I wouldn't have written the post if the expected outcome of a woman going to her doctor with (peri)menopause syndroms is to get treatment. The experience of many women also in higher-income countries is more like this: Due to a lack of education, the woman doesn't link her individual symptomes to menopause. Therefore she goes to her standard doctor. Due to a lack of education, the standard doctor doesn't link the symptomes to menopause and sends the woman to a specialist. The specialist treats the symptome, but not the cause, or understands the link and there isn't necessarily a good therapy existing due to a lack of studies and medical development. The findings of a greek study point out the worldwide huge lacks in the healthcare system: "Overall, training on menopause management is profoundly inadequate even nowadays. Menopause management requires theoretical education and clinical experience for the optimal management of menopause-related issues. Although menopause education is included in some medical and specialty training curricula, physicians are not adequately trained to provide the standard of care to women transitioning to menopause." Link Besides, only because EA women are younger nowadays doesn't mean they will stay young forever. Concerning Give Well - I didn't find anything about that topic there. But on an earlier research, I already wondered what about period poverty, as many girls miss classes or completely stop to attend school because they don't have any products to deal with their period and I couldn't find a single reviewed program about that topic. So perhaps women's health is a bit of a blind spot in general?
What would also be interesting: Is there a sweetspot how much the money given to the women can be reduced while keeping the benefit of reduced deaths so costs go down and more persons can benefit.
I observed social media communication of and about politics in general and I realize that there's a big gap between what kind of communication works well with many voters and what kind of communication highly educated content creators usually tend to use. There's a lot of "communication in newspaper headline style", making emotional points that feel intuitive for many and need an attention span of a few seconds. And then comes the fact checker, making a 3 minute video explaining why this headline-message has its flaws and what is problematic. When you are just scrolling with the current average attention span of 8,25 seconds (source: Microsoft study), you won't even come to the overall message of video no 2 and it didn't trigger any emotion causing you to react or share the content --> it won't get spread and doesn't reach many views. So if we want to change the recognition of EA topics not only in more intellectual circles, but in a broad public, we have to adapt to these communication styles and create content for this target group, as this is the majority of voters. I don't want to say there shouldn't also be deep dive content, I think best is to have content (perhaps even on different channels) adjusted to different audiences and different levels of knowledge of the concepts for a broad reach. How is this affecting the politicians? Public movements have an influence - and if a big enough group of voters is actively campaigning for certain actions, it puts pressure on the government. At some point, it is hard to ignore this. Ideally, we have action on the street and behind closed doors in parallel so the voices of the street deliver weight to the actions behind closed doors.
True, that social media frustration is very real for us as well. "Happy Christmas" and a picture with a friendly smile has more interactions than the new release we worked on for months and years or a more philosophical post. Feels completely stupid. If we would just constantely post bikini pictures of our female band members, we would definitely rise more attention. But we would also have a way lower/different connection to our followers. I think one shouldn't just look at the numbers, but also how much is just social media noise and how much is a meaningful connection. How many people did you really touch and influence. In the end, those have a way higher value for the overall mission. Nevertheless, reach is a problem - when the meaningful content drowns in the noise, it is harder to reach the people. When paid ads are the only medicine to cut through, it binds ressources - and, in addition, companies also optimise your ad possibilities to their advantage. E.G. META used to have the possibility to cap how often one person gets the same ad and silently removed the function at some point because it resulted in ads that couldn't be delivered when your targeting was narrow. As a result, you now pay for one person getting your ad 20 times in that scenario. Also filters don't always work as you expect it - otherwise I can't explain that band members get the ads delivered despite the configuration not to deliver to page followers or, my absolute favourite, me getting delivered my own ad and getting charged for it. Edit says: You asked for a video of the song, the music you find on any streaming platform, I link you the website as the lyrics are there as well: https://molllust.com/music/2015-in-deep-waters/ (Number in a Cage) Video: I realized that videos are only online from the acoustic version where acting is way less (especially due to me playing the piano all the time instead of running around on stage), but I found a small excerpt live in a best off-video of a show, I linked the time stamp:
Thank you! Very interesting to read. However, what can we do to get the good ideas from paper to reality? I feel frustrated from just piling up knowledge, walking miles and miles at demonstrations, signing petitions and hoping for someone to change sth. This feels incredibly ineffective. I see that patiently working on spreading knowledge and visibility does have an effect, but for many lifes that could be safed this is waaaay to slow. Of course, revolutions are often a shortcut to change, but they come with huge suffering, and peaceful activism doesn't build enough urge for those in power to really change sth. So many activists and initatives gave up because they were investing time and money again and again and their achievements were small. So I am searching for the "weak spot" in the system to empower and accelerate change.
