A counter force is that at least some of those people would have found EA anyway or found GiveWell and donated to effective charities.
However, for lots of people (for example, me) the in person connection is going to make them a lot more excited than just finding out about the movement in the abstract. In my case, that’s made me donate substantially more than I would otherwise.
One person I introduced to the EA London group framed this as ‘it’s not that I wouldn’t have found this and been interested in it anyway, eventually, but you probably sped up that process by 6 months to a year’. That doesn’t strike me as a crazy estimate, and such reasoning leads to similar practical conclusions I think.
Agreed- part of valuing the pledge at $20,000US (rather than the $150,000US that the median earner would donate over their life time) is an attempt to capture this sort of counter-factual concern.
I also totally agree about your point about personal connections- I think many people find that they do a lot to motivate them to do more for EA- just another way that chapters are awesome!
A counter force is that at least some of those people would have found EA anyway or found GiveWell and donated to effective charities.
However, for lots of people (for example, me) the in person connection is going to make them a lot more excited than just finding out about the movement in the abstract. In my case, that’s made me donate substantially more than I would otherwise.
One person I introduced to the EA London group framed this as ‘it’s not that I wouldn’t have found this and been interested in it anyway, eventually, but you probably sped up that process by 6 months to a year’. That doesn’t strike me as a crazy estimate, and such reasoning leads to similar practical conclusions I think.
Agreed- part of valuing the pledge at $20,000US (rather than the $150,000US that the median earner would donate over their life time) is an attempt to capture this sort of counter-factual concern.
I also totally agree about your point about personal connections- I think many people find that they do a lot to motivate them to do more for EA- just another way that chapters are awesome!