What would also be interesting: Is there a sweetspot how much the money given to the women can be reduced while keeping the benefit of reduced deaths so costs go down and more persons can benefit.
Janika
Karma: 23
Menopause—a neglected cause area?
I observed social media communication of and about politics in general and I realize that there’s a big gap between what kind of communication works well with many voters and what kind of communication highly educated content creators usually tend to use.
There’s a lot of “communication in newspaper headline style”, making emotional points that feel intuitive for many and need an attention span of a few seconds. And then comes the fact checker, making a 3 minute video explaining why this headline-message has its flaws and what is problematic. When you are just scrolling with the current average attention span of 8,25 seconds (source: Microsoft study), you won’t even come to the overall message of video no 2 and it didn’t trigger any emotion causing you to react or share the content --> it won’t get spread and doesn’t reach many views.
So if we want to change the recognition of EA topics not only in more intellectual circles, but in a broad public, we have to adapt to these communication styles and create content for this target group, as this is the majority of voters. I don’t want to say there shouldn’t also be deep dive content, I think best is to have content (perhaps even on different channels) adjusted to different audiences and different levels of knowledge of the concepts for a broad reach.
How is this affecting the politicians? Public movements have an influence—and if a big enough group of voters is actively campaigning for certain actions, it puts pressure on the government. At some point, it is hard to ignore this. Ideally, we have action on the street and behind closed doors in parallel so the voices of the street deliver weight to the actions behind closed doors.
True, that social media frustration is very real for us as well. “Happy Christmas” and a picture with a friendly smile has more interactions than the new release we worked on for months and years or a more philosophical post. Feels completely stupid. If we would just constantely post bikini pictures of our female band members, we would definitely rise more attention. But we would also have a way lower/different connection to our followers. I think one shouldn’t just look at the numbers, but also how much is just social media noise and how much is a meaningful connection. How many people did you really touch and influence. In the end, those have a way higher value for the overall mission. Nevertheless, reach is a problem—when the meaningful content drowns in the noise, it is harder to reach the people. When paid ads are the only medicine to cut through, it binds ressources—and, in addition, companies also optimise your ad possibilities to their advantage. E.G. META used to have the possibility to cap how often one person gets the same ad and silently removed the function at some point because it resulted in ads that couldn’t be delivered when your targeting was narrow. As a result, you now pay for one person getting your ad 20 times in that scenario. Also filters don’t always work as you expect it—otherwise I can’t explain that band members get the ads delivered despite the configuration not to deliver to page followers or, my absolute favourite, me getting delivered my own ad and getting charged for it.
Edit says: You asked for a video of the song, the music you find on any streaming platform, I link you the website as the lyrics are there as well: https://molllust.com/music/2015-in-deep-waters/ (Number in a Cage)
Video: I realized that videos are only online from the acoustic version where acting is way less (especially due to me playing the piano all the time instead of running around on stage), but I found a small excerpt live in a best off-video of a show, I linked the time stamp:
Thank you! Very interesting to read. However, what can we do to get the good ideas from paper to reality? I feel frustrated from just piling up knowledge, walking miles and miles at demonstrations, signing petitions and hoping for someone to change sth. This feels incredibly ineffective. I see that patiently working on spreading knowledge and visibility does have an effect, but for many lifes that could be safed this is waaaay to slow.
Of course, revolutions are often a shortcut to change, but they come with huge suffering, and peaceful activism doesn’t build enough urge for those in power to really change sth. So many activists and initatives gave up because they were investing time and money again and again and their achievements were small. So I am searching for the “weak spot” in the system to empower and accelerate change.
Is living in a simulation the only possibility to minimize suffering?
I can totally understand your feelings. I am a musician and with my songs, I try to point on these problems and reach people from the emotional side as well.
Staying in the animal welfare world, I want to share some experiences with my song “Number in a Cage”. The song is about a female chick that experiences the first hours of life, witnessing her brother to get shreddered. When we play the song on stage, I am acting what this little chick experiences and my whole band acts mechanical as the factory surrounding.
Audience reactions are very diverse.
1) people who come to me after the show saying “Finally someone who understands that and points it out. I guess you are vegan as well?”—so those that feel seen.
