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For what it's worth, I highly enjoyed reading this interaction:) +1 to Dario and everyone else here. 

Thanks for the feedback! I definitely dislike propaganda, and would be curious to see which parts felt the most propaganda-y to you. Also, to echo Dario, below--- I appreciate your very kind delivery of the negative feedback. :)
I don't know if I will ever end up spending much time improving the story, as my life is pretty hectic at the moment, but I would be interested in any specific improvements you suggest. (So far, I haven't really tried much, but I've considered ways of addressing the inadequacy of the oak sprout metaphor by e.g. replacing it with something flammable.) 

I'm strongly in favour. I don't think keeping the forum more impersonal will improve the rationality of users (or very weakly if so). But I do think it'll make me (N=1) more likely to want to interact with it. I would use a non-photo image to display my personality.

The largest consideration against, I think, is that it may make existing users feel like this is an ickier place, and they may enjoy the impersonal feel of it.

The tax point is particularly relevant. I felt obliged to pay for a ticket previously as a high earner, but it felt odd and somewhat performative to do so when the net effect of donating directly to movement building instead seemed clearly better because the donation could be increased by doing so.

Some discussion about profile pictures for the Forum here [EA · GW]

Profile pictures for EA Forum?

One of the reasons I like posting on Facebook is because it gives me plenty of opportunities to display my personality (e.g. profile picture, banner, friends, etc.).  You might argue that it distracts from the content of the post, but... I don't think that's much of an effect?  I'd be more incentivised to interact with the forum if I could show more of myself here.

Great animated video version by CGP Grey - link

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response! I really appreciate your ideas. I'll reply inline here:

"Bigger and more-complex projects tend to be more important (or else we probably wouldn't do the project), and the complexity and size tend to make it harder to get started or get into a rhythm."

Totally agree with this, and these things are compounding.

Most of my claim is that some people struggle with a cognitive bias effect that pushes them to avoid all of this, all together.

So you're right, it's not necessarily always the "importance" of the project that leads to avoidance or a struggle to effectively prioritize it; instead, it can be the complexity or a lack of clarity or vision that keeps the project out of arm's reach.

Curiously, I often imagined that the people who struggle with the Importance-Avoidance Effect have typically already started their project(s) to some degree. And maybe they've even mapped out an outline of steps they need to follow to complete a series of milestones. Yet despite having had some start and having some clarity and vision, they lack the initiative and prioritization. This is very similar to what you describe as struggling to "get into a rhythm." I really like that phrasing.

But anyways, there may be several compounding effects leading to a disruption in getting in rhythm. And it's not always just the "importance" alone that is to blame. But the fact is that sometime it is a major contributor, and for me, that has been something I've neglected to recognize for years! Hence why I want to bring attention to it. (We've known about our inabilities to tackle projects of great complexity. And now I'm hoping to expand on that understanding.)

"I feel that I am decently capable of motivating myself to work on such projects [as simple data entry] in batches (perhaps even more so when it is more important!)"

That is fantastic that you are able to manage such dedication and prioritization. I'll be honest though, this is a major struggle for me and for some of my friends who I wrote this article about.

For us, no matter how little skill is required and no matter how simple the task may be, the more important it becomes, the less it gets reasonably prioritized and worked on. (I have two ongoing projects that have sat around for over a year because they only require about 10–25 hours of menial work to complete. I have tried working on them in "batches" or sessions, but those sessions are shorter and fewer and farther between... No amount emphasis on the "importance" increases motivation and prioritization. It often backfires.)

So whatever it is that you're doing that allows you to be able to muster that motivation and prioritization, please share 😄 (because I for one am not achieving that).

"These bigger and more-complex projects also tend to have longer deadlines, and longer deadlines plays into procrastination habits."

100% accurate. This is another compounding factor.

"If you notice yourself having to force/motivate yourself to work on something, it's typically because you don't want to do it despite its importance."

While this is certainly true in some cases, the people and projects I was thinking of when I wrote this would not fall into this category.

I posted this to the EA forums because the people I know who struggle with this are people who want to do these projects because of the project's importance, and because they genuinely want to do these things. They can't think of anything they would rather do. It really does become a life mission and grand purpose for them. They want to dedicate their lives to it, and they believe it is their magnum opus — their great contribution to making the world a better place.

Yet these same people find themselves needing effective strategies to "motivate" (initiate) themselves to do the hard work involved in getting these projects to fruition.

Hence why I mentioned this thought in the post:

"the solution is often about implementation strategies, such as basic behavioral change techniques to prioritize action"

"Is it possible that there is a degree of observation bias in that we might not notice all the cases where the importance of a project successfully motivated us to work on it? Or, perhaps more importantly/clearly, we might not consider all the times we just gave up on a potential project/task when we deemed it not important (rather than unsuccessfully berating ourselves to complete the task)?"

This is very plausible! Thank you for bringing this potential bias to this discussion.

How might we further explore this? If this is a possible blindspot for me, perhaps others might be consulted to provide more perspective on this.

However, I will note that, even if there are other cases not as readily considered, it might not necessarily change the idea that, in some key cases, this might be a very real problem people face.

The exciting thing about this is that, if we properly diagnose the problem as originating from this sort of avoidance effect, then we can just try out the best implementation strategies/techniques. See where that leads 🙂

"I think it's possible to overestimate the causal relationship between importance and avoidance due to other correlated factors and observation biases."

I agree. I don't want people running around "over-diagnosing" this 😅 especially when other factors might be much more significant, impactful, influential, etc.

But I also do want to bring this factor into our considerations, as I feel it can be easily overlooked and neglected. (Let's give it some of the attention it deserves for a while to see how prevalent and consequential the effect truly is.)

Helping governments and societies become, well, nicer.

I'm curious what ideas are out there for helping societies, or people in general, become nicer.

Thanks for this and the related work! Interesting to see the relatively small/insignificant effect on post frequency. I don't want to spend much time commenting here so I'll be very concise with my quick thoughts. They are just for the sake of feedback mainly so don't take them too seriously!

• I still think [55% confidence] that prizes probably do have an effect, mainly on those considering writing posts. The effect might not enough to justify doing them monthly though. However, annual prizes seem more likely to be cost-effective to me.
• Your 'prize posts' also curate good content and that is valuable for forum readers, I think
• I'd like an annual prize for the top posts/comments over the year, potentially with a crowdsourced component (i.e., forum users nominate/vote). 
• I like the creative writing prize and similar. I think it makes me many times more likely to produce creative content (which sadly doesn't overcome my time or ineptitude  :P)
• I like the idea of using prizes to spotlight and incentivise specific types of content.