the data you have is way way too weak to draw any meaningful conclusion. You really should just stick with your priors here until you have much more data.
This. (Stressing it as an epistemic principle that’s under-applied within EA.)
Tom_Ash
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Meetup : Secular solstices around the world
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I can connect you with .impact, etc.
People can also get in touch with .impact directly, by posting to the whole community in its Facebook group (or, if preferred, Slack channel—or if they prefer to email someone privately, they can contact Ben Clifford on imbenclifford@gmail.com ).
Many fundraisers don’t have access to a bunch of semi-EAs
(...who wouldn’t be donating the same amount anyway.)
And yes, this appears to be true.
it’s possible semi-EAs might go more for REG or other weird charities than others.
It seems quite likely, absent further evidence.
I agree that the drop-off is likely not that high.
Likewise, I think we’d need further evidence to say that.
Hey Squark, there’s a guide to using it (and other features of the forum) at http://bit.ly/1OHRd1X . As it explains, the effect is that you get a little
link to it next to your username when you comment or post.When you tried entering your LessWrong profile you should have got the warning below about other links not working. If that didn’t happen, can you tell me what browser and OS (Mac, Linux, etc.) you’re using? Thanks!
Not really, but I’m happy for high value questions which others can’t answer to be referred to me. :)
The wiki has some partial pointers on this.
I advised a wealthy donor with a complex tax situation on the most tax-efficient ways to give—it’s worth looking out for opportunities to do so, as they can be incredibly easy ways to get a few extra % of their donation to effective charities! (Or they could even affect the whole donation, if tax-efficiency affects where they donate.)
I’ll find this useful for planning and evaluation. (And that’s not a conclusion I came to instantly; it took a couple of months of looking at the alpha versions that Ozzie’s been sharing widely on the EA projects Slack. So I’d recommend taking some time to think about uses you could put Guesstimate to, and keeping it in the back of your head!)
To clarify, I wasn’t saying that was necessary, or worth the time. :) Your flag that it was a cross-post does the job, perhaps with an explicit mention that this is “aimed at a different audience”, etc.
[Aside]
“I heard from a prominent EA recently about her showing my Huffington Post to her mom, and her mom—not an EA—donating to the Effective Altruism Foundation as a result.”
That’s striking, and it’d be useful to hear more details, when you (or the other person) have time.
Yeah, to excite a popular audience so some small fraction start looking into EA, a bit of poetic license could be appropriate. ‘Explosive’ is a term you can stretch pretty far. If I were writing an academic paper, I’d say “A movement called EA is undergoing a steady, moderate growth!” But you weren’t doing that; you just happened to cross-post here, where there’s no perceived need to big up EA, and for good or ill people often apply academic-style standards.
True. Of course, some people are confident that helping the global poor is positive overall, so can be straightforwardly concerned about the PR problem.
Instead of “the most good you can do”, a better message for some audiences may be “expanding the circle of compassion”.
If anyone tests this, it’d be interesting if they reported back here, sharing how it goes.
A possible response to such people is to ask (or, better, elucidate) how much more they value other lives relative to the lives of those who AMF or SCI save or help, and to then see if donating to AMF or SCI still does more good according to their non-cosmopolitan values.
PS: I also started a Facebook discussion for those who engage more there: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dotimpact/permalink/528090784025243/
Yes, it’s definitely a matter of striking the right balance. Well chosen downvotes have value, and losing some of them would be a cost.
I agree. (And, separately, I upvoted because I thought this was a useful comment.)
However, I’d be interested in hearing weaker variants of norms like ‘downvoting requires comment’, as the status quo seems to me to involve a little too much downvoting alongside too little useful critical engagement with the content of downvoted posts or comments.
That’s strikingly successful! Can you say a little more about these people and why they were so unusually receptive? Did they fit into groups of people typically receptive to EA? What was their attitude to charity before? What sort of contact did you have with the journalists and artist?
Can you expand on these results?