Peter—thank you for another excellent post. I would completely agree that for some people telling others how much you donate will be an effective way of transforming their behaviour, and may well work with younger groups or for particularly influential speakers—what might work for Peter Singer may not work for others—the answer is for individuals to try it and see.
I have some experience on this particular issue, having tried at some length to do exactly this. I invested in two communities in Uganda and the Philippines on the edge of extreme poverty and created sustainable businesses that could generate returns for reinvestment in those communities which were transformational on the lives of perhaps 50 individuals, and which provided immense personal satisfaction. On relating to my peer group how I was able to achieve all this “for the cost of a new kitchen we didn’t really need” and would they like to have a try too there was a sense of incomprehension, an unspoken sense that I was perhaps having a mid life crisis and a firm request domestically for the new kitchen!
The main cause of this failure I suspect was the lack of social status being attached in the mainstream to unusually large giving (as opposed to new kitchens), and this is a learning point I take forwards. But the point is people’s motivations and behaviours are really complex and appear to vary wildly from situation to situation despite apparently similar inputs on a particular dimension.
I think this gap that can occur between practise and theory, as the real world will not conform to any particular theory is a real challenge for effective altruism as it continues to try to grow, potentially leading to paralysis as better theories are sought before any further actions are taken. The challenge effective altruism will face at it tries to outreach more broadly is a rare case of “science meets the real world”.
Many of us from a business background have wondered why the academic community appears to lock itself away, and I am starting to understand why—the approaches adopted are quite different at a fundamental level. Working within scientific fields necessarily requires looking at the world through a highly selective lens—progress in healthcare requires absolute focus on the structure of the cell, DNA etc. for example—and then creating theories that can then be applied from the evidence—the behaviour of the Islamic State for example is completely irrelevant.
In seeking to outreach into the mainstream all factors can potentially be relevant—including elements like personal feelings towards the Islamic State in certain circumstances. There is no general theory that can be applied within the grasp of ordinary human level of complexity—the problem is simply too complex to model.
Does this mean that there is no logical way to proceed? Not at all—but it does require controlled experimentation of trying things to see what works—a clear bias to action. To highlight the difference I would recommend Richard Branson’s “Screw it Lets do it” alongside the work of Peter Singer. Richard Branson has dyslexia so will therefore never write an academic paper (and uses ghost writers for all his Facebook and social media outreach) but he has nevertheless been hugely successful in impacting the real world in trying many things, failing quickly and building on his successes. That many of Richard’s initiatives could benefit from the application of evidence and reason is definitely true, but even without it his success is undeniable.
I would also highlight Ian Goldin’s book “The Butterfly Defect” in this regard. Ian Goldin is the Director of the Oxford Martin School of Future Studies of which the Future of Humanity Institute is a part. In the book he highlights the challenges of operating in a highly complex world, and the risks and challenges of trying to create complex theories and rules when all things are linked.
In his book he highlights a speech from Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability and member of the Financial Policy Committee “So what is the secret of the dog’s success? The answer, as in many other areas of complex decision-making, is simple. Or rather, it is to keep it simple. For studies have shown that the frisbee-catching dog follows the simplest of rules of thumb: run at a speed so that the angle of gaze to the frisbee remains roughly constant”—or to keep your eyes on the frisbee and go there—“Humans follow an identical rule of thumb.”
The Effective Altruism movement has the potential to become hugely influential if it can collectively understand the differences between the academic rational approach and the business rational approach and understand when and how to use each. However, as I have found it hard to understand the “base level coding” of the scientific approach I understand it will likely be challenging for those grounded in the academic approach to understand the “business rational” approach.
I realised the fundamental gap between business rational and academic rational when it was suggested by an EA I read Elizer Yodkowsky’s core sequences (in order to look at things “the right way”) - in particular “Map and Territory” and realised that in my business life I had mainly focussed really hard on studying the territory and spent only a very small amount of time trying to compose a map (nobody in effective businesses has lots of time for map making—you would be sacked for time wasting long before you had made a decent map). That this is step 1 of the core sequences shows that the difference in approach is really quite fundamental.
In terms of marketing and outreach (I use the two interchangeably) there are basic and effective processes for marketing something (here a movement that is trying to do the most good it can through the use of evidence and reason), which are well proven to succeed:
using market research to gain an insight how different groups of people view the world and different presentations of your proposition or product, testing for a variety of hypotheses on a well sampled and statistically signficant and representative sample group;
segment your market and create different approaches to each segment based on your understanding of what might work as identified in the market research;
“test marketing” those approaches, using the 4P marketing dimensions of product, price, place, promotion;
scaling up those that succeed and trying again with those that fail, learning what you can from those failures (you learn far more from your failures);
being open to alternative approaches to outreach and market as new evidence presents itself, and testing them in a controlled and objective fashion.
In all of this there is a focus on the goal of trying to outreach as effectively as possible, using the simple approach of the dog and the frisbee of just trying to do it, modifying the directions as necessary. Some lessons and thoughts can be learned along the way, but the main focus is to do, with learning from doing a spin off benefit.
To me the creation of a business rational based “evolutionary marketing and outreach ecosystem” in which different marketing and outreach approaches can be tried out will provide a compelling ROI to the Effective Altruism movement, that sits comfortably with its ethos. It will however probably require bringing different skill sets into the movement more along the “screw it lets do it” mentality—the challenge of course will be mutual respect which will require a genuine understanding for different approaches.
None of which is to say that highlighting the amount you give to others should not be attempted as a way to increase giving—it absolutely should. But many different things need to be attempted in a controlled fashion and the results widely shared, the collective successes built upon, and the collective failures learnt from.
That I will probably get zero karma points for writing this to me simply highlights the difficulty of the task!
This a great post. After 6 months being involved with effective altruism and discussing it with many people I feel confident that there is enormous potential for outreach and growth for the EA movement in the mainstream once it’s understood that altruism isn’t at the outset a strong motivator for most people when it comes to turning fine words into meaningful action. As the marketing industry understands parting people from their cash is most effectively achieved by focussing on subtle messaging around fear, status and happiness dependent on the particular target market. It is likely that people can be moved to a genuinely more alruistic mindset through time, but leading with this with ever increased persistence is akin to shouting at a Frenchman in English because he didn’t understand you the first time around.
From conversations with my peer group I think the mainstream will be most attracted by charities around existential risk (broadening this out into sustainability related issues), playing on well placed worries about the future, and extreme poverty alleviation given a rarely voiced unease that extreme global inequality is creating fertile ground for extremism, as well as getting involved in a strong community full of inspirational people where greater giving leads to higher status. The interest around a vegetarian lifestyle is probably most easily generated from the unsustainability of our current meat eating habits. My peer group seem to easily understand and be attracted to Givewell etc,, as “Gocompare for charities” as a way of ensuring their money goes the farthest but will not be so interested in getting into a highly academic debate around it—being more interested in more general discussions around a happier lifestyle. These initial thoughts (and others from whoever else is interested) requires a proper piece of market research to a properly representative group to validate and prioritise them—outreach can be conducted with as much evidence and reason as cause selection—which can be used to define market segmentation and definition of the marketing mix to the respective segments. As I have some knowledge in this area I am keen to create a project team on this and would love to hear from anybody who is interested in being involved.