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
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