It's an interesting point, but they're just reviewing the evidence... 

A better exercise to not fall into self-deception is 'mental contrasting', in which you first think about achieving your goals, and then about the obstacles that stand in your way and how to overcome them. It might also help in goal achievement, especially in combination with a technique called 'implementation intention'.^[1]

1. ^{^}

   Wang G, Wang Y and Gai X (2021) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions on Goal Attainment. Front. Psychol. 12:565202. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202

Thanks, that proposal is indeed very interesting!

I agree, it seems like a very good idea to post it here. I assume it's seen by dozen times more people than in your team. Also, the EA forum is definitely less biased about any thing than organizations that work for that thing. Just the way humans work. 

That's great, thank you. It might be valuable to also write on MCII - mental contrasting & implementation intention. A meta-analysis showed it is quite effective^[1] (g = 0.336), and it mentioned 2 papers that found it to be more effective than its components - either implementation intention or mental contrasting alone^[2] [3]

1. ^{^}

   Wang G, Wang Y and Gai X (2021) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions on Goal Attainment. Front. Psychol. 12:565202. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.565202

2. ^{^}

   Adriaanse, M. A., Oettingen, G., Gollwitzer, P. M., Hennes, E. P., De Ridder, D. T. D., and De Wit, J. B. F. (2010). When planning is not enough: fighting unhealthy snacking habits by mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII). Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 40, 1277–1293. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.730

3. ^{^}

   Kirk, D., Oettingen, G., and Gollwitzer, P. M. (2013). Promoting integrative bargaining: mental contrasting with implementation intentions. Int. J. Conflict Manage. 24, 148–165. doi: 10.1108/10444061311316771

That's neat. May I ask why have you published this script, but not the script for the GiveDirectly episode?

Hi, as other commenters said, I think that from a purely EA perspective, there might be better ideas to cover. But it's really good that you published the draft here, as it is likely to help increase your positive impact and quality of production in general (they're already top notch though). With the size of your channel it's probably cost-effective for other EAs to help you anyway (it's not common to leverage exposure to >100k people). Also not every idea you cover needs to be 100% EA, it's very important to just do interesting stuff every now and then.

As for my suggestion, maybe you could have charter cities in the broader context of evidence based policy & desicion making- as charter cities being one extreme & interesting example of policy research. Taking about evidence based policy could also raise the question of effectiveness and intuition (obviously of value for EA), as social programs are near impossible to assess intuitively, and most don't really work - https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-social-program/.

There are other good resources on evidence based policy, for example -

Social Programs That Work - https://evidencebasedprograms.org/

The Campbell Collaboration - https://www.campbellcollaboration.org

I agree that charter cities are very interesting and a likely good way to get people interested in policy in general. Although I don't think this video 100% aligns with EA, it still seems of extreme potential and value, so good luck!

‌ P.S. - y'all are doing a great job with the channel. You are really interesting and explain complicated subjects concisely and elegantly. Keep it on :)

Cool. Thanks for sharing and good luck!

Thanks, I see it's very hard to think of something that hasn't been already thought of by EAs. By coincidence, I've just seen a post by 'Rethink Priorities' on the subject.