This comment captures my intutions well. Thanks for writing this. It’s weird for me, because when I wear my effective altruism hat, I think what Gleb is doing is great because marketing effective altruism seems like it would only drive more donations to effective charities, while not depriving them of money or hurting their reputations if people become indifferent to the Intentional Insights project. This seems to be the consensus reaction to Gleb’s work on the Effective Altruism Forum. Of course, effective altruism is sometimes more concerned with only the object-level impact that’s easy to measure, e.g., donations, rather than subtler effects down the pipe, like cumulatively changing how people think over the course of multiple years. Whether that’s a good or ill effect is a judgment I’ll leave for you.
On the other hand, when I put on my rationality community hat, I feel the same way about Gleb’s work as you do. It’s uncomfortable for me because I realize I have perhaps contradicting motivations in assessing Intentional Insights.
An important way I think about my work in the rationality sphere is cognitive altruism.
In a way, it’s not different than effective altruism. When promoting effective giving, I encourage people to think rationally about their giving. I pose to them the question of how (and whether) they currently think about their goals in giving, the impact of their giving, and the quality of the charities to which they give, encouraging them to use research-based evaluations from GiveWell, TLYCS, etc. The result is that they give to effective charities.
Similarly, I encourage people to think rationally about their life and goals in my promotion of rationality. The results is that they make better decisions about their lives and are more capable of meeting their goals, including being more long-term oriented and thus fighting the Moloch problem. For example, here is what one person got out of my book on finding meaning and purpose by orienting toward one’s long-term goals. He is now dedicated to focusing his life on helping other people have a good life, in effect orienting toward altruism.
In both cases, I take the rational approach of using methods from content marketing that have been shown to work effectively in meeting the goals of spreading complex information to broad audiences. It’s not different in principle.
I’m curious whether this information helps you update one way or another in your assessment of Intentional Insights.
This comment captures my intutions well. Thanks for writing this. It’s weird for me, because when I wear my effective altruism hat, I think what Gleb is doing is great because marketing effective altruism seems like it would only drive more donations to effective charities, while not depriving them of money or hurting their reputations if people become indifferent to the Intentional Insights project. This seems to be the consensus reaction to Gleb’s work on the Effective Altruism Forum. Of course, effective altruism is sometimes more concerned with only the object-level impact that’s easy to measure, e.g., donations, rather than subtler effects down the pipe, like cumulatively changing how people think over the course of multiple years. Whether that’s a good or ill effect is a judgment I’ll leave for you.
On the other hand, when I put on my rationality community hat, I feel the same way about Gleb’s work as you do. It’s uncomfortable for me because I realize I have perhaps contradicting motivations in assessing Intentional Insights.
An important way I think about my work in the rationality sphere is cognitive altruism.
In a way, it’s not different than effective altruism. When promoting effective giving, I encourage people to think rationally about their giving. I pose to them the question of how (and whether) they currently think about their goals in giving, the impact of their giving, and the quality of the charities to which they give, encouraging them to use research-based evaluations from GiveWell, TLYCS, etc. The result is that they give to effective charities.
Similarly, I encourage people to think rationally about their life and goals in my promotion of rationality. The results is that they make better decisions about their lives and are more capable of meeting their goals, including being more long-term oriented and thus fighting the Moloch problem. For example, here is what one person got out of my book on finding meaning and purpose by orienting toward one’s long-term goals. He is now dedicated to focusing his life on helping other people have a good life, in effect orienting toward altruism.
In both cases, I take the rational approach of using methods from content marketing that have been shown to work effectively in meeting the goals of spreading complex information to broad audiences. It’s not different in principle.
I’m curious whether this information helps you update one way or another in your assessment of Intentional Insights.