2) people have trouble to digest the song. We often experienced people not clapping immediately after the song and trying to process what they just have seen. If things go well, they reflect and take sth out of it. If things go bad, they push it away and just continue their lives as if never been confronted with that.
3) people who avoid us due to our not so easy to stomach-songs. The worst was a concert where people became completely icy after that song towards us and when we continued with a song about tolerance and not letting refugees drown in the Mediteranean Sea you could feel the atmosphere was kind of hostile. We didn’t sell a single merch item that night.
4) people who don’t get it at all and just find the playful chick-motive funny, happily dancing around.
For us, this led to discussions on which concerts we could play which songs without being so confrontational that we loose the audience completely. It is a serious problem. Both lyric-and musicwise, I want to be progressive, not just walk the “easy to stomach, easy message, easy, catchy hooks”-way. But if you are so out of the box for most of the possible audience, the reach is super low. Only to reach group 1 (and musically group 4) audience is nice for giving them hope and feel seen, but not the goal of writing such lyrics. I want people to think about the issue who aren’t on that path yet. But to create the group 2-environment and not loosing too much to group 3 feels like a hard to hit balanace.
In addition, I often feel kind of desperate. I am doing the poisonous comparison to the reach of easy to stomach-songs vs my art. Even the comparison inbetween my songs—our love song always is spotify algorithms darling while those that feel really relevant to me have a way poorer reach. So it feels to me like: Do my thoughts and my art really have a resonance, a space here? Is it trying to move windmills with my breath? Is it kind of self-punishment to stay with my messages and believes, as I keep myself from more career success with restricting my audience? So I am in a constant back and forth between a fighting and a desperate spirit.
I composed several songs with topics of the EA-cosmos for my band molllust. So if you are into symphonic metal, perhaps some of them might be interesting for you. You can find them on all standard streaming platforms and all lyrics/music are on the Website: https://molllust.com/music/
Mother Universe:
Mars—The Game is Over, Pluto—The Raven’s Lullaby (Anti-War)
Neptune—Wrath of the Sea (Anti-Specism, Anti-Pollution)
Jupiter—When Divine Winds Rage (climate change)
In Deep Waters:
Voices of the Dead, Paradise on Earth, Spring (Movement building, changing the world to a better place)
Paradis Perdu (pollution, changing the world to a better place)
Number in a Cage (animal rights: anti-chicken shredding)
Traumwelt (changing the world to a better place)
Bach con fuoco:
Ave (changing the world to a better place)
I think those are the most EA-related songs, though more deal with current problems in the world.
Thank you! I also now this initative: https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/ Unfortunately, they failed to collect enough signatures to force the EU to debate it.
But as the equal right movement, the initatives try to achieve the tax via the current governments.
The Club ob Rome also suggests (among lot of other huge changes) to use taxes in order to reduce the inequality and to stabilize society in their “Earth for all”-publication. But they also point out that many progressive decisions will be hard to achieve with the current structures, as those benefiting will use their influence and money to work against it and therefore also encourage e.g. grassroot movements in order to support the ideas.
This is why I am explicitely searching for alternative ways to work on that issue.
[Question] Global tax and global government institution to redistribute the money for the most good—achievable?
[Question] Is there a space to discuss and develop project ideas and find collaboration partners?
Is it also possible to read the materials for the sessions without participating? I guess this could also help many people—at least more than not having any access to that kind of information at all.
