This is a crosspost from my blog article.
I think that because effective altruists tend to discuss a narrow range of cause areas, it can be easy for us to believe that we’ve already identified all of the most important cause areas, which is almost certainly not the case. As such, in this post, I’m going to propose a couple of other cause areas by discussing what I would think are the world’s most important cause areas if I were not already familiar with EA. For each, I’ll include why I think it could be a possible cause area as well as some possible interventions for it.
- Loneliness in developed nations
- Explanation:
- Over the past half century, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in loneliness among people in developed nations. Social connection is a core contributor to health, wellbeing, and productivity so we should expect that reducing loneliness would significantly increase society’s flourishing.
- Possible interventions:
- Developing online platforms that allow individuals to host in-person community events for free.
- Creating more spaces where it is normal and encouraged to interact with people that you do not already know.
- Creating dating and friendship apps that use machine learning to create optimal pairings between individuals for relationship satisfaction.
- These could possibly be designed such that, after signing up, the app rarely requires user interaction outside of arranging meeting up with people that you have met on the app.
- The mass spread of misinformation
- Explanation:
- The modern internet and its regulations have created an environment where billions of people are exposed to misinformation on a regular basis. This is, in my view, creating more polarized societies, harming democracy as an institution, negatively impacting public health, and reducing social connection.
- Possible interventions:
- Regulating and breaking up online platforms so that consumers have a greater range of sources from which to choose to get information.
- Requiring broadcasters to demarcate opinion pieces from reporting on radio and national television
- The existence of totalitarian states
- Explanation:
- Some states across the world do not engage in democratic practices, control the information their people have access to, and prevent their people from traveling to certain places. I believe these states represent an existential threat to humanity because they lack self-regulating to prevent the state from oppressing its people, and, if these states grow large enough, they could control humanity’s fate. Working to end the existence of such states should be a top priority for humanity
- Interventions:
- Promoting more aggressive national and international policies for ending totalitarian regimes
- The lack of regulation on American tech companies
- Explanation:
- American tech companies have an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice general welfare and the stability of their own nation in order to maximize profit. Social media companies, for instance, have developed algorithms that maximize the time users spend on their platforms rather than the satisfaction they get out of them. Similarly, dating app companies have de-normalized traditional forms of courtship and then put a paywall behind their new form of courtship - notably, one that is harmful to people’s mental health.
- Interventions:
- Trust-busing American tech companies
- Promoting further regulation of American tech companies
Hey James, very concerned with number 1 also. I actually spent a year building an events app (i gave up), it's a very tough space. For one it's not clear why people need more two sided market places (spontaneous event/hangouts apps are also considered one of the biggest "tarpits" for entrepreneurs, though i'd caution reading too deeply into that type of stuff). ATP partiful and lu.ma are solid enough in terms of e vites, for really small groups you use i message. then maybe you are gesturing more at meetup or pie but these apps suffer from weird sociological dynamics. You can not just get a bunch of lonely people together and have a good time exactly. The more you look into this stuff, the more it feels like an omni problem. It's hard to say the tractability. There is a huge design space of things to improve on, you gesture at this. The problem spans addiction, habits, thirdspaces, culture, trust, etc. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing in terms of being able to make headway.
I do believe ai might have some promise in terms of creating better events wikis (e.g. https://cguth7.github.io/events/ ).
Feel free to reach out whenever, I have much more to say on the topic.
Hey Charlie,
I'm super glad you made an attempt with that events building app!!
Yeah, I agree that it's definitely just a very multi-causal problem, which makes it really difficult to approach. Last year, I read Dr. Vivek Murphy's (the former attorney surgeon general of the US) book on the loneliness epidemic, and I was pretty disappointed that his ideas were mostly just along the lines of "get people together more."
For what it's worth, I think that the culture on Meetup really depends on the city and the exact kind of event. When I lived in a large city, it seems like a significant portion of attendees were people who were really struggling to make friends, which made for a very awkward and kind of tense environment. But, when I moved to a smaller city, it seemed like crowds that would show up were pretty representative of the actual demographics of the town. Additionally, it seems like events that are like "Let's meet people" can vary from a very excellent experience to very awkward. On the other hand, stuff like hikes and particular interest groups seem to be pretty quality groups from my experience. So, that said, I wouldn't discount Meetup entirely. The reason I said "Developing online platforms that allow individuals to host in-person community events for free." was because Meetup currently costs $175 a year and is the main platform in my city, which means that they're basically monopolizing the online public events space but also reducing the number of events that are occurring by making it cost-prohibitive to do so.
