Once you start trying to appeal to “emotionally-oriented” thinkers (what a euphemism), you start bringing them into your group. Once you bring them into your group, they start participating in creating your group policy. Once they start participating in creating your group policy—you stop being effective, because they don’t care about effective, and they outnumber you.
Don’t court the Iron Law of Oligarchy so directly. Keep your focus on your organization’s purpose, rather than your organization. It will last slightly longer that way.
...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Once you bring them into your group, they start participating in creating your group policy.
What exactly is the “group” here, and how exactly will they “participate in the policy”? Are we going to put the emotionally oriented people into research positions at GiveWell? Or do you believe the risk is that at some moment they will say “fuck GiveWell, let’s donate to the Cute Puppies Foundation instead”?
The latter seems like a real risk to me, the former doesn’t.
The issue is that the “We” you reference is going to change. And it will be, step by step, a series of positive moves, all culminating in a collapse of everything you care about. First, to court the new, “emotionally oriented” members of EA, you start hiring better marketers. Executives give way to industry-proven fundraisers. At every step, you get more effective at your purpose—and at each step, your purpose changes slightly. Until Effective Altruism becomes yet another Effective Fundraiser—and then, yes, people are put into research positions based on their ability to improve fundraising, rather than their ability to research charitable efforts.
All organizations are doomed, and that part will happen regardless. It’s just a matter of timing.
Agreed that putting emotionally-oriented people into research positions would be a risk, but let’s be honest, they won’t want to go there.
Regarding the second point, the whole goal of the post I was making above is to appeal to people’s emotions to cause them to care about effectiveness.
The more emotionally-oriented people will not be good at determining effectiveness. But if we can get them to care about effectiveness, not cute puppies, that’s where we can make a huge difference in their spending decisions. They would be highly unlikely to become leaders within EA, but their donations can then be powerfully shaped by EA recommendations
I hear your concern about bringing more emotionally-oriented people into leadership positions. However, I am not at all convinced by the point of them not caring about being effective. The whole point I was making above is to appeal to people’s emotions to cause them to care about effectiveness.
The more emotionally-oriented people will not be good at determining effectiveness. But if we can get them to care about effectiveness, not cute puppies, that’s where we can make a huge difference in their spending decisions. They would be highly unlikely to become leaders within EA, but their donations can then be powerfully shaped by EA recommendations
They are highly likely to become leaders within EA, because your advertising is based on appealing to social status, and people who can be appealed to on that basis are better at social status games than you are. You assume your intelligence puts you at an advantage; you’re, bluntly, horribly wrong. Charisma is not a dump stat.
I agree that charisma is important, but within the EA movement in particular, you won’t get far without intelligence. Intelligence is a necessary qualifier for leadership in EA, in other words.
I have a pretty strong confidence level on that one. I’m ready to make a $100 bet that if you ask EA people whether intelligence is a necessary qualifier for leadership in the EA movement, 9 out of 10 will say yes. Want to take me up on this?
Within the current EA movement, or within the EA movement you propose to create by filling your ranks with people who don’t share your culture or values?
I don’t think you understand how bets work in staking out certainty, but $100 against $100 implies your certainty that you won’t destroy the EA movement is ~50%.
And he’ll find little disagreement from me over what the current group of EA members will say, which says nothing at all about what the group of EA members -after- a successful advertising campaign aimed at increasing membership substantially will say, and at which point the EA movement is, by my view, effectively destroyed, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
My certainty is against your claim of emotionally oriented people becoming EA leaders, not the destruction of the EA movement. Please avoid shifting goalposts :-) So taking the bet, or taking back your claim?
My unwillingness to accept a strawman in place of the positions I have actually stated does not constitute shifting goalposts. But that’s irrelevant, compared to the larger mistake you’re making, in trying to utilize this technique.
A lesson in Dark Arts: I am Nobody. I could delete this account right now, start over from scratch, and lose nothing but some karma points I don’t care about. You, however, are a Somebody. Your account is linked to your identity. Anybody who cares to know who you are, can know who you are. Anybody who already knows who you are can find out what you say here.
As a Somebody, you have credibility. As a Nobody, I have none. So in a war of discrediting—you discredit me, I discredit you—I lose nothing. What do you lose?
Your identify gives you credibility. But it also gives you something to lose. My lack of identity means any credit I gain or lose here is totally meaningless. But it means I have nothing to lose. That means that our credibility disparity is precisely mirrored by a power disparity; one in your favor, the other in mine. But the credibility disparity lasts only until you let yourself be mired in credibility-destroying tactics.
You really shouldn’t engage anybody, much less me, in a Dark Arts competition. Indeed, it’s vaguely foolish of you to have admitted to the practice of Dark Arts in the first place.
I agree that I have something significant to lose, as my account is tied to my public identity.