I can totally understand your feelings. I am a musician and with my songs, I try to point on these problems and reach people from the emotional side as well. Staying in the animal welfare world, I want to share some experiences with my song "Number in a Cage". The song is about a female chick that experiences the first hours of life, witnessing her brother to get shreddered. When we play the song on stage, I am acting what this little chick experiences and my whole band acts mechanical as the factory surrounding. Audience reactions are very diverse. 1) people who come to me after the show saying "Finally someone who understands that and points it out. I guess you are vegan as well?" - so those that feel seen. 2) people have trouble to digest the song. We often experienced people not clapping immediately after the song and trying to process what they just have seen. If things go well, they reflect and take sth out of it. If things go bad, they push it away and just continue their lives as if never been confronted with that. 3) people who avoid us due to our not so easy to stomach-songs. The worst was a concert where people became completely icy after that song towards us and when we continued with a song about tolerance and not letting refugees drown in the Mediteranean Sea you could feel the atmosphere was kind of hostile. We didn't sell a single merch item that night. 4) people who don't get it at all and just find the playful chick-motive funny, happily dancing around. For us, this led to discussions on which concerts we could play which songs without being so confrontational that we loose the audience completely. It is a serious problem. Both lyric-and musicwise, I want to be progressive, not just walk the "easy to stomach, easy message, easy, catchy hooks"-way. But if you are so out of the box for most of the possible audience, the reach is super low. Only to reach group 1 (and musically group 4) audience is nice for giving them hope and feel seen, but not the goal of writing such lyrics. I want people to think about the issue who aren't on that path yet. But to create the group 2-environment and not loosing too much to group 3 feels like a hard to hit balanace. In addition, I often feel kind of desperate. I am doing the poisonous comparison to the reach of easy to stomach-songs vs my art. Even the comparison inbetween my songs - our love song always is spotify algorithms darling while those that feel really relevant to me have a way poorer reach. So it feels to me like: Do my thoughts and my art really have a resonance, a space here? Is it trying to move windmills with my breath? Is it kind of self-punishment to stay with my messages and believes, as I keep myself from more career success with restricting my audience? So I am in a constant back and forth between a fighting and a desperate spirit.
I composed several songs with topics of the EA-cosmos for my band molllust. So if you are into symphonic metal, perhaps some of them might be interesting for you. You can find them on all standard streaming platforms and all lyrics/music are on the Website: https://molllust.com/music/ Mother Universe: Mars - The Game is Over, Pluto - The Raven's Lullaby (Anti-War) Neptune - Wrath of the Sea (Anti-Specism, Anti-Pollution) Jupiter - When Divine Winds Rage (climate change) In Deep Waters: Voices of the Dead, Paradise on Earth, Spring (Movement building, changing the world to a better place) Paradis Perdu (pollution, changing the world to a better place) Number in a Cage (animal rights: anti-chicken shredding) Traumwelt (changing the world to a better place) Bach con fuoco: Ave (changing the world to a better place) I think those are the most EA-related songs, though more deal with current problems in the world.