I also agree that tractability seems unclear, but, without having looked into the issue very much, it seems like it's reasonably neglected. For instance, at the university I attended, my RAs never hosted events, cafeterias weren't designed as places to interact with people, and the events that were hosted by the university were often not designed for socializing. It seems like a researcher could pretty easily trial a bunch of different initiatives at universities, and the universities would have profit incentives to implement them since students who have better mental health are probably less likely to drop out. A researcher could also try something similar at like companies or small towns or suburbs or large cities.
Re meetup and groups: You need to find a balance of inclusivity. Even though the purpose of a group is largely to socialize, the medium in which socializing takes place should be attractive in some sense orthogonally to how cool a person is. e.g. I like to go play basketball. I also socialize with the people at basketball. sometimes the people there are weird, it's ok, i still like basketball and have a good time and come again. Vs. a group that's basically just to socialize, the cool people get less out of it if the other people aren't cool and so they leave and it spirals.
If people really wanted to meetup more, there are tons of possible ways it could happen cheaper, both through existing competitors (facebook events/groups, reddit, listservs, 222, RA, and way more, trust me). While sorting and selecting the best events is not extremely easy, it's not that hard. If you actually put a few hours asking around where events are posted and then 1-2 hours of effort scrolling through these things (local websites, instas) you can fill up your calendar with random stuff (although I will say I think a lot of young 20s people don't realize that you could just ask a few store owners and librarian where the events are and you will learn a lot). It's true we could drive the marginal cost down even further and this should help some but after thinking about this alot (and trying to get people to actually join things and or/post events) i'm not convinced this is the core of the problem. I think the core of the problem is more that we don't have enough supply of actually good events and communities + increasingly entertaining other options that become hard to break habits so we might need some light paternal guidance in the right direction. Operationalizing this into a solution ends up looking closer to a religion than an app.
I would also be interested in seeing what some researchers could come up with, and I def think there is a lot of innovation on the side of thirdspace design and group norms/ activity setups that can improve social life, but OTOH so much of what makes a group is its people and leaders, and that's not something that is easy to scale, repeating but scaling it seems more social movement/religion in nature than modern tech.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
I'm reasonably idealistic in thinking that we could basically just do a bunch of interventions that make it easier to socialize and that would resolve most of the problem, but I'm definitely pessimistic that we could get much culture change, since it doesn't feel like there's much motion to do that. It seems hard to imagine an American culture that encourages people to actively socialize each week in community settings. And, the problem of "increasingly entertaining other options" is probably intractable.
I do think you're wrong about the platform thing though. As someone in their early 20s, I know pretty much no one who uses platforms other than Meetup and online forums/word of mouth/fliers to find events. As such, to me, it does feel like Meetup has a seriously monopoly. Additionally, a lot of people in my town will commonly say that they wish there more public events to go to so, at least where I live, it seems like supply of events is the real issue and not the events being too low quality.
I also think you're overemphasizing the need for group culture and leaders to be designed well, since I think this stuff just naturally arises in environments where typical people with shared interests come together.
Well I'd guess first i'd just say I only ever thought much about this stuff in the context of Chicago, and even then just in my little slice of the world. I'm sure different places have different textures.
Your second paragraph doesn't make that much sense to me. Do you think if meetup was free there would be way more events in your town? Seems unlikely to me. Don't get me wrong, network effects are totally in play in these markets and can create natural monopolies which reduce supply (and then market quantity) from social optimum, but i think that if it was 0$ instead of 175 you might have like 10-30% more groups. But it seems to me supply could reasonably 5x if we had a healthy society.
"I also think you're overemphasizing the need for group culture and leaders to be designed well, since I think this stuff just naturally arises in environments where typical people with shared interests come together." Hmm yea my mind could be changed pretty easily, I'd just like to see the studies (or maybe there already are similar things done in psyche or soc, i haven't looked much).
Yeah, that's totally fair. I think the dynamics around public events probably vary a lot across the US.
And, yeah, I think I pretty much entirely agree with your second paragraph. Creating free in-person events from online platforms can only do so much.