However, I do not share your belief that me having acknowledged engaging in Dark Arts is foolish. I am comfortable with being publicly identified as someone who is comfortable with using light forms of Dark Arts, stuff that Less Wrongers generally do not perceive as crossing into real Dark Arts, to promote rationality and Effective Altruism. In fact, I explored this question in a Less Wrong discussion post earlier. I want to be open and transparent, to help myself and Intentional Insights make good decisions and update beliefs.
I agree that emotionally-oriented people are not automatically stupid, my point was about what EAs value. If an emotionally-oriented person happens to be also intelligent, then that has certain benefits for the EA movement, of course.
I have a strong probabilistic estimate that there are currently a substantial number of people in the EA movement who care about status games. I’m willing to take a bet on that.
When it comes to straight money donations their origin doesn’t matter. When it comes to people who actually want to spend time being involved “in the community” their background matters.
This is a good point. Perhaps an alternative target audience to “emotionally oriented donars” would be “Geeks”. Currently, EA is heavily focused on the Nerd demographic. However, I don’t see any major problems with branching out from scientists to science fans. There are plenty of people who would endorse and encourage effectiveness in charities, even if they suck at math. If EA became 99.9% non-math people, it would obviously be difficult maintain a number crunching focus on effectiveness. However this seems unlikely, and compared to recruiting “emotionally-oriented” newbies it seems like there would be much less risk of losing our core values.
Maybe “Better Giving Through SCIENCE!” would make a better slogan than “Be A Superdonor”? I’ve only given this a few minutes of thought, so feel free to improve on or correct any of these ideas.
I think orienting toward geeks would be good, but insufficient. The whole point I was making above is to appeal to people’s emotions to cause them to care about effectiveness. The more emotionally-oriented people will not be good at determining effectiveness. But if we can get them to care about effectiveness, not cute puppies, that’s where we can make a huge difference in their spending decisions. They would be highly unlikely to become leaders within EA, but their donations can then be powerfully shaped by EA recommendations
I’m not sure that there are many people who are exclusively “emotionally-oriented”—or “analytically-oriented”, for that matter. Rather, the idea is that by appealing to both the “head” and the “heart” we can convey a fuller message about EA, and that this will amplify our reach among people who otherwise might not know about it or take it seriously.
Sure, but that’s a spectrum too. I don’t know of many people who are so vulnerable to the “dark arts” that the “head” would play no role in their decisions. EA will always appeal to the most analytical, that’s a given—but if you want to broaden your reach you need to make the effort.
I was being a little excessive in the post by using that term. I wouldn’t necessarily call them stupid, just not well educated and savvy. If we can shape them in the right direction, and get them to care about effectiveness, it would be a huge boon to the EA movement and put a lot of money into effective charities. Thus, we can be agentive about meeting our goals.
If we can shape them in the right direction, and get them to care about effectiveness, it would be a huge boon to the EA movement and put a lot of money into effective charities.
As you said in the OP, “we leave huge sums of money on the table”. Shaping people so that you could get at their money easier is what marketing scum does.
Of course, that shouldn’t bother dedicated consequentialists, should it? :-/
As you said in the OP, “we leave huge sums of money on the table”. Shaping people so that you could get at their money easier is what marketing scum does.
I think that’s a bit of an extreme way to put it… people who are emotionally driven see emotional appeals as the proper way to convince people. “You think too much” and ” sometimes you just have to go with your gut” is an inherently appealing thing to them—regardless of intelligence levels.
Essentially, they WANT emotional appeals like this one—I saw several emotionally driven (and smart) friends who shared this commercial and basically said (I’m translating now) “It’s nice to see an emotional appeal that actually has a good message/purpose”.
That’s what effective altruism can offer, marketing that has a good message and leads to good outcomes. Convincing people by logic is no more “inherently good” than convincing people by emotion (at least, I haven’t seen anyone provide a convincing proof of either’s inherent goodness or badness), it just depends on their preferred method of thinking.
people who are emotionally driven see emotional appeals as the proper way to convince people
But why would “emotionally driven” people be interested in EA? It doesn’t offer them the required emotional appeal (note: I’m talking about EA activities, not EA marketing). If the marketing promises them rescuing cute puppies in distress, EA won’t be able to deliver. And even if such people stick around, OrphanWilde’s considerations come into play: these people have different goals and different culture, recruit enough of them and they’ll take over.
Essentially, they WANT emotional appeal
People WANT to be on the receiving end of advertising for unknown to them charity? Not anyone I know, but sure, mankind is very diverse… :-/
Besides, are you quite sure you want to compete on the emotional-appeal basis? You become a very small fish in a big pond with some pretty large megalodons swimming around. I don’t doubt that the Sierra Club, Susan G. Komen, and ASPCA will handily beat you in the cuteness sweepstakes (not to mention advertising budgets). What’s your edge?