Came up to this post while wondering why I never saw an add of effective altruism or organisations being part of it, despite FB obviously generated me as interested person in ecological problems, animal welfare and climate change etc, as I very frequently receive ads from diverse charity organisations of that field. Part of the question was answered when I read from the 80000 hours targeting—I am female, live in a country that doesn’t have English as native language and I am older (39) than their usual target audience and not a tech nerd (definitely a nerd and science interested though, as I stumbled across the community via YouTube influencer advertisement in a science video). Nevertheless, I could imagine that despite career advice is less pressing for most people of my age, donating could especially work better when people already have a stable income and the family and job situation settled? When I quick checked the fb sides of giving what you can, effective altruism, give well and 80000 hours fb transperency just told me there were no ads running. I wouldn’t call myself a marketing expert, but as a musician, I constantely have to work with ads to grow my reach and it definitely brings results. How successful a fb/insta/youtube advertisement is, is also highly dependent how you build your campaign and how your creative (the ad itself) looks. Usually split testing helps to narrow down what’s working best and different types of campaigns work differently well depending on the time the algorithm could learn which targets work best. Also I have to correct the error that video ads aren’t possible at fb/insta. And the error that layering on insta ads isn’t possible. Be aware that you have completely different options if you just boost a post or create campaigns in the ads manager. The post boost is more the “ads for beginners” option that makes it easy to create ads but with the price of loosing many options.
Hey Felix, sure. This is the YouTube channel of my band: https://youtube.com/@molllust You find the band on the common streaming services as well. How I can get involved in EA is exactly the question I am asking myself. Until now, I tried to raise awareness about pressing problems with my songs and worked on my own lifestyle (going vegan, reducing foodwaste with actively being part of foodsharing, avoiding emissions on personal travels with going almost everywhere by bike or rarely public transport, signed petitions, went to demonstrations) and informed myself about models how to shape the world in the future. I found e.g. “Earth for all” from the Club of Rome quite inspiring. But this all feels too few for me and so I am on search how to improve my impact. I think I have at least some reach as an artist. So I am thinking about how I can inspire the audience, as I think just speaking of problems is just unconfortable for many, but presenting solutions could make it easier for people to do good. Then I am trying to figure out if I can help to solve the problems I named in my first post—but this would only work with connections and a team, which I both don’t have. Therefore I was thinking I have to start seaching somewhere and this could be a good place for that. I know that it is seen a bit critical here to improve science globally, but I think it would be possible to tackle the biggest sorrow—one could rank scientific studies after a scale from “highly beneficial for humanity and Earth” to “highly dangerous for humanity/Earth” and just grant access to different groups of people (all vs. very small circle) to results and connect results depending on the ranking. In addition, a platform as I imagine couldn’t get online from one day to the next with all possible publications anyway, so one could classify the studies first and then working from highest to least beneficial and therefore giving the beneficial topics an extra headstart. The third thing I wrap my mind around is: After we just very recently finally have a study with a quite complete status of Earth’s health, wouldn’t it be possible to build a meta-organisation that raises money in Crowdfundings to directly elliminate the biggest problems with concrete projects, in the order how pressing they are regarding the tipping points? E.g. identify the most inefficient and dirty power plant of the world and replace it? Fund a specific scientific project to get the aircraft fuel problem solved? Help farmers change to organic agriculture in an area with exceptional high poisoning of water through herbicites and fertilizers? Just to mention a few ideas. I think it’s easier to motivate people with small chunks of highly effective projects where the personal impact is way easier to see than just a big fond where you don’t even know what exactly your money is taken for. Perhaps one could even engage the people in a community voting between different similiar impactful solutions what to do first. But also here it is at the moment just an idea and I would enjoy finding people to wrap the mind around as well and if it seems a realistic option to start sth. together.
Hey!
Just registered myself here and wanted to quickly introduce myself. I am a classical trained soprano touring with two symphonic metal bands, one (the smaller) of them is my personal “baby” I composed 3 albums and an EP for. My main area is my homeland Germany, but I gave concerts in many European countries, South- and Latin America, in the Caribean Sea, in Turkey, in China and Taiwan. My main occupation is my own band, since I am doing also the work behind the scenes—marketing, booking, organising everything, taxes… I am teaching singing and piano and doing haunted tours as side jobs to make ends meet, since art, especially if you are not mainstream, doesn’t pay the bills despite an immense workload—I usually work 6-7 days a week and rarely less then 10 hours per day, often more.
I started my career with studying communication and media and also made my magister degree (similiar to master, just the older German academic system) and got my professional musical education in parallel (basically, I did music aside from school already as small child). I focused in my studies on TV journalism and media paedagogic, also did some internships at some TV stations—where basically everybody told me: If you can, do sth else, working circumstances are getting worse and worse here. And since I really loved music, I focussed on that. Now, 39 years old, I feel like I exchanged one industry with catastrophic work conditions against an even worse one and I feel kind of a lack of sense in my life.
