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MattG comments on “Be A Superdonor!”: Promoting Effective Altruism by Appealing to the Heart - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think that's a bit of an extreme way to put it... people who are emotionally driven see emotional appeals as the proper way to convince people. "You think too much" and " sometimes you just have to go with your gut" is an inherently appealing thing to them - regardless of intelligence levels.
Essentially, they WANT emotional appeals like this one - I saw several emotionally driven (and smart) friends who shared this commercial and basically said (I'm translating now) "It's nice to see an emotional appeal that actually has a good message/purpose".
That's what effective altruism can offer, marketing that has a good message and leads to good outcomes. Convincing people by logic is no more "inherently good" than convincing people by emotion (at least, I haven't seen anyone provide a convincing proof of either's inherent goodness or badness), it just depends on their preferred method of thinking.
But why would "emotionally driven" people be interested in EA? It doesn't offer them the required emotional appeal (note: I'm talking about EA activities, not EA marketing). If the marketing promises them rescuing cute puppies in distress, EA won't be able to deliver. And even if such people stick around, OrphanWilde's considerations come into play: these people have different goals and different culture, recruit enough of them and they'll take over.
People WANT to be on the receiving end of advertising for unknown to them charity? Not anyone I know, but sure, mankind is very diverse... :-/
Besides, are you quite sure you want to compete on the emotional-appeal basis? You become a very small fish in a big pond with some pretty large megalodons swimming around. I don't doubt that the Sierra Club, Susan G. Komen, and ASPCA will handily beat you in the cuteness sweepstakes (not to mention advertising budgets). What's your edge?
Well, it depends on what you're advertising. If you're advertising deworming you talk about the suffering of children in these countries and you show some heartbreaking images (I'm being deliberately vague here, but you get the idea.
If you're advertising animal welfare, then yes, you can show cute puppies.
You wouldn't consider "people who are emotionally driven" as a target market. That's far too big a market for a small movement like EA (probably containing somewhere between 40%-95% of the global population). Instead, you would start out with a smaller market that you expect contains many emotionally driven people. You move to the bigger ponds once you have the capital to compete in them.
That's not what the original poster is proposing, however. The original poster is proposing convincing people, through social status bonuses, to donate money. The original poster isn't proposing appealing to people's better natures, but through encouraging their baser natures.
That's where the morality enters into it, I believe.