But why would “emotionally driven” people be interested in EA? It doesn’t offer them the required emotional appeal (note: I’m talking about EA activities, not EA marketing). If the marketing promises them rescuing cute puppies in distress, EA won’t be able to deliver.
Well, it depends on what you’re advertising. If you’re advertising deworming you talk about the suffering of children in these countries and you show some heartbreaking images (I’m being deliberately vague here, but you get the idea.
If you’re advertising animal welfare, then yes, you can show cute puppies.
Besides, are you quite sure you want to compete on the emotional-appeal basis? You become a very small fish in a big pond with some pretty large megalodons swimming around.
You wouldn’t consider “people who are emotionally driven” as a target market. That’s far too big a market for a small movement like EA (probably containing somewhere between 40%-95% of the global population). Instead, you would start out with a smaller market that you expect contains many emotionally driven people. You move to the bigger ponds once you have the capital to compete in them.
That’s what effective altruism can offer, marketing that has a good message and leads to good outcomes. Convincing people by logic is no more “inherently good” than convincing people by emotion (at least, I haven’t seen anyone provide a convincing proof of either’s inherent goodness or badness), it just depends on their preferred method of thinking.
That’s not what the original poster is proposing, however. The original poster is proposing convincing people, through social status bonuses, to donate money. The original poster isn’t proposing appealing to people’s better natures, but through encouraging their baser natures.
That’s where the morality enters into it, I believe.
Using the term marketing scum is a bit pejorative, I hope we can agree on that :-) Let’s avoid emotionally-loaded terms when having rational discourse—I suggest tabooing that term.
Regardless of the term used, yes, I am a dedicated consequentialist, and my goal is to get people to care about effective giving, to avoid leaving huge sums on the table.
Wait. Is your goal to get people to care about effective giving, or is your goal to get people to give effectively? “to avoid leaving huge sums on the table” implies the latter.
This question seems to be the crux of the discussion. Whether EA as a movement has an important identity and mission that’s not just “improve the measured state of being of many people on a relatively short timeframe”.
My goal is to get people to care about effective giving. This will then lead to people giving effectively. However, the first is the goal I am pursuing most directly.
Rather, the idea is that by appealing to both the “head” and the “heart” we can convey a fuller message about EA, and that this will amplify our reach among people who otherwise might not know about it or take it seriously.
Coddletrop. This post is talking about dark arts, about bypassing the head entirely. “Superdonor” indeed.
I agree that OP was leaning a bit heavy on the advertising methods, and that advertising is almost 100% appeal to emotion. However, I’m not sure that 0% emotional content is quite right either. (For reasons besides argument to moderation.) Occasionally it is necessary to ground things in emotion, to some degree. If I were to argue that dust specs in 3^^^3 people’s eyes is a huge amount of suffering, I’d likely wind up appealing to empathy for that vastly huge unfathomable amount of suffering. The argument relies almost exclusively on logic, but the emotional content drives the point home.
However, maybe a more concrete example of the sorts of methods EAs might employ will make it clearer whether or not they are a good idea. If we do decide to use some emotional content, this seems to be an effective science-based way to do it: http://blog.ncase.me/the-science-of-social-change/
Aside from just outlining some methods, the author deals briefly with the ethics. They note that children who read George Washington’s Cherry Tree were inspired to be more truthful, while the threats implicit in Pinocchio and Boy Who Cried Wolf didn’t motivate them to lie less than the control group. I have no moral problem with showing someone a good role model, and setting a good example, even if that evokes emotions which influence their decisions. That’s still similar to an appeal to emotion, although the Aristotelian scheme the author mentions would classify it as Ethos rather than Pathos. I’m not sure I’d classify it under Dark Arts. (This feels like it could quickly turn into a confusing mess of different definitions for terms. My only claim is that this is a counterexample, where a small non-rational component of a message seems to be permissible.)
It seems worth noting that EAs are already doing this, to some degree. Here are a couple EA and LW superheroes, off of the top of my head:
Stanislav Petrov day was celebrated here a bit over a month ago, although there are others who arguably averted closer cold war near-misses, but on days less convenient to make a holiday out of.
One could argue that we should only discuss these sorts of people purely for how their stories inform the present. However, if their stories have an aspirational impact, then it seems reasonable to share that. I’d have a big problem if EA turned into a click-maximizing advertising campaign, or launched infomercials. I agree with you there. There are some techniques which we definitely shouldn’t employ. But some methods besides pure reason legitimately do seem advisable. But guilting someone out of pocket change is significantly different from acquiring new members by encouraging them to aspire to something, and then giving them the tools to work toward that common goal. It’s not all framing.
The issue with advertising isn’t just the ethics. Set the ethics of advertising aside. The issue with advertising is that you’re bringing people in on the basis of something other than Effective Altruism.
