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ThrustVectoring comments on In Praise of Tribes that Pretend to Try: Counter-"Critique of Effective Altruism" - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (18)
People dismissing the low-commitment group have the wrong counterfactual. It's incorrect to think "if this person wasn't lurking on LW, they'd actually do something for FAI". More accurate is "if this person wasn't lurking on LW, they wouldn't be interested at all in FAI".
A similar way to dip your toes into EA would be a highly effective way to garner support for EA. Even something as informal as a discussion board/blog would help. Make it obvious how to do more for those convinced to do more, and you're probably doing the movement a favor.
This part is not obvious to me. See Robin's longer discussion at Reward or Punish?.
That is, it's certainly more pleasant to be part of a group that works by reward than by punishment. But it's not clear to me it's more effective.
I'm not making a stand on the reward vs punishment debate. I'm generalizing from my personal experience - that is, if I couldn't lurk or make posts on lesswrong, I wouldn't be interested in FAI at all. If it were the case that the minimum amount needed to participate in rationality topics that LW discusses was "read and write academic papers or participate as a volunteer or worker in MIRI", I wouldn't be making any sort of effort along this axis whatsoever.
Plus there's the whole cult-aversion thing - punishing those who buy in to EA but do not make as much effort as you want them to carries a whole host of bad connotations.