I am well aware of the general reticence about mass media and the preference for a high fidelity model of spreading the ideas of effective altruism. However, I think that (1) the misrepresentation risks are less acute in the narrower effective-giving space and (2) some coverage —even if it is a bit off-target— can often be better than no coverage when you are launching a new organization.
I want to express some general support for being less concerned about fidelity when spreading ideas like effective giving.
Something that I didn’t discuss in the article on fidelity is risk assessment. While all ideas are susceptible to misunderstandings as they spread, not all misunderstandings are equally harmful. Effective giving appears to be a relatively low-risk idea to spread both both because the idea seems to be close to society’s existing concepts and because there have been a number of past attempts at spreading the idea without any particular problematic results (I’d be interested in counterexamples if anyone knows of any).
I agree it makes sense to spread the idea of effective giving widely. The only counterexample I can think of is the following, which was probably limited to affecting only one person’s donations: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yz5bqvG2sG92tLHmM/open-thread-4?commentId=pW684GoPXQE4YjdLs. Interestingly, this was a person to person interaction rather than through media. Overall it seems very good to share the idea of effective giving more.
I want to express some general support for being less concerned about fidelity when spreading ideas like effective giving.
Something that I didn’t discuss in the article on fidelity is risk assessment. While all ideas are susceptible to misunderstandings as they spread, not all misunderstandings are equally harmful. Effective giving appears to be a relatively low-risk idea to spread both both because the idea seems to be close to society’s existing concepts and because there have been a number of past attempts at spreading the idea without any particular problematic results (I’d be interested in counterexamples if anyone knows of any).
I agree it makes sense to spread the idea of effective giving widely. The only counterexample I can think of is the following, which was probably limited to affecting only one person’s donations: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yz5bqvG2sG92tLHmM/open-thread-4?commentId=pW684GoPXQE4YjdLs. Interestingly, this was a person to person interaction rather than through media. Overall it seems very good to share the idea of effective giving more.