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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA can sound less weird, if we want it to, published by Ines on May 25, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I have previously encountered EAs who have beliefs about EA communication that seem jaded to me. These are either, “Trying to make EA seem less weird is an unimportant distraction, and we shouldn’t concern ourselves with it” or “Sounding weird is an inherent property of EA/EA cause areas, and making it seem less weird is not tractable, or at least not without compromising important aspects of the movement.” I would like to challenge both of these views. “Trying to make EA seem less weird is unimportant” As Peter Wildeford explains in this LessWrong post: People take weird opinions less seriously. The absurdity heuristic is a real bias that people -- even you -- have. If an idea sounds weird to you, you're less likely to try and believe it, even if there's overwhelming evidence. Being taken seriously is key to many EA objectives, such as growing the movement, getting mainstream researchers to care about the EA risks of their work, and having policymakers give weight to EA considerations. Sci-fi-sounding ideas make it harder to achieve these, while making it easier for critics to mischaracterize the movement and (probably) contributing to the perception that EA is cult-like. On a more personal note, and perhaps more relevant to some of the examples I am going to mention, it is also nice for friends and family to be able to understand why we do what we do, which I don’t think is a trivial desire to have. All things considered, I think it would be better if EA ideas did not sound weird to outsiders, and instead sounded intuitive and immediately persuasive. “EA is inherently weird, and making our ideas seem less weird is not tractable” I don’t think this is true, and I think this view generally comes from people who haven’t spent much time trying to think creatively about this. Some ways of framing things are more compelling than others, and this is an area where we can iterate, innovate and improve. Here are a few examples of possible ways we talk about weird EA ideas: AI risk Talking about other bad but less severe outcomes of AI misalignment besides paperclip maximizers and then saying “and it could even get as bad as paperclip maximizers,” requires less of a leap in imagination than opening with paperclip maximizers. It may be the case that we don’t even need to make general audiences consider paperclip maximizers at all, since the mechanisms needed to prevent them are the same as those needed to prevent the less severe and more plausible-sounding scenarios of the form "you ask an AI to do X, and the AI accomplishes X by doing Y, but Y is bad and not what you intended". Longtermism Due to scope insensitivity, referencing visuals to show just how much larger the future can be than the present is particularly emotionally powerful here, and makes the whole idea of working to improve the far future feel far less abstract. My favorite longtermist visualization is this one by Our World in Data, which I have saved on my phone to be able to reference it in conversations. (I think visualizations also work well to combat scope insensitivity for wild animal welfare and farmed animal welfare). Non-human Welfare If it is the first time someone is contemplating the idea that insects or wild animals deserve moral consideration, it makes sense to want to give them the spiel with the least probability of being mocked and dismissed. If you start to explain it by saying we should spend money to enhance the lives of insects in the wild, the idea will probably get laughed out of the room. I think for insect welfare, the most palatable approach would be talking about the role of inhumane pesticides and other ways humans harm insects actively, making insect welfare more comparable t...