How many new people could EA successfully culturally inculcate each month? Because that’s the maximum number of people you should be successfully reaching each month. EA is fundamentally a rationalist culture; if you introduce non-rationalists faster than you can teach them rationalism, you are destroying your own culture.
I very much agree. My post was leaning more toward the heart to go against the mainstream. There are plenty of tactics I would not endorse. We shouldn’t lie to people, or tell them that Jesus will cry if they don’t give to effective charities. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge and be ok with using some moderate dark arts to promote rationality and effective altruism. If we can motivate people to engage with the EA movement and put their money toward effective charities by getting them to truly care about effective donations, I think that is a quite justifiable use of moderate dark arts. We can be agentive about meeting our goals.
This post is talking about dark arts, about bypassing the head entirely.
Guess what, that’s what the ‘heart’ responds to. It doesn’t mean you can’t appeal to the head too, it’s just saying that a mixed message won’t work very well. The appeals do have to be largely distinct, albeit they would probably work best if presented together.
Emotions are not in opposition to rationality, and you do not have to bypass rational processes in order to reach the heart. That is the flawed presumption underlying the Spock mentality.
Emotions are not in opposition to rationality, and you do not have to bypass rational processes in order to reach the heart.
This is very true. You only need to bypass the head if you want to sabotage the rational process and manipulate people into something their head would have rejected.
The Spock mentality is about personal decision making, not communication or even influence. The notion that ‘reaching’ System 1 is not something you can do with ordinary, factual communication is quite widely accepted. Even some recent CFAR materials—with their goal factoring approach—are clearly based on this principle.
I think I was clear that we should still use the current EA tactics of appealing to the head, but enrich them by appealing to the heart, to emotions. I think it’s important to acknowledge and be ok with using some moderate dark arts to promote rationality and effective altruism. If we can motivate people to engage with the EA movement and put their money toward effective charities by getting them to truly care about effective donations, I think that is a quite justifiable use of moderate dark arts.
First, emotions != dark arts, or EA would be meaningless as an enterprise.
Second, you’re not getting anybody to care about effective donations, you’re getting them to care about the social status they would attain by being a part of your organization. People who care about social status in this way are going to want more, and they’re better at it than you are. You will lose control.
Sure, emotions = dark arts, but there are shades of darkness, I think we can all agree on that. For example, the statement “emotions != dark arts” relies on a certain emotional tonality to the word “dark arts.”
I’m getting people to care about social status to the extent that they care about effective donations. There is nothing about Intentional Insights itself that they should care about, the organization is just a tool to get them to care about effective giving. The key is to tie people’s caring to effective giving :-)
Sure, emotions = dark arts, but there are shades of darkness, I think we can all agree on that.
No. We can’t. Emotions != dark arts. I say that as somebody who killed his emotions and experienced an emotion-free existence for over a decade in the pursuit of pure rationality. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
the statement “emotions != dark arts” relies on a certain emotional tonality to the word “dark arts.”
No, it does not. It is a statement that there are ways of interacting with emotions that are non-manipulative. Emotions are not in opposition to rationality, and indeed are necessary to it. Emotions are the fundamental drive to our purpose; rationality is fundamentally instrumental. Emotions tell us what we should achieve; rationality tells us how. What makes your approach “dark arts” is that you seek to make people achieve something different from the achievement you are appealing to in them.
I’m getting people to care about social status to the extent that they care about effective donations. There is nothing about Intentional Insights itself that they should care about, the organization is just a tool to get them to care about effective giving. The key is to tie people’s caring to effective giving :-)
You lure people in with one goal, and hope to change the goal they pursue. Have a notion of your own human fallibility, and consider what will happen if you fail. They won’t leave. They will take over, and remake your shining institution in their own image.
Because if you do possess the ability to change people’s goals, you should start there. Convince people that Effective Altruism is worth doing for its own sake. If you can manage that, you don’t need the dark arts in the first place. If you need the dark arts, then you can’t do what you’d need to be able to do to make the results favorable, and shouldn’t use them.
I accept that you believe you killed your emotions. However, I think statements like “you have no idea what you are talking about” indicate a presence of emotions, as that’s a pretty extreme statement. So I think it might be best to avoid further continuing this discussion.
OrphanWilde has told his emotion-killing story elsewhere on LW, and isn’t claiming to have no emotions now but to have spent some time in the past without emotions (having deliberately got rid of them) and found the results very unsatisfactory.
Whether that makes any difference to your willingness to continue the conversation is of course up to you.
If you do possess the ability to change people’s goals, you should start there. Convince people that Effective Altruism is worth doing for its own sake. If you can manage that, you don’t need the dark arts in the first place. If you need the dark arts, then you can’t do what you’d need to be able to do to make the results favorable, and shouldn’t use them.
