I think you’re right that “woke signaling” is pretty off-putting to significant portions of the population (at least in the US). What’s less clear is how many put-off people were counterfactually going to listen to ACE’s recommendations anyway.
The flipside is that “woke signaling” probably has beneficial effects for some donors on the left, those who are more likely to defer to evaluators who they see as sharing their values. In addition, to the extent that the larger non-EA animal-welfare community is very left-leaning, “woke signaling” might help build bridges to it.
I don’t know which effect would be stronger, but I don’t think you can assume (1) predominates.
I think your argument would be stronger for most object-level charities than for a charity evaluator. I’d think the target audience for the latter is a smaller group of people who are predisposed to be sympathetic to the cause. The key win would be getting someone excited enough to donate; the shared real-world outcome for moderately supportive through strongly opposed is that the person won’t defer to the org’s recommendations. What follows is a oversimplified model.
If “woke signaling” moves someone from moderately supportive to unsympathetic, that isn’t great but the counterfactual loss in donations is still $0. But moving someone from moderately supportive to highly supportive has more concrete value if it triggers a counterfactual donation. If there are more people at moderately supportive who would respond positively to “woke signaling” than there are people at highly supportive who would respond negatively, it could be a strategic move.
This is plausible, but not obvious, to me:
I think you’re right that “woke signaling” is pretty off-putting to significant portions of the population (at least in the US). What’s less clear is how many put-off people were counterfactually going to listen to ACE’s recommendations anyway.
The flipside is that “woke signaling” probably has beneficial effects for some donors on the left, those who are more likely to defer to evaluators who they see as sharing their values. In addition, to the extent that the larger non-EA animal-welfare community is very left-leaning, “woke signaling” might help build bridges to it.
I don’t know which effect would be stronger, but I don’t think you can assume (1) predominates.
I think your argument would be stronger for most object-level charities than for a charity evaluator. I’d think the target audience for the latter is a smaller group of people who are predisposed to be sympathetic to the cause. The key win would be getting someone excited enough to donate; the shared real-world outcome for moderately supportive through strongly opposed is that the person won’t defer to the org’s recommendations. What follows is a oversimplified model.
If “woke signaling” moves someone from moderately supportive to unsympathetic, that isn’t great but the counterfactual loss in donations is still $0. But moving someone from moderately supportive to highly supportive has more concrete value if it triggers a counterfactual donation. If there are more people at moderately supportive who would respond positively to “woke signaling” than there are people at highly supportive who would respond negatively, it could be a strategic move.