (within some bounds.)
“the views of people around them have a significant effect on the inclinations of people towards the movement”
This is complex, and there are different subquestions here, but I think people may overestimate this.
“building political consensus will be useful for the direct work”
I doubt this is an important factor for efficient global poverty charity, partly because there’s a relatively uncontroversial global poverty movement anyway, which any lobbying could be presented (and will likely automatically be perceived) as part of.
“Increasing awareness of the movement is important, but increasing positive inclination may be even more important.”
I disagree.
For EA: ” It seems that it would be hard to run out of effective things to do, so Saturation is impossible.”
However, the saturation chart isn’t impossible—that could be a result of reaching all the efficiently reachable people who are ever going to be EAs, rather than of running out of effective things to do.
For EA: “the movement could get very large”
I’m sceptical. It’d help to indicate roughly what very large means though.
For Owen’s very approximate numerical estimates for EA: “I’d be mildly surprised if they were wrong by much over an order of magnitude”
I wouldn’t, especially for numbers you honestly say “are basically pulled out of my head”.
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Anyway, there ends my laundry list of negative answers! I found it a very helpful paper which clarified my conceptual breakdown of the issues, and as Owen said helped identify and provide labels for disagreements.
Here are some ‘polling data points’ I gave Owen on various questions and claims he included (saying that I thought I should largely list areas where I have negative answers or disagree, leaving aside the many where I agree, and that he could more often than not take me as agreeing with what I haven’t commented on). I’m curious as to other people’s views—I imagine I could guess some!
--
“the movement has a natural maximum size that we cannot change”
I wouldn’t be surprised by this (within some bounds.)
“it is very hard to change inclination”
I wouldn’t be surprised by this. On this point and some others, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/867500613306297/?qa_ref=qd and my comments under that. I think what Tyler asked about is an important fact.
“the views of people around them have a significant effect on the inclinations of people towards the movement”
This is complex, and there are different subquestions here, but I think people may overestimate this.
“building political consensus will be useful for the direct work”
I doubt this is an important factor for efficient global poverty charity, partly because there’s a relatively uncontroversial global poverty movement anyway, which any lobbying could be presented (and will likely automatically be perceived) as part of.
“Increasing awareness of the movement is important, but increasing positive inclination may be even more important.”
I disagree.
For EA: ” It seems that it would be hard to run out of effective things to do, so Saturation is impossible.”
However, the saturation chart isn’t impossible—that could be a result of reaching all the efficiently reachable people who are ever going to be EAs, rather than of running out of effective things to do.
For EA: “the movement could get very large”
I’m sceptical. It’d help to indicate roughly what very large means though.
For Owen’s very approximate numerical estimates for EA: “I’d be mildly surprised if they were wrong by much over an order of magnitude”
I wouldn’t, especially for numbers you honestly say “are basically pulled out of my head”.
--
Anyway, there ends my laundry list of negative answers! I found it a very helpful paper which clarified my conceptual breakdown of the issues, and as Owen said helped identify and provide labels for disagreements.