Yup, agreed that no one is exclusively emotional or analytical—this is a spectrum.
and I made sure in the post above to emphasize that we should keep the current EA outreach oriented toward the head, but also enrich it with an orientation toward the heart. Let’s be real, people who are really emotionally oriented will still not care much about EA. But we can reach much further on the spectrum of the analytical/emotional toward emotional than we are currently doing.
Once you start trying to appeal to “emotionally-oriented” thinkers (what a euphemism), you start bringing them into your group. Once you bring them into your group, they start participating in creating your group policy. Once they start participating in creating your group policy—you stop being effective, because they don’t care about effective, and they outnumber you.
Don’t court the Iron Law of Oligarchy so directly. Keep your focus on your organization’s purpose, rather than your organization. It will last slightly longer that way.
Do you mean the Iron Law of Bureaucracy?
So I did, yes. I suspect I’ve mixed those mentally more than once.
What exactly is the “group” here, and how exactly will they “participate in the policy”? Are we going to put the emotionally oriented people into research positions at GiveWell? Or do you believe the risk is that at some moment they will say “fuck GiveWell, let’s donate to the Cute Puppies Foundation instead”?
The latter seems like a real risk to me, the former doesn’t.
The latter is a part of the risk.
But yes, the former is a part of the risk too.
The issue is that the “We” you reference is going to change. And it will be, step by step, a series of positive moves, all culminating in a collapse of everything you care about. First, to court the new, “emotionally oriented” members of EA, you start hiring better marketers. Executives give way to industry-proven fundraisers. At every step, you get more effective at your purpose—and at each step, your purpose changes slightly. Until Effective Altruism becomes yet another Effective Fundraiser—and then, yes, people are put into research positions based on their ability to improve fundraising, rather than their ability to research charitable efforts.
All organizations are doomed, and that part will happen regardless. It’s just a matter of timing.
Agreed that putting emotionally-oriented people into research positions would be a risk, but let’s be honest, they won’t want to go there.
Regarding the second point, the whole goal of the post I was making above is to appeal to people’s emotions to cause them to care about effectiveness.
The more emotionally-oriented people will not be good at determining effectiveness. But if we can get them to care about effectiveness, not cute puppies, that’s where we can make a huge difference in their spending decisions. They would be highly unlikely to become leaders within EA, but their donations can then be powerfully shaped by EA recommendations
I hear your concern about bringing more emotionally-oriented people into leadership positions. However, I am not at all convinced by the point of them not caring about being effective. The whole point I was making above is to appeal to people’s emotions to cause them to care about effectiveness.
The more emotionally-oriented people will not be good at determining effectiveness. But if we can get them to care about effectiveness, not cute puppies, that’s where we can make a huge difference in their spending decisions. They would be highly unlikely to become leaders within EA, but their donations can then be powerfully shaped by EA recommendations
They are highly likely to become leaders within EA, because your advertising is based on appealing to social status, and people who can be appealed to on that basis are better at social status games than you are. You assume your intelligence puts you at an advantage; you’re, bluntly, horribly wrong. Charisma is not a dump stat.
I agree that charisma is important, but within the EA movement in particular, you won’t get far without intelligence. Intelligence is a necessary qualifier for leadership in EA, in other words.
I have a pretty strong confidence level on that one. I’m ready to make a $100 bet that if you ask EA people whether intelligence is a necessary qualifier for leadership in the EA movement, 9 out of 10 will say yes. Want to take me up on this?
Within the current EA movement, or within the EA movement you propose to create by filling your ranks with people who don’t share your culture or values?
Within the EA movement currently, but I disagree with the second presumption. So are you taking that bet?
I don’t think you understand how bets work in staking out certainty, but $100 against $100 implies your certainty that you won’t destroy the EA movement is ~50%.
The bet is not on the question of whether he destroys the EA movement but about whether people say intelligence is important.
And he’ll find little disagreement from me over what the current group of EA members will say, which says nothing at all about what the group of EA members -after- a successful advertising campaign aimed at increasing membership substantially will say, and at which point the EA movement is, by my view, effectively destroyed, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
My certainty is against your claim of emotionally oriented people becoming EA leaders, not the destruction of the EA movement. Please avoid shifting goalposts :-) So taking the bet, or taking back your claim?
My unwillingness to accept a strawman in place of the positions I have actually stated does not constitute shifting goalposts. But that’s irrelevant, compared to the larger mistake you’re making, in trying to utilize this technique.
A lesson in Dark Arts: I am Nobody. I could delete this account right now, start over from scratch, and lose nothing but some karma points I don’t care about. You, however, are a Somebody. Your account is linked to your identity. Anybody who cares to know who you are, can know who you are. Anybody who already knows who you are can find out what you say here.
As a Somebody, you have credibility. As a Nobody, I have none. So in a war of discrediting—you discredit me, I discredit you—I lose nothing. What do you lose?
