Regarding your podcast example, I have some thoughts:
Psychometrics is both correct and incredibly unpopular—this means there is possibly an arbitrage here for anyone willing to believe in it.
Very high IQ people are rare and often have hobbies that are considered low-status in the general population. Searching for low-status signals that are predictive of cognitive ability looks to be an efficient means of message targeting.
It is interesting to note that Demis Hassibias’s prodigious ability was obvious to anyone paying attention to board games competitions in the late 90s. It may have been high ROI to sponsor the Mind Sports Olympiad at that time just for a small shot at influencing someone like Demis. There are likely other low-status signals of cognitive ability that will allow us to find diamonds in the rough.
Those who do well in strategic video games, board games, and challenging musical endeavors may be worth targeting. (Heavy metal for example—being very low-status and extremely technical musically—is a good candidate for being underpriced).
With this in mind, one obvious idea for messaging is to run ads. Unfortunately, high-impact people almost certainly have ad-blockers on their phones and computers.
However, the podcast space offers a way around this. Most niche 3rd party apps allow podcasters to advertise their podcasts on the podcast search pages. On the iPhone, at least, these cannot be adblocked trivially.
As the average IQ of a 3rd-party podcast app user is likely sligher higher than those who use first-party podcast apps, the audience is plausibly slightly enriched for high-impact people already. By focusing ads on podcast categories that are both cheap and good proxies for listener’s IQs (especially of the low-status kind mentioned above) one may be able to do even better.
I have been doing this for the AXRP podcast on the Overcast podcast app, and it has worked out to about ~5 dollars per subscriber. I did this without asking the permission of the podcast’s host.
Due to the recurring nature of podcasts and the parasocial relationship podcast listeners develop to the hosts of podcasts, it is my opinion their usefulness as a propaganda and inculcation tool is underappreciated at this time. It is very plausible to me that 5 dollars per subscriber may indeed be very cheap for the right podcast.
Directly sponsoring niche podcasts with extremely high-IQ audiences may be even more promising. There are likely mathematics, music theory, games and puzzle podcasts that are small enough to have not attracted conventional advertisers but are enriched enough in intelligent listeners to be a gold mine from this perspective.
I do not think I am a particularly good fit for this project. My only qualification is I am the only person I am aware of who is running such a project. Someone smarter with a better understanding of statistics would plausibly do far better. Perhaps if you have an application by a higher-quality person with a worse idea, you can give them my project. Then I can use my EA budget on something even crazier!
I think some of these are really neat and interesting ideas. I will keep them in mind, but also encourage you to think about whether you might actually be the best fit for this project (as far as I know no one has done it so far but you, it’s hard for people to absorb one anothers’ models and enthusiasms, I doubt we will get a ton of applicants).
Regarding your podcast example, I have some thoughts:
Psychometrics is both correct and incredibly unpopular—this means there is possibly an arbitrage here for anyone willing to believe in it.
Very high IQ people are rare and often have hobbies that are considered low-status in the general population. Searching for low-status signals that are predictive of cognitive ability looks to be an efficient means of message targeting.
It is interesting to note that Demis Hassibias’s prodigious ability was obvious to anyone paying attention to board games competitions in the late 90s. It may have been high ROI to sponsor the Mind Sports Olympiad at that time just for a small shot at influencing someone like Demis. There are likely other low-status signals of cognitive ability that will allow us to find diamonds in the rough.
Those who do well in strategic video games, board games, and challenging musical endeavors may be worth targeting. (Heavy metal for example—being very low-status and extremely technical musically—is a good candidate for being underpriced).
With this in mind, one obvious idea for messaging is to run ads. Unfortunately, high-impact people almost certainly have ad-blockers on their phones and computers.
However, the podcast space offers a way around this. Most niche 3rd party apps allow podcasters to advertise their podcasts on the podcast search pages. On the iPhone, at least, these cannot be adblocked trivially.
As the average IQ of a 3rd-party podcast app user is likely sligher higher than those who use first-party podcast apps, the audience is plausibly slightly enriched for high-impact people already. By focusing ads on podcast categories that are both cheap and good proxies for listener’s IQs (especially of the low-status kind mentioned above) one may be able to do even better.
I have been doing this for the AXRP podcast on the Overcast podcast app, and it has worked out to about ~5 dollars per subscriber. I did this without asking the permission of the podcast’s host.
Due to the recurring nature of podcasts and the parasocial relationship podcast listeners develop to the hosts of podcasts, it is my opinion their usefulness as a propaganda and inculcation tool is underappreciated at this time. It is very plausible to me that 5 dollars per subscriber may indeed be very cheap for the right podcast.
Directly sponsoring niche podcasts with extremely high-IQ audiences may be even more promising. There are likely mathematics, music theory, games and puzzle podcasts that are small enough to have not attracted conventional advertisers but are enriched enough in intelligent listeners to be a gold mine from this perspective.
I do not think I am a particularly good fit for this project. My only qualification is I am the only person I am aware of who is running such a project. Someone smarter with a better understanding of statistics would plausibly do far better. Perhaps if you have an application by a higher-quality person with a worse idea, you can give them my project. Then I can use my EA budget on something even crazier!
I think some of these are really neat and interesting ideas. I will keep them in mind, but also encourage you to think about whether you might actually be the best fit for this project (as far as I know no one has done it so far but you, it’s hard for people to absorb one anothers’ models and enthusiasms, I doubt we will get a ton of applicants).