If the claim was that this is best among public outreach interventions, the title is misleading. The post also doesn’t really compare deep questioning to other public outreach methods, just justifies it on its own terms.
Opportunity costs for attention and time are the other things people could be doing, and it it common and I think basically justifiable to value people’s time at a level similar to their work salary. The reasoning is that typically, even if you can’t make money during your free time, people are willing to spend money and give up other opportunities to get free time—if they want to use that time to do deep questioning, that’s great, but if and when they do, they are explicitly valuing that use of their time over other options.
And I agree that some grassroots organizations could push this forward, but I worry doing it on behalf of an organization with an explicit agenda, even as a volunteer, might undermine the personal connection of deep questioning. As you said, “the interlocutors do not have the impression that the public outreacher is from an organization and tries to persuade them of something.” If they are, in fact, coming from an organization, that seems to be deeply deceptive.
If the claim was that this is best among public outreach interventions, the title is misleading. The post also doesn’t really compare deep questioning to other public outreach methods, just justifies it on its own terms.
Opportunity costs for attention and time are the other things people could be doing, and it it common and I think basically justifiable to value people’s time at a level similar to their work salary. The reasoning is that typically, even if you can’t make money during your free time, people are willing to spend money and give up other opportunities to get free time—if they want to use that time to do deep questioning, that’s great, but if and when they do, they are explicitly valuing that use of their time over other options.
And I agree that some grassroots organizations could push this forward, but I worry doing it on behalf of an organization with an explicit agenda, even as a volunteer, might undermine the personal connection of deep questioning. As you said, “the interlocutors do not have the impression that the public outreacher is from an organization and tries to persuade them of something.” If they are, in fact, coming from an organization, that seems to be deeply deceptive.