Can I say that I mean the following as both descriptive of reality and charitable? They ran that campaign as part of a considered strategy to produce the outcome which it got. *You saw it.*
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Replying to @patio11
I figured they probably knew the publicity would be negative. But is there a plausible story for why that's useful for the goal of helping animals?
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Replying to @juliagalef
If you grant people that work there the argument "Perpetuating PETA into the future helps animals. In fact, it is probably the most important thing we could do which helps animals." then "Crush our Q4 goals for brand awareness" very plausibly helps animals.
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Replying to @patio11
So you're suggesting that they have good reason to expect that, in the long run (increased $ from greater brand recognition) > (reduced effectiveness from annoying ppl / looking foolish) ?
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Replying to @juliagalef
Yep. They're not optimizing for likelihood of capturing a donation from Julia. They're optimizing for likelihood of capturing a donation from semi-informed person whose personal cause is animal welfare thinking "Hmm where does one donate given one's cause is animal welfare."
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Replying to @patio11 @juliagalef
And they can *bury us both* in evidence that this strategy is effective. PETA is the scissor factory.
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Replying to @patio11
But presumably they don't have evidence about how much this stuff hurts "animal welfare" as a cause in general. They could only have evidence about e.g. how it affects their donations. So they're just assuming that the good they can do via increased $ > the harm to the cause ?
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Replying to @juliagalef
If one is being maximally charitable to PETA, they think they have *overwhelming* evidence. "We turned $10 million into X police reports saving
$NUMBER abused animals. Each is a life we value as approximately equal to yours. Tell me more about my 'credibility' and its impact."3 replies 0 retweets 7 likes -
Replying to @patio11
But even if they think "$10 million from negative publicity --> N abused animals are saved" ... they must know that "negative publicity --> some people/businesses become unwilling to be associated with animal welfare --> M abused animals are *not* saved" Why think that N > M ?
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Replying to @juliagalef
In the status quo they operate in, most people who'd get turned off by negative publicity *eat meat.* PETA thinks they are lost causes. The entire game is convincing the sensible sliver of humanity to donate to the organization that will, someday, end meat eating.
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So their math is something more like: "OK, contingent on you believing with your heart and soul that an abused dog is approximately equal to Patrick in terms of moral worth, would poor execution on a marketing campaign cause you to not donate to animal welfare this year?"
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