Your identify gives you credibility. But it also gives you something to lose. My lack of identity means any credit I gain or lose here is totally meaningless. But it means I have nothing to lose. That means that our credibility disparity is precisely mirrored by a power disparity; one in your favor, the other in mine. But the credibility disparity lasts only until you let yourself be mired in credibility-destroying tactics.
You really shouldn’t engage anybody, much less me, in a Dark Arts competition. Indeed, it’s vaguely foolish of you to have admitted to the practice of Dark Arts in the first place.
I agree that I have something significant to lose, as my account is tied to my public identity.
However, I do not share your belief that me having acknowledged engaging in Dark Arts is foolish. I am comfortable with being publicly identified as someone who is comfortable with using light forms of Dark Arts, stuff that Less Wrongers generally do not perceive as crossing into real Dark Arts, to promote rationality and Effective Altruism. In fact, I explored this question in a Less Wrong discussion post earlier. I want to be open and transparent, to help myself and Intentional Insights make good decisions and update beliefs.
I think you go wrong if you assume that “emotionally-oriented” are automatically stupid.
I agree that emotionally-oriented people are not automatically stupid, my point was about what EAs value. If an emotionally-oriented person happens to be also intelligent, then that has certain benefits for the EA movement, of course.
A person who cares about playing status games might be intelligent but still harmful to the EA movement.
I have a strong probabilistic estimate that there are currently a substantial number of people in the EA movement who care about status games. I’m willing to take a bet on that.
When it comes to straight money donations their origin doesn’t matter. When it comes to people who actually want to spend time being involved “in the community” their background matters.
Yup, agreed.
Yes, they do. Strait money donations exert evolutionary pressure on charities.
This is a good point. Perhaps an alternative target audience to “emotionally oriented donars” would be “Geeks”. Currently, EA is heavily focused on the Nerd demographic. However, I don’t see any major problems with branching out from scientists to science fans. There are plenty of people who would endorse and encourage effectiveness in charities, even if they suck at math. If EA became 99.9% non-math people, it would obviously be difficult maintain a number crunching focus on effectiveness. However this seems unlikely, and compared to recruiting “emotionally-oriented” newbies it seems like there would be much less risk of losing our core values.
Maybe “Better Giving Through SCIENCE!” would make a better slogan than “Be A Superdonor”? I’ve only given this a few minutes of thought, so feel free to improve on or correct any of these ideas.
I think orienting toward geeks would be good, but insufficient. The whole point I was making above is to appeal to people’s emotions to cause them to care about effectiveness. The more emotionally-oriented people will not be good at determining effectiveness. But if we can get them to care about effectiveness, not cute puppies, that’s where we can make a huge difference in their spending decisions. They would be highly unlikely to become leaders within EA, but their donations can then be powerfully shaped by EA recommendations
I’m not sure that there are many people who are exclusively “emotionally-oriented”—or “analytically-oriented”, for that matter. Rather, the idea is that by appealing to both the “head” and the “heart” we can convey a fuller message about EA, and that this will amplify our reach among people who otherwise might not know about it or take it seriously.
Hint: “emotionally oriented” is a code word for “stupid and easily led”.
Sure, but that’s a spectrum too. I don’t know of many people who are so vulnerable to the “dark arts” that the “head” would play no role in their decisions. EA will always appeal to the most analytical, that’s a given—but if you want to broaden your reach you need to make the effort.
I was being a little excessive in the post by using that term. I wouldn’t necessarily call them stupid, just not well educated and savvy. If we can shape them in the right direction, and get them to care about effectiveness, it would be a huge boon to the EA movement and put a lot of money into effective charities. Thus, we can be agentive about meeting our goals.
As you said in the OP, “we leave huge sums of money on the table”. Shaping people so that you could get at their money easier is what marketing scum does.
Of course, that shouldn’t bother dedicated consequentialists, should it? :-/
I think that’s a bit of an extreme way to put it… people who are emotionally driven see emotional appeals as the proper way to convince people. “You think too much” and ” sometimes you just have to go with your gut” is an inherently appealing thing to them—regardless of intelligence levels.
Essentially, they WANT emotional appeals like this one—I saw several emotionally driven (and smart) friends who shared this commercial and basically said (I’m translating now) “It’s nice to see an emotional appeal that actually has a good message/purpose”.
That’s what effective altruism can offer, marketing that has a good message and leads to good outcomes. Convincing people by logic is no more “inherently good” than convincing people by emotion (at least, I haven’t seen anyone provide a convincing proof of either’s inherent goodness or badness), it just depends on their preferred method of thinking.
But why would “emotionally driven” people be interested in EA? It doesn’t offer them the required emotional appeal (note: I’m talking about EA activities, not EA marketing). If the marketing promises them rescuing cute puppies in distress, EA won’t be able to deliver. And even if such people stick around, OrphanWilde’s considerations come into play: these people have different goals and different culture, recruit enough of them and they’ll take over.
