Thanks for posting this, I have had similar thoughts/questions in the past and briefly talked with a few people about it, but I don’t think I’ve posted much about it on the forum.
I was especially interested in a point/thread you mentioned about people perceiving many charities as having similar effectiveness and that this may be an impediment to people getting interested in effective altruism. I’m not familiar with the research/arguments there, but yeah it sounds like if that is true it might be beneficial/effective to first “meet people where they are” (in terms of cause passions/focuses/neutrality) by showing the differences in effectiveness in that one cause area: I imagine that part of the reason that some people may resistant to believing in high differences in impact is some (perhaps unconscious) motivated reasoning since they don’t want to acknowledge their current passion is not very comparatively impactful.
In other words, if people are resistant to changing their minds in part because of a reinforcing loop of “I don’t want to admit I may be wrong about my passion/cause area,” “many charities have similar impacts,” and “What I am doing is impactful,” one may be able to more effectively change people’s thoughts about the second point by highlighting differences in charity effectiveness within a cause area. Specifically, this could help by sidestepping the “I don’t want to change my cause area” motivated reasoning/resistance. Of course, many people might still be resistant to changing their minds more broadly, and this all depends on the extent to which that claim about people’s perceptions of effectiveness is true, but it seems like it might be helpful for some people.
I was especially interested in a point/thread you mentioned about people perceiving many charities as having similar effectiveness and that this may be an impediment to people getting interested in effective altruism
A recent survey of Oxford students found that they believed the most effective global health charity was only ~1.5x better than the average — in line with what the average American thinks — while EAs and global health experts estimated the ratio is ~100x. This suggests that even among Oxford students, where a lot of outreach has been done, the most central message of EA is not yet widely known.
I think generally any kind of criticism of people trying to do good without first having built a relationship on common ground leads to “soldier mindset” where people become defensive about their actions. People who donate money or time by default expect to be thanked and feel good about it, in proportion to the amount of money or time that they donated. I suspect it’s always more productive to build a relationship with someone and find out what motivates them to give, and share relevant organizations or articles in line with their motivation, as opposed to approaching with foremost intention to convince people to change. And EAs should definitely have a scout mindset about this—There’s lots of reasons people might not think primarily of effectiveness when donating, and they’re not things we should change about people, but things we can build on. E.g. maybe some people donate to what’s convenient, or what they read about from a specific publisher that they trust, or this organization did a presentation at their church. That’s good to know.
Thanks for posting this, I have had similar thoughts/questions in the past and briefly talked with a few people about it, but I don’t think I’ve posted much about it on the forum.
I was especially interested in a point/thread you mentioned about people perceiving many charities as having similar effectiveness and that this may be an impediment to people getting interested in effective altruism. I’m not familiar with the research/arguments there, but yeah it sounds like if that is true it might be beneficial/effective to first “meet people where they are” (in terms of cause passions/focuses/neutrality) by showing the differences in effectiveness in that one cause area: I imagine that part of the reason that some people may resistant to believing in high differences in impact is some (perhaps unconscious) motivated reasoning since they don’t want to acknowledge their current passion is not very comparatively impactful.
In other words, if people are resistant to changing their minds in part because of a reinforcing loop of “I don’t want to admit I may be wrong about my passion/cause area,” “many charities have similar impacts,” and “What I am doing is impactful,” one may be able to more effectively change people’s thoughts about the second point by highlighting differences in charity effectiveness within a cause area. Specifically, this could help by sidestepping the “I don’t want to change my cause area” motivated reasoning/resistance. Of course, many people might still be resistant to changing their minds more broadly, and this all depends on the extent to which that claim about people’s perceptions of effectiveness is true, but it seems like it might be helpful for some people.
See here
I think generally any kind of criticism of people trying to do good without first having built a relationship on common ground leads to “soldier mindset” where people become defensive about their actions. People who donate money or time by default expect to be thanked and feel good about it, in proportion to the amount of money or time that they donated. I suspect it’s always more productive to build a relationship with someone and find out what motivates them to give, and share relevant organizations or articles in line with their motivation, as opposed to approaching with foremost intention to convince people to change. And EAs should definitely have a scout mindset about this—There’s lots of reasons people might not think primarily of effectiveness when donating, and they’re not things we should change about people, but things we can build on. E.g. maybe some people donate to what’s convenient, or what they read about from a specific publisher that they trust, or this organization did a presentation at their church. That’s good to know.