Every now and then, I see a post about ways to convince the average person of EA. Admittedly, I didn’t really pay much attention. Before coming to Canada, I was around people who, even when convinced of EA values, couldn’t really do much. After getting here, I was mostly socially isolated, so who was I even going to pitch it to in the first place?
Then I went to the Solstice celebration. Well, several, actually. I ended up at four different events that night, because apparently Solstice is just a Thing That Happens in that part of Toronto. Only the first one had rationalists at all, and we were still a minority.
As is kind of my habit, I ended up at the centre of conversation everywhere I went. However, whenever I talked about my future or my politics or my values or my Kelsey or anything else important, EA just kept coming up, and I’d keep being asked “What’s that?”
This was a test I hadn’t studied for. I knew how to answer the question, but I didn’t know how to answer it. How to convey why it mattered so much to me and convince them that it should matter to them too. Here’s what I came up with on the fly:
Enthusiasm: This one is probably obvious, but I’m listing it anyway because it was Super Important. I was visibly excited to talk about doing good better. I gesticulated and babbled happily and just generally pumped enough energy into the area around me that other people were drawn in.
I think that associating EA with happiness and excitement was a better choice than with cold calculation or crushing obligation. I made it clear that calculations and morals were important, but I’m pretty sure that I left them with a first association of EA = excitement.
Focusing On Potential: My message was more about how much good you can do, rather than why it’s so overwhelmingly important that you do it. There is definitely a place for focusing on how necessary it is. However, I don’t think that’s a party, where you’re trying to hold people’s attention in spite of food, drinks, music, and less technical conversation.
Instead, I talked about how powerful we were. How our (well, not mine, yet) wealth put us in a position to change the world. How much a single dollar could do. I didn’t say “and this is terribly unjust” (even though it is). What I said was more like: “Congratulations, you now have superpowers! You can save the world in your spare time! Isn’t that awesome? Don’t you want to test drive them?”
Making It Additive: A lot of the people I encountered had their own pet causes that they considered Important. They cared about the arts and rescue shelters and political activism and volunteering, etc. These things were generally connected to a bunch of other values. This was neither the time nor the place to argue that community isn’t really as important as you think it is.
So that’s not what I talked about. I affirmed that their values were valid and that the things they supported mattered. What I tried to do was convince them that EA also mattered. Mattered enough that they should look into it and consider doing it as well. After all, what I needed them to do then and there wasn't accept the idea that there is a Single Best Type Of Charity – I just needed them to take effectiveness seriously. Once that was done, we could haggle over percentage-effort.
Framing As Social Justice: The people I spoke to were mostly Lefty, because the relevant demographic was “young, middle class Canadian”. As such, they cared a lot about social justice from the start. Based on conversations I'd had with @theunitofcaring, it occurred to me that the social justice framework might be the most effective way to build a bridge between our values.
One of the best ways to make them care about pregnant women in Africa catching malaria was to talk about the reproductive rights of poor black women. I mentioned that the (global) income gap between those black women and their white male counterparts was enormous, and told them that they had the power to realign some of it. In general, it was clear to see that talking about “poor black women” increased how much they cared about problems. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I was happy to help the explore all the consequences of their ideology.
Making It Personal: This is one place where I can't really frame it as a suggestion. Everything so far has been more descriptive than prescriptive, but this is where it really wouldn't be possible to just do as I did. I made EA values and causes personal to my own experience. I talked about my tragic backstory.
I am still kind of proud of the looks of horror I was able to elicit by describing having lived through an epidemic of mosquito-borne illness. I was able to drive home just how vast the global wealth gap is by describing life in [Redacted]. I told them about how important immigration is to me, personally. Everyone I spoke to wanted me to pursue refugee status (which, thankfully, will no longer be necessary), but I was able to ask them why me and not the millions of other desperate people who are shut out by arbitrary lines on a map?
There are a lot of things I didn't talk about or just glossed over. In some cases, it was because I disagreed with it (such as moral obligations) or because it would have been difficult or tedious to explain in the middle of a party (like precise details of how charities are ranked). That was based on my own personal choices and I'm not suggesting anyone else avoid them. I'm also not saying that everyone should do the things that I did do. There are many ways to achieve the same goals, depending on your comparative advantage.
I tried my best not to condescend to people or “dumb down” anything. I started from the position that there were a few basic values that made EA EA, and tried to convince those around me that those values were in accordance with their own. Which things I focused on was purely pragmatic. It was about prompting them to think. I hope some of them will look into all the relevant info and it will lead them to fully participate in the community. I wanted to spark an interest that would lead them further.
It's worth noting that I come off as very charismatic in person (and also, to a lesser extent, in writing), so some of my success may be attributed to unconscious factors that it didn't occur to me to list. Furthermore, I have been told I'm physically attractive, and while my (dysphoric) inside view insists this is false, it would be remiss of me not to mention it as a possible explanation for my success.
That being said, I am counting this as a success. Of the many people I spoke to about it, the majority agreed that EA was probably important, and about a dozen promised to look it up later. I don't know how many actually did, but if the number of people who emailed me the next day asking if we could hang out is any indication, I do have some influence on people's behaviour after I'm gone. I am cautiously optimistic about the follow-through effects.
Rather than solely creating an individualized “culture of giving,” we should be challenging capitalism’s institutionalized taking.
"We don’t have to accept capital’s terms for addressing its own problems or purported moral imperatives that presuppose them. We can overturn those terms completely.”
Even taking that completely for granted - have we? I mean, we’ve had a lot of time to, haven’t we? Marx wasn’t born yesterday, and Socialism wasn’t born with Marx. People have certainly tried to “overturn those terms completely”, but we know what happened there. Clearly, this means getting where we need to go is a hard problem. If it could be solved overnight, we’d have already done so. What are we doing in the mean time?
Even if you don’t think EA is the best way to do good, even if you believe revolution is optimal, once you believe that charity can do any good, why would you do neither?
“Gomberg argues that the resources required to successfully relieve poverty through philanthropy or achieve radical systemic change are so huge that “in doing more of one we do less of the other.” So, they must be construed as “competing ways of using our time, energy, and other resources.””
Most Leftists don’t spend money on promoting revolution, though. Sure, many of them spend money on things associated with revolution - the clothes, the social groups, the concerts - but not revolution itself. I think many of them would give some amount to revolutionary causes if they knew how, but it’s often infeasible.
But that isn’t a reason to do nothing for the wretched of the earth! The proletariat can’t rise up if they died of malaria in the mean time. Even if you can’t do the Literal Best Thing Ever, you should do the things you can.
I think it would be a net positive if Leftists adopted an “EA as a stop-gap” approach. If you can do any good with a dollar, then you should. If you know a radical organisation that is actually effecting system change (and not a couple people who meet each week to talk about it) then, by all means, send your dollar there. However, until you are doing that, use that dollar to help the poor directly. Put it in the hands of the people you believe capitalism stole it from.
But you are not more noble for refusing to assist, and you become no less complicit in the present economic system by sitting on your capital while your brothers and sisters starve.
