Discussing EA with Non-EA People | External Movement-Building
Premise
When I first started calling myself an Effective Altruist, it was hard to talk about EA to other people. If it came up, I would find myself backed into a corner, ultimately trying to defend utilitarianism to someone who didn’t want to be convinced. These conversations didn’t feel productive. So for a while, I kept EA to myself.
Eventually I looked for carefully-worded, clear ways to explain EA concepts that are non-contentious but still retain fidelity to the heart and values of EA. I’ve learned that just because many people do not want to have long philosophical discussions, look at graphs, and listen to 3-hour podcasts, does not mean they don’t want to do a lot of good. Just like the animal rights movement has had success getting non-vegans to cut back on meat consumption, the EA movement could benefit by promoting certain concepts to people who don’t identify as EA.
Pulling from my 8 years of experience as a “highly-effective” public school educator and 2 years of experience giving and honing my talk about EA for high school and college students (on an irregular basis), I’d like to share my thoughts on goals and best practices for what I call “external movement building,” or the spread of EA ideas outside of the EA community.
Guiding Question
What ideas (if any) should we, the EA community, popularize for the general public? And how should we frame those ideas?
We might want ideas that…
...are not likely to be misinterpreted or misused.
Good candidates will retain fidelity to the heart of EA without requiring “EA Policing.” They will give a clear and foolproof message as they spread around.
...will not be contentious.
We might want the low-hanging fruit of ideas people will easily agree with but just never considered.
...will actually make an impact if applied.
My Current Thinking
I’ll explain why I believe we should focus on promoting the use of evidence, leverage, and personal advantage to the general public when they seek to do good.
If chosen, I’d like to be part of the late sessions if possible, thank you!
(And thanks to Aaron Gertler for the revision help!)
I’m happy to have read this! This is a well-articulated post about something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
I definitely intuit that it’s more important to reduce suffering than to increase pleasure. I wonder how much of my suffering-focused viewpoint is due to a bias: hearing stories about other people suffering makes me quite sad, but hearing about other people being extremely happy doesn’t tend to make me that happy unless it’s someone I know personally, or maybe someone who has a relatable backstory.
Maybe our sense of empathy is a little biased because as we evolved, it was more important to help others in our tribe who were in danger of dying than to somehow celebrate when they had their needs met. I’m just theorizing here.
I look forward to checking out the book!