People WANT to be on the receiving end of advertising for unknown to them charity? Not anyone I know, but sure, mankind is very diverse… :-/
Besides, are you quite sure you want to compete on the emotional-appeal basis? You become a very small fish in a big pond with some pretty large megalodons swimming around. I don’t doubt that the Sierra Club, Susan G. Komen, and ASPCA will handily beat you in the cuteness sweepstakes (not to mention advertising budgets). What’s your edge?
Well, it depends on what you’re advertising. If you’re advertising deworming you talk about the suffering of children in these countries and you show some heartbreaking images (I’m being deliberately vague here, but you get the idea.
If you’re advertising animal welfare, then yes, you can show cute puppies.
You wouldn’t consider “people who are emotionally driven” as a target market. That’s far too big a market for a small movement like EA (probably containing somewhere between 40%-95% of the global population). Instead, you would start out with a smaller market that you expect contains many emotionally driven people. You move to the bigger ponds once you have the capital to compete in them.
That’s not what the original poster is proposing, however. The original poster is proposing convincing people, through social status bonuses, to donate money. The original poster isn’t proposing appealing to people’s better natures, but through encouraging their baser natures.
That’s where the morality enters into it, I believe.
Using the term marketing scum is a bit pejorative, I hope we can agree on that :-) Let’s avoid emotionally-loaded terms when having rational discourse—I suggest tabooing that term.
Regardless of the term used, yes, I am a dedicated consequentialist, and my goal is to get people to care about effective giving, to avoid leaving huge sums on the table.
Wait. Is your goal to get people to care about effective giving, or is your goal to get people to give effectively? “to avoid leaving huge sums on the table” implies the latter.
This question seems to be the crux of the discussion. Whether EA as a movement has an important identity and mission that’s not just “improve the measured state of being of many people on a relatively short timeframe”.
My goal is to get people to care about effective giving. This will then lead to people giving effectively. However, the first is the goal I am pursuing most directly.
But… but… but… what about “appealing to the heart”? :-P
I’d be happy to taboo that as well, if you’d like ;-)
Coddletrop. This post is talking about dark arts, about bypassing the head entirely. “Superdonor” indeed.
I agree that OP was leaning a bit heavy on the advertising methods, and that advertising is almost 100% appeal to emotion. However, I’m not sure that 0% emotional content is quite right either. (For reasons besides argument to moderation.) Occasionally it is necessary to ground things in emotion, to some degree. If I were to argue that dust specs in 3^^^3 people’s eyes is a huge amount of suffering, I’d likely wind up appealing to empathy for that vastly huge unfathomable amount of suffering. The argument relies almost exclusively on logic, but the emotional content drives the point home.
However, maybe a more concrete example of the sorts of methods EAs might employ will make it clearer whether or not they are a good idea. If we do decide to use some emotional content, this seems to be an effective science-based way to do it: http://blog.ncase.me/the-science-of-social-change/
Aside from just outlining some methods, the author deals briefly with the ethics. They note that children who read George Washington’s Cherry Tree were inspired to be more truthful, while the threats implicit in Pinocchio and Boy Who Cried Wolf didn’t motivate them to lie less than the control group. I have no moral problem with showing someone a good role model, and setting a good example, even if that evokes emotions which influence their decisions. That’s still similar to an appeal to emotion, although the Aristotelian scheme the author mentions would classify it as Ethos rather than Pathos. I’m not sure I’d classify it under Dark Arts. (This feels like it could quickly turn into a confusing mess of different definitions for terms. My only claim is that this is a counterexample, where a small non-rational component of a message seems to be permissible.)
It seems worth noting that EAs are already doing this, to some degree. Here are a couple EA and LW superheroes, off of the top of my head:
Norman Borlough saved a billion lives from starvation by making sweeping improvements in crop yields using industrial agriculture. https://80000hours.org/2011/11/high-impact-science/
Viktor Zhdanov convinced the World Health Assembly, by a margin of only 2 votes, to eradicate Smallpox, saving perhaps hundreds of millions of lives. https://80000hours.org/2012/02/in-praise-of-viktor-zhdanov/
Stanislav Petrov day was celebrated here a bit over a month ago, although there are others who arguably averted closer cold war near-misses, but on days less convenient to make a holiday out of.
One could argue that we should only discuss these sorts of people purely for how their stories inform the present. However, if their stories have an aspirational impact, then it seems reasonable to share that. I’d have a big problem if EA turned into a click-maximizing advertising campaign, or launched infomercials. I agree with you there. There are some techniques which we definitely shouldn’t employ. But some methods besides pure reason legitimately do seem advisable. But guilting someone out of pocket change is significantly different from acquiring new members by encouraging them to aspire to something, and then giving them the tools to work toward that common goal. It’s not all framing.
