Thanks for your comments, again. Very helpful, and good to have this discussion. Regarding your bullet points:
1) I thought I delineated this pretty clearly, but the effectiveness of protesting definitely depends on the cause.
2) This is correct—but I’m not sure this is all that crucial, since presumably the same increase in commitment to the cause would happen to someone else. An effective altruist would hopefully direct this in even more productive ways. The counter-argument is that EAs may already be motivated enough that this doesn’t matter. I’m unsure on that question.
3-4) Agreed, and you may be right. I would like to see that comparison done.
5) This might have been a better route to go, although I suspect there is room for protesting and social movement organizing around open borders, mass incarceration, and other important causes, which was why I made it more general. I will probably give a more specific treatment at some point.
Regarding much of your post, I agree that the crux of the issue is whether protesting around these shootings affects mass incarceration. I would think this moves the debate forward on mass incarceration fairly strongly, but I could be wrong. I didn’t provide much evidence on this question since it wasn’t the primary focus of the piece.
Yes, I don’t mean to say you didn’t acknowledge things differ by cause, just that without a benchmark of non-protest activities in the cause it’s hard to show the advantage of protesting as a tactic, and that I think the mixed examples haven’t shown an existence proof because of cause selection issues.
but I’m not sure this is all that crucial, since presumably the same increase in commitment to the cause would happen to someone else
Is the idea here that one goes to the protest and then donates to climate action instead of AMF in the future, possibly donating more in total? I.e. it’s like volunteering ineffectively for a charity to build affiliation with it? Or that if you attend you will cause others to commit and so will get almost the same gains even if you don’t put in further resources?
I imagine a protest where 1000 people attend and one where 1001 people attend. The extra impact could a) come mostly from the chance that the extra person will become entangled with the movement and invest more time, money, and social capital later; b) mostly come from a diffuse effect where each person who attends is more likely to become committed the more people who attend; c) some other effect like media coverage.
B) seems a bit strange because each attendee can only interact with so many other attendees, and it would imply more superlinear returns than the Tea Party study suggests. However, I could see that the impact of attendance might be as high as an exogenous attendee, even after subtracting out the average later donations and commitment (which would make the cost-benefit for you much worse), if you were much more likely to cause other attendees to commit their time and money. Basically, marketing to the enriched audience of protest attendees.
I didn’t provide much evidence on this question since it wasn’t the primary focus of the piece.
Oh, sorry—the first quote was very unclear. I meant that in EA attending a protest would presumably also become more invested in it like people in the Tea Party study. That could be a point against climate action, as you say, but if I already felt, say, open borders was the most important cause and I went to a protest for that, it would deepen my investment.
Thanks for your comments, again. Very helpful, and good to have this discussion. Regarding your bullet points:
1) I thought I delineated this pretty clearly, but the effectiveness of protesting definitely depends on the cause. 2) This is correct—but I’m not sure this is all that crucial, since presumably the same increase in commitment to the cause would happen to someone else. An effective altruist would hopefully direct this in even more productive ways. The counter-argument is that EAs may already be motivated enough that this doesn’t matter. I’m unsure on that question. 3-4) Agreed, and you may be right. I would like to see that comparison done. 5) This might have been a better route to go, although I suspect there is room for protesting and social movement organizing around open borders, mass incarceration, and other important causes, which was why I made it more general. I will probably give a more specific treatment at some point.
Regarding much of your post, I agree that the crux of the issue is whether protesting around these shootings affects mass incarceration. I would think this moves the debate forward on mass incarceration fairly strongly, but I could be wrong. I didn’t provide much evidence on this question since it wasn’t the primary focus of the piece.
Yes, I don’t mean to say you didn’t acknowledge things differ by cause, just that without a benchmark of non-protest activities in the cause it’s hard to show the advantage of protesting as a tactic, and that I think the mixed examples haven’t shown an existence proof because of cause selection issues.
Is the idea here that one goes to the protest and then donates to climate action instead of AMF in the future, possibly donating more in total? I.e. it’s like volunteering ineffectively for a charity to build affiliation with it? Or that if you attend you will cause others to commit and so will get almost the same gains even if you don’t put in further resources?
I imagine a protest where 1000 people attend and one where 1001 people attend. The extra impact could a) come mostly from the chance that the extra person will become entangled with the movement and invest more time, money, and social capital later; b) mostly come from a diffuse effect where each person who attends is more likely to become committed the more people who attend; c) some other effect like media coverage.
B) seems a bit strange because each attendee can only interact with so many other attendees, and it would imply more superlinear returns than the Tea Party study suggests. However, I could see that the impact of attendance might be as high as an exogenous attendee, even after subtracting out the average later donations and commitment (which would make the cost-benefit for you much worse), if you were much more likely to cause other attendees to commit their time and money. Basically, marketing to the enriched audience of protest attendees.
Sure.
Oh, sorry—the first quote was very unclear. I meant that in EA attending a protest would presumably also become more invested in it like people in the Tea Party study. That could be a point against climate action, as you say, but if I already felt, say, open borders was the most important cause and I went to a protest for that, it would deepen my investment.
OK, I understand now. I think that there is a huge difference between:
1) Spending 4 person-hours on activity X will change the outside world to produce Y QALYs.
2) Spending 4 person-hours on activity X will lead you to spend 40 person-hours to produce Y QALYs
If I don’t think Y QALYs/40 hours is cost-effective enough to want to pursue, then I don’t want to do 2), even if Y/4 hours would be enough.