Thank you! I also now this initative: https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/ Unfortunately, they failed to collect enough signatures to force the EU to debate it. But as the equal right movement, the initatives try to achieve the tax via the current governments. The Club ob Rome also suggests (among lot of other huge changes) to use taxes in order to reduce the inequality and to stabilize society in their "Earth for all"-publication. But they also point out that many progressive decisions will be hard to achieve with the current structures, as those benefiting will use their influence and money to work against it and therefore also encourage e.g. grassroot movements in order to support the ideas. This is why I am explicitely searching for alternative ways to work on that issue.
Is it also possible to read the materials for the sessions without participating? I guess this could also help many people - at least more than not having any access to that kind of information at all.
Came up to this post while wondering why I never saw an add of effective altruism or organisations being part of it, despite FB obviously generated me as interested person in ecological problems, animal welfare and climate change etc, as I very frequently receive ads from diverse charity organisations of that field.
Part of the question was answered when I read from the 80000 hours targeting - I am female, live in a country that doesn't have English as native language and I am older (39) than their usual target audience and not a tech nerd (definitely a nerd and science interested though, as I stumbled across the community via YouTube influencer advertisement in a science video). Nevertheless, I could imagine that despite career advice is less pressing for most people of my age, donating could especially work better when people already have a stable income and the family and job situation settled?
When I quick checked the fb sides of giving what you can, effective altruism, give well and 80000 hours fb transperency just told me there were no ads running.
I wouldn't call myself a marketing expert, but as a musician, I constantely have to work with ads to grow my reach and it definitely brings results.
How successful a fb/insta/youtube advertisement is, is also highly dependent how you build your campaign and how your creative (the ad itself) looks. Usually split testing helps to narrow down what's working best and different types of campaigns work differently well depending on the time the algorithm could learn which targets work best. Also I have to correct the error that video ads aren't possible at fb/insta. And the error that layering on insta ads isn't possible. Be aware that you have completely different options if you just boost a post or create campaigns in the ads manager. The post boost is more the "ads for beginners" option that makes it easy to create ads but with the price of loosing many options.
I wouldn't have written the post if the expected outcome of a woman going to her doctor with (peri)menopause syndroms is to get treatment.
The experience of many women also in higher-income countries is more like this:
Due to a lack of education, the woman doesn't link her individual symptomes to menopause. Therefore she goes to her standard doctor.
Due to a lack of education, the standard doctor doesn't link the symptomes to menopause and sends the woman to a specialist.
The specialist treats the symptome, but not the cause, or understands the link and there isn't necessarily a good therapy existing due to a lack of studies and medical development.
The findings of a greek study point out the worldwide huge lacks in the healthcare system:
"Overall, training on menopause management is profoundly inadequate even nowadays. Menopause management requires theoretical education and clinical experience for the optimal management of menopause-related issues. Although menopause education is included in some medical and specialty training curricula, physicians are not adequately trained to provide the standard of care to women transitioning to menopause." Link
Besides, only because EA women are younger nowadays doesn't mean they will stay young forever.
Concerning Give Well - I didn't find anything about that topic there. But on an earlier research, I already wondered what about period poverty, as many girls miss classes or completely stop to attend school because they don't have any products to deal with their period and I couldn't find a single reviewed program about that topic. So perhaps women's health is a bit of a blind spot in general?
What would also be interesting: Is there a sweetspot how much the money given to the women can be reduced while keeping the benefit of reduced deaths so costs go down and more persons can benefit.
I observed social media communication of and about politics in general and I realize that there's a big gap between what kind of communication works well with many voters and what kind of communication highly educated content creators usually tend to use.
There's a lot of "communication in newspaper headline style", making emotional points that feel intuitive for many and need an attention span of a few seconds. And then comes the fact checker, making a 3 minute video explaining why this headline-message has its flaws and what is problematic. When you are just scrolling with the current average attention span of 8,25 seconds (source: Microsoft study), you won't even come to the overall message of video no 2 and it didn't trigger any emotion causing you to react or share the content --> it won't get spread and doesn't reach many views.