The issue with advertising isn’t just the ethics. Set the ethics of advertising aside. The issue with advertising is that you’re bringing people in on the basis of something other than Effective Altruism.
How many new people could EA successfully culturally inculcate each month? Because that’s the maximum number of people you should be successfully reaching each month. EA is fundamentally a rationalist culture; if you introduce non-rationalists faster than you can teach them rationalism, you are destroying your own culture.
How do you foresee this going for EA’s culture?
I very much agree. My post was leaning more toward the heart to go against the mainstream. There are plenty of tactics I would not endorse. We shouldn’t lie to people, or tell them that Jesus will cry if they don’t give to effective charities. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge and be ok with using some moderate dark arts to promote rationality and effective altruism. If we can motivate people to engage with the EA movement and put their money toward effective charities by getting them to truly care about effective donations, I think that is a quite justifiable use of moderate dark arts. We can be agentive about meeting our goals.
P.S. Nice username!
Guess what, that’s what the ‘heart’ responds to. It doesn’t mean you can’t appeal to the head too, it’s just saying that a mixed message won’t work very well. The appeals do have to be largely distinct, albeit they would probably work best if presented together.
Emotions are not in opposition to rationality, and you do not have to bypass rational processes in order to reach the heart. That is the flawed presumption underlying the Spock mentality.
This is very true. You only need to bypass the head if you want to sabotage the rational process and manipulate people into something their head would have rejected.
The Spock mentality is about personal decision making, not communication or even influence. The notion that ‘reaching’ System 1 is not something you can do with ordinary, factual communication is quite widely accepted. Even some recent CFAR materials—with their goal factoring approach—are clearly based on this principle.
I think I was clear that we should still use the current EA tactics of appealing to the head, but enrich them by appealing to the heart, to emotions. I think it’s important to acknowledge and be ok with using some moderate dark arts to promote rationality and effective altruism. If we can motivate people to engage with the EA movement and put their money toward effective charities by getting them to truly care about effective donations, I think that is a quite justifiable use of moderate dark arts.
First, emotions != dark arts, or EA would be meaningless as an enterprise.
Second, you’re not getting anybody to care about effective donations, you’re getting them to care about the social status they would attain by being a part of your organization. People who care about social status in this way are going to want more, and they’re better at it than you are. You will lose control.
Sure, emotions = dark arts, but there are shades of darkness, I think we can all agree on that. For example, the statement “emotions != dark arts” relies on a certain emotional tonality to the word “dark arts.”
I’m getting people to care about social status to the extent that they care about effective donations. There is nothing about Intentional Insights itself that they should care about, the organization is just a tool to get them to care about effective giving. The key is to tie people’s caring to effective giving :-)
No. We can’t. Emotions != dark arts. I say that as somebody who killed his emotions and experienced an emotion-free existence for over a decade in the pursuit of pure rationality. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
No, it does not. It is a statement that there are ways of interacting with emotions that are non-manipulative. Emotions are not in opposition to rationality, and indeed are necessary to it. Emotions are the fundamental drive to our purpose; rationality is fundamentally instrumental. Emotions tell us what we should achieve; rationality tells us how. What makes your approach “dark arts” is that you seek to make people achieve something different from the achievement you are appealing to in them.
You lure people in with one goal, and hope to change the goal they pursue. Have a notion of your own human fallibility, and consider what will happen if you fail. They won’t leave. They will take over, and remake your shining institution in their own image.
Because if you do possess the ability to change people’s goals, you should start there. Convince people that Effective Altruism is worth doing for its own sake. If you can manage that, you don’t need the dark arts in the first place. If you need the dark arts, then you can’t do what you’d need to be able to do to make the results favorable, and shouldn’t use them.
I accept that you believe you killed your emotions. However, I think statements like “you have no idea what you are talking about” indicate a presence of emotions, as that’s a pretty extreme statement. So I think it might be best to avoid further continuing this discussion.
OrphanWilde has told his emotion-killing story elsewhere on LW, and isn’t claiming to have no emotions now but to have spent some time in the past without emotions (having deliberately got rid of them) and found the results very unsatisfactory.
Whether that makes any difference to your willingness to continue the conversation is of course up to you.
I’ll repeat:
If you do possess the ability to change people’s goals, you should start there. Convince people that Effective Altruism is worth doing for its own sake. If you can manage that, you don’t need the dark arts in the first place. If you need the dark arts, then you can’t do what you’d need to be able to do to make the results favorable, and shouldn’t use them.
Yup, agreed that no one is exclusively emotional or analytical—this is a spectrum.
and I made sure in the post above to emphasize that we should keep the current EA outreach oriented toward the head, but also enrich it with an orientation toward the heart. Let’s be real, people who are really emotionally oriented will still not care much about EA. But we can reach much further on the spectrum of the analytical/emotional toward emotional than we are currently doing.