This morning I gave a colloquium to my Psychology Department here at University of New Mexico. Most of the 30+ audience members had never heard of EA, although a few had a vague idea about it.
I analyzed 10 cognitive and emotional barriers that people face in accepting EA approaches to moral activism, from confirmation bias and speciesism to scope-insensitivity and Theory of Mind failures in understanding likely AGI systems.
I also made a pitch for more psychology grad students and faculty to get involved in EA, to share our expertise on human nature, statistics, research design, public outreach, program evaluation, mental health welfare issues, etc.
The powerpoint is here if anyone's interested: https://geoffrey-miller-y5jr.squarespace.com/s/EA-talk-march09-public-shorter-tcdh.pptx
I've proposed to give a similar but shorter talk at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) conference this June in Amsterdam, which is the main evolutionary psychology research meeting -- so I'd appreciate any feedback on this version.
This is well done! Acknowledging and talking about what makes hyper-rationalism repulsive to many people - mostly very unfairly! - is constructive and interesting.
Maybe out of scope, but in the introduction section describing EA, I'd probably also include a slide or two of some of the more reasonable criticisms of typical EA beliefs and behaviors as well, and separate those from the list of 10 barriers of bias and irrational intuition.
Doing that would better set aside the question of the merits of the EA approach, and make it easier to focus on these other blockers to wider adoption. It also would make the presentation come off more even-handed rather than "here are the bad reasons people don't support what I support". That might get you more buy-in from the more skeptical members of the audience, along with inducing some questioning about how to improve EA from people who do find the answers intuitive.