So if we want to change the recognition of EA topics not only in more intellectual circles, but in a broad public, we have to adapt to these communication styles and create content for this target group, as this is the majority of voters. I don't want to say there shouldn't also be deep dive content, I think best is to have content (perhaps even on different channels) adjusted to different audiences and different levels of knowledge of the concepts for a broad reach.
How is this affecting the politicians? Public movements have an influence - and if a big enough group of voters is actively campaigning for certain actions, it puts pressure on the government. At some point, it is hard to ignore this. Ideally, we have action on the street and behind closed doors in parallel so the voices of the street deliver weight to the actions behind closed doors.
True, that social media frustration is very real for us as well. "Happy Christmas" and a picture with a friendly smile has more interactions than the new release we worked on for months and years or a more philosophical post. Feels completely stupid. If we would just constantely post bikini pictures of our female band members, we would definitely rise more attention. But we would also have a way lower/different connection to our followers. I think one shouldn't just look at the numbers, but also how much is just social media noise and how much is a meaningful connection. How many people did you really touch and influence. In the end, those have a way higher value for the overall mission. Nevertheless, reach is a problem - when the meaningful content drowns in the noise, it is harder to reach the people. When paid ads are the only medicine to cut through, it binds ressources - and, in addition, companies also optimise your ad possibilities to their advantage. E.G. META used to have the possibility to cap how often one person gets the same ad and silently removed the function at some point because it resulted in ads that couldn't be delivered when your targeting was narrow. As a result, you now pay for one person getting your ad 20 times in that scenario. Also filters don't always work as you expect it - otherwise I can't explain that band members get the ads delivered despite the configuration not to deliver to page followers or, my absolute favourite, me getting delivered my own ad and getting charged for it.
Edit says: You asked for a video of the song, the music you find on any streaming platform, I link you the website as the lyrics are there as well: https://molllust.com/music/2015-in-deep-waters/ (Number in a Cage)
Video: I realized that videos are only online from the acoustic version where acting is way less (especially due to me playing the piano all the time instead of running around on stage), but I found a small excerpt live in a best off-video of a show, I linked the time stamp:
Thank you! Very interesting to read. However, what can we do to get the good ideas from paper to reality? I feel frustrated from just piling up knowledge, walking miles and miles at demonstrations, signing petitions and hoping for someone to change sth. This feels incredibly ineffective. I see that patiently working on spreading knowledge and visibility does have an effect, but for many lifes that could be safed this is waaaay to slow.
Of course, revolutions are often a shortcut to change, but they come with huge suffering, and peaceful activism doesn't build enough urge for those in power to really change sth. So many activists and initatives gave up because they were investing time and money again and again and their achievements were small. So I am searching for the "weak spot" in the system to empower and accelerate change.
I can totally understand your feelings. I am a musician and with my songs, I try to point on these problems and reach people from the emotional side as well.
Staying in the animal welfare world, I want to share some experiences with my song "Number in a Cage". The song is about a female chick that experiences the first hours of life, witnessing her brother to get shreddered. When we play the song on stage, I am acting what this little chick experiences and my whole band acts mechanical as the factory surrounding.
Audience reactions are very diverse.
1) people who come to me after the show saying "Finally someone who understands that and points it out. I guess you are vegan as well?" - so those that feel seen.
2) people have trouble to digest the song. We often experienced people not clapping immediately after the song and trying to process what they just have seen. If things go well, they reflect and take sth out of it. If things go bad, they push it away and just continue their lives as if never been confronted with that.
3) people who avoid us due to our not so easy to stomach-songs. The worst was a concert where people became completely icy after that song towards us and when we continued with a song about tolerance and not letting refugees drown in the Mediteranean Sea you could feel the atmosphere was kind of hostile. We didn't sell a single merch item that night.
4) people who don't get it at all and just find the playful chick-motive funny, happily dancing around.