What makes it even worse, I ask myself if, regarding the pressing problems humanity is facing right now, I should use my personal ressources for art. Even worse, the more I advance in my career, the more I am busy with 1001 jobs around the art that annoy me and that feel completely wrong. Example: You don’t get your music promoted if you don’t spend money on paid ads in social media and guiding people to streaming platforms, but at the same time, these structures are exploiting artists, especially independent artists that are not willing to shape their music in behalf of best selling instead of best artistry. So it would feel way better for me to work on structures that improve the situation instead of feeding the devil with my ressources. In addition, my job gets threatened by AI and generated music. E.G. Deezer is just teaming up with label managers from huge major artists (those, that are the commercial big fishes) in order to rank down all musical tracks in payment (that’s already a nightmare now) under a certain amount of listeners, officially to protect again generated music. As a result, they basically rank down all small or niche artists on the level of white noise (so basically I get paid the same for a professional production that involved almost 40 musicians, a professional producer and several years of work as if I had recorded my running vaccuum cleaner and uploaded the sound file), shifting the shares of the small ones to the big labels.
But it is not only a lack of structures for fair spread and payment of art online that make me worry in my field of expertise, but also the power of misused AI in combination with good marketing skills. You can manipulate already now public opinion and sometimes also people in leader positions quite well, but you don’t have to be a prophet to see the danger on the near horizon to drown the truth in science with a spiderweb of fake studies, easily generated and spread with AI and bots. Combined with fake proofs of reality (AI generated videos and pictures, AI generated voices), there is a huge risk we completely loose track of reality and truth. While, at the same time, journalists are under immense pressure for output, as their earnings went down with the internet as well and deep research often is too expensive, therefore it’s easier to quickly spread news they get from press agencies and they are under pressure to make content that is clicked a lot, which usually works best with click bait titles and provocing/shocking themes. And I strongly wish to do sth. against all that mess.
In my opinion, we need a global safe space of information, science and art, that respects the preferences of media use of people to be broadly used and gives the creators an income safety net and fair equal opportunities to publish (no matter who they are) as long as they fullfill the standards of different categories. I developed quite some ideas for that, this is a super rough presentation of the idea, but I am unsure how to get such a huge project running and quite sure I will need a bigger amount of allies in order to have a chance to successfully get sth. from scratch board to reality (besides the fact that I don’t consider myself as perfect super human and therefore I am convinced that more heads wrapping around the matter and scientific comparison of different approaches is needed to create a system that’s as effective and fair as possible). That’s (besides that I am also deeply worried about many other pressing problems, but where I don’t feel such a strong personal fit) how I ended up here.
I feel like I would love to write a lot more, but for a quick introduction I already created a novel. ;-)
I wouldn’t have written the post if the expected outcome of a woman going to her doctor with (peri)menopause syndroms is to get treatment.
The experience of many women also in higher-income countries is more like this:
Due to a lack of education, the woman doesn’t link her individual symptomes to menopause. Therefore she goes to her standard doctor.
Due to a lack of education, the standard doctor doesn’t link the symptomes to menopause and sends the woman to a specialist.
The specialist treats the symptome, but not the cause, or understands the link and there isn’t necessarily a good therapy existing due to a lack of studies and medical development.
The findings of a greek study point out the worldwide huge lacks in the healthcare system:
”Overall, training on menopause management is profoundly inadequate even nowadays. Menopause management requires theoretical education and clinical experience for the optimal management of menopause-related issues. Although menopause education is included in some medical and specialty training curricula, physicians are not adequately trained to provide the standard of care to women transitioning to menopause.” Link
Besides, only because EA women are younger nowadays doesn’t mean they will stay young forever.
Concerning Give Well—I didn’t find anything about that topic there. But on an earlier research, I already wondered what about period poverty, as many girls miss classes or completely stop to attend school because they don’t have any products to deal with their period and I couldn’t find a single reviewed program about that topic. So perhaps women’s health is a bit of a blind spot in general?