Having taught a couple of Splash classes, and having read through SHICâs suspension post (which discusses their struggles in doing impactful work with pre-college students), I wouldnât expect the class to lead to much impact. However, it sounds like an opportunity to practice discussing EA in front of a forgiving audience, and might inspire a couple of students down the line; good luck!
While effective altruism (just like every social movement ever) has critics, itâs a relatively safe thing to advocate for; almost every mainstream article/âvideo/âetc. published about it nowadays is positive, and in my experience, people almost always think itâs a good idea when I present it as âtrying to do things that will really help people, rather than ignoring their needs in favor of what we think will helpâ.
What tactics do you think could be more effective at promoting effective altruism? Iâve been thinking about promoting EA practices in a public interest tech context, but Iâd be flying blind because I have no idea whatâs effective and relatively little experience in PIT overall. One possibility would be to deliver an EA talk at a tech conference such as GHC.
âtrying to do things that will really help people, rather than ignoring their needs in favor of what we think will helpâ
is uncontroversial; I think cause prioritization would be more controversial, though. I wouldnât be surprised if people working on one cause objected to being told that theyâd have more impact working on a different one.
In past Splash courses Iâve taught, Iâve noticed that some students were already familiar with the topic; for example, during my introductory machine learning class, one student asked about a type of neural network that I had heard of but was unfamiliar with. Do you think Iâd be mostly preaching to converts?
Donât worry about âpreaching to convertsâ in your Splash class; I very much doubt many of your students will have any familiarity with EA beyond a passing mention somewhere.
Discussing effective tactics for promoting EA would take a long time. If you want to learn about some things other folks have done, check out the EA Hubâs list of resources or the top community posts on the Forum (not everything at that link will be about promotion, but if you skip around youâll find some relevant articles).
With cause prioritization (and other topics), youâll probably be fine as long as you avoid negativity. My framing is never âdonât work on Xâ; instead, itâs (to paraphrase): âwhat are you hoping to get by working on X? Does it seem to be working? What led you to working on X rather than other things in the same general area?â My overall message is âeveryone sees the world a little differently, but for any way you see the world, there will be some strategies for helping that are likely to work out better than others. Cause prioritization is about figuring out the best thing you can be doing, according to your values.â
Prioritization isnât exclusive to EA: Other entities do it all the time based on their own values (e.g. environmental agencies trying to weigh policies by how they affect the lives of citizens, but not necessarily people in other countries). EA just has fewer limits on the sorts of ideas it considers, and on which beings we care about helping.
(This is a very rough perspective, and belongs to me rather than my employer, but the point of âwork with peopleâs values, donât tell them to value other thingsâ stands.)
Having taught a couple of Splash classes, and having read through SHICâs suspension post (which discusses their struggles in doing impactful work with pre-college students), I wouldnât expect the class to lead to much impact. However, it sounds like an opportunity to practice discussing EA in front of a forgiving audience, and might inspire a couple of students down the line; good luck!
While effective altruism (just like every social movement ever) has critics, itâs a relatively safe thing to advocate for; almost every mainstream article/âvideo/âetc. published about it nowadays is positive, and in my experience, people almost always think itâs a good idea when I present it as âtrying to do things that will really help people, rather than ignoring their needs in favor of what we think will helpâ.
You might be interested in CEAâs list of common objections to EA and how we respond to them. Itâs a bit out-of-date, but I still hear all these objections on Twitter, so I imagine you could hear them as well.
Thank youâthis is really helpful feedback!
What tactics do you think could be more effective at promoting effective altruism? Iâve been thinking about promoting EA practices in a public interest tech context, but Iâd be flying blind because I have no idea whatâs effective and relatively little experience in PIT overall. One possibility would be to deliver an EA talk at a tech conference such as GHC.
is uncontroversial; I think cause prioritization would be more controversial, though. I wouldnât be surprised if people working on one cause objected to being told that theyâd have more impact working on a different one.
In past Splash courses Iâve taught, Iâve noticed that some students were already familiar with the topic; for example, during my introductory machine learning class, one student asked about a type of neural network that I had heard of but was unfamiliar with. Do you think Iâd be mostly preaching to converts?
Donât worry about âpreaching to convertsâ in your Splash class; I very much doubt many of your students will have any familiarity with EA beyond a passing mention somewhere.
Discussing effective tactics for promoting EA would take a long time. If you want to learn about some things other folks have done, check out the EA Hubâs list of resources or the top community posts on the Forum (not everything at that link will be about promotion, but if you skip around youâll find some relevant articles).
With cause prioritization (and other topics), youâll probably be fine as long as you avoid negativity. My framing is never âdonât work on Xâ; instead, itâs (to paraphrase): âwhat are you hoping to get by working on X? Does it seem to be working? What led you to working on X rather than other things in the same general area?â My overall message is âeveryone sees the world a little differently, but for any way you see the world, there will be some strategies for helping that are likely to work out better than others. Cause prioritization is about figuring out the best thing you can be doing, according to your values.â
Prioritization isnât exclusive to EA: Other entities do it all the time based on their own values (e.g. environmental agencies trying to weigh policies by how they affect the lives of citizens, but not necessarily people in other countries). EA just has fewer limits on the sorts of ideas it considers, and on which beings we care about helping.
(This is a very rough perspective, and belongs to me rather than my employer, but the point of âwork with peopleâs values, donât tell them to value other thingsâ stands.)