For us, this led to discussions on which concerts we could play which songs without being so confrontational that we loose the audience completely. It is a serious problem. Both lyric-and musicwise, I want to be progressive, not just walk the "easy to stomach, easy message, easy, catchy hooks"-way. But if you are so out of the box for most of the possible audience, the reach is super low. Only to reach group 1 (and musically group 4) audience is nice for giving them hope and feel seen, but not the goal of writing such lyrics. I want people to think about the issue who aren't on that path yet. But to create the group 2-environment and not loosing too much to group 3 feels like a hard to hit balanace.
In addition, I often feel kind of desperate. I am doing the poisonous comparison to the reach of easy to stomach-songs vs my art. Even the comparison inbetween my songs - our love song always is spotify algorithms darling while those that feel really relevant to me have a way poorer reach. So it feels to me like: Do my thoughts and my art really have a resonance, a space here? Is it trying to move windmills with my breath? Is it kind of self-punishment to stay with my messages and believes, as I keep myself from more career success with restricting my audience? So I am in a constant back and forth between a fighting and a desperate spirit.
I composed several songs with topics of the EA-cosmos for my band molllust. So if you are into symphonic metal, perhaps some of them might be interesting for you. You can find them on all standard streaming platforms and all lyrics/music are on the Website: https://molllust.com/music/
Mother Universe:
Mars - The Game is Over, Pluto - The Raven's Lullaby (Anti-War)
Neptune - Wrath of the Sea (Anti-Specism, Anti-Pollution)
Jupiter - When Divine Winds Rage (climate change)
In Deep Waters:
Voices of the Dead, Paradise on Earth, Spring (Movement building, changing the world to a better place)
Paradis Perdu (pollution, changing the world to a better place)
Number in a Cage (animal rights: anti-chicken shredding)
Traumwelt (changing the world to a better place)
Bach con fuoco:
Ave (changing the world to a better place)
I think those are the most EA-related songs, though more deal with current problems in the world.
Thank you! I also now this initative: https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/ Unfortunately, they failed to collect enough signatures to force the EU to debate it.
But as the equal right movement, the initatives try to achieve the tax via the current governments.
The Club ob Rome also suggests (among lot of other huge changes) to use taxes in order to reduce the inequality and to stabilize society in their "Earth for all"-publication. But they also point out that many progressive decisions will be hard to achieve with the current structures, as those benefiting will use their influence and money to work against it and therefore also encourage e.g. grassroot movements in order to support the ideas.
This is why I am explicitely searching for alternative ways to work on that issue.
Is it also possible to read the materials for the sessions without participating? I guess this could also help many people - at least more than not having any access to that kind of information at all.
Came up to this post while wondering why I never saw an add of effective altruism or organisations being part of it, despite FB obviously generated me as interested person in ecological problems, animal welfare and climate change etc, as I very frequently receive ads from diverse charity organisations of that field. Part of the question was answered when I read from the 80000 hours targeting - I am female, live in a country that doesn't have English as native language and I am older (39) than their usual target audience and not a tech nerd (definitely a nerd and science interested though, as I stumbled across the community via YouTube influencer advertisement in a science video). Nevertheless, I could imagine that despite career advice is less pressing for most people of my age, donating could especially work better when people already have a stable income and the family and job situation settled? When I quick checked the fb sides of giving what you can, effective altruism, give well and 80000 hours fb transperency just told me there were no ads running. I wouldn't call myself a marketing expert, but as a musician, I constantely have to work with ads to grow my reach and it definitely brings results. How successful a fb/insta/youtube advertisement is, is also highly dependent how you build your campaign and how your creative (the ad itself) looks. Usually split testing helps to narrow down what's working best and different types of campaigns work differently well depending on the time the algorithm could learn which targets work best. Also I have to correct the error that video ads aren't possible at fb/insta. And the error that layering on insta ads isn't possible. Be aware that you have completely different options if you just boost a post or create campaigns in the ads manager. The post boost is more the "ads for beginners" option that makes it easy to create ads but with the price of loosing many options.