morally ambivalent about extinction, though reducing chances of extinction could plausibly also have positive flowthrough for S-Risks.
Catđ¸
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On a practical level, I donât necessarily disagree with anything youâre saying in the first two paragraphs. I tried to address some of what youâre saying in my conclusion, and I donât think anything in the âmainâ argument (benefits missions provide but EA is currently missing) is incompatible with having the abstract âdoing goodâ as the core EA thing (so then it just becomes a semantic thing about how we define missions).
As for your last paragraph, I argue for a cultural shift because Iâve personally seen a lot of people who resonate very much with EA intellectually but not emotionally (like here). This is fine when they have an easy transition into a high-impact role and there are less abstract stuff they can feel emotional about, but a lot of people donât âsurviveâ that transition. They are aligned on principles, but EA is a really different community and movement that takes time getting used to. The current EA community seems to not only select for people who share values, but also people who share personality traits. I think thatâs bad.
(I do like the subculture idea and it was something I was thinking about as I wrote it! I think thatâs 100% a viable path too)
On a more speculative level, the people who I see drifting away strongly tend to be the people who have support networks outside of EA, instead of the people who are more reliant on EA for their social/âemotional needs. Iâm sure some of this trend exists for every movement, but I somewhat believe that this trend is larger for EA. This post gets at one of the reasons I have personally hypothesized to have caused thisâthat EA feels cold to a lot of people in a way difficult to describe, and humans are emotions-driven at their core. Regardless of the reason, selecting for members that are socially and emotionally reliant on the movement seems like a recipe for disaster.
âDoÂing Goodâ is not a Mission
Iâm considering writing a post on why itâs hard for some people who intellectually agree with EA foundations to be emotionally passionate about EA (and really âdoing goodâ in general). This is mostly based on my experience as a university group organiser, my tendency to be drawn to EA-lite people who end up leaving the community, and the fact that I am not very passionate about EA. Very fuzzy TL;DR is that caring about cause prioritisation requires levels of uncertainty, but the average person needs to be able to see concrete steps to take and how their contribution can help people to feel a fervour that propels them into action. This is doubly true for people who are not surrounded by EAs. To combat this, I argue for one actionable item, and one broader, more abstract ideal. The action item is to have a visual, easily digestable EA roadmap, that links broader cause areas with specific things people and orgs are doing. Ideally, the roadmap would almost be like a bunch of âbusiness pitchesâ to attract new employees, explaining the pain points, the solutions suggested, and how people can get involved. The broader ideal I want to advocate for is for the EA philosophy to be principles based, but for the day-to-day EA to be missions-based (which I view as different from being cause-area-oriented).
Itâs all just vibes in my head right now, but Iâd be curious to know if people would want to see interviews/âsurveys/âany sort of data to back up what Iâm saying.
I think something that may help donors feel like theyâre actually doing something and could be cool is a GiveWell-ran but kickstarter aesthetic website for charities. Charities set their moonshots, breaks it down to manageable bitesize pieces and establishes goals based on them. Different promises are made to donors for different goals of donation reached. Donors also have different tiers based on how much they donate.
E.g. We want to distribute malaria vaccines to everyone in Nigeria. For $x donated, weâll distribute vaccines to all children under 5 in the state of Ondo in Nigeria, and send stickers out to all donors. If we reach $x + y, we will expand to the neighboring state of Eikiti as well and all silver+ tier donors will get a handwritten card. Donating $(x * 0.001) grants you bronze tier, $(x * 0.005) grants you silver, etc.
With the right UI design, I think donors could feel much more like theyâre really contributing because of the relative tiers, and their ability to see the project get closer to pre-established goals specifically due to their donation. Thereâs also a much cleaner feedback cycle when donating $z â you get letters/âvideos/âwhatever else emotionally appeals to donors. And I imagine you could also add a lot of community incentives and gamification elements to something like this.