A year ago when I was a normal EA, I found it useful to continuously point out the ways we could help people, and so easily. I could also play up people’s concern with what you describe here. I didn’t change a whole lot of minds, but I could see people updating, and friends would definitely be more likely to care about charity’s impact after these conversations.
Then I became a weird EA and shortly thereafter tried to convince people of the risk from AI. I could see the inferential distance staring me in the face. It’s easy to see why people want to keep talking about global poverty. Think there’s a way to rescue this though. I now talk about the principles of “actually trying to do the most good.” Then when giving examples, I use the example of curing blindness in the third world vs. training seeing eye dogs. I think this is still quite honest. I do think curing blindness is more important than 1/50th of a seeing eye dog. I will also give my true opinions if asked.
I’m curious to know if you think this satisfies your goal of integrity.
A year ago when I was a normal EA, I found it useful to continuously point out the ways we could help people, and so easily. I could also play up people’s concern with what you describe here. I didn’t change a whole lot of minds, but I could see people updating, and friends would definitely be more likely to care about charity’s impact after these conversations.
Then I became a weird EA and shortly thereafter tried to convince people of the risk from AI. I could see the inferential distance staring me in the face. It’s easy to see why people want to keep talking about global poverty. Think there’s a way to rescue this though. I now talk about the principles of “actually trying to do the most good.” Then when giving examples, I use the example of curing blindness in the third world vs. training seeing eye dogs. I think this is still quite honest. I do think curing blindness is more important than 1/50th of a seeing eye dog. I will also give my true opinions if asked.
I’m curious to know if you think this satisfies your goal of integrity.