Are young people really more idealistic than older people? More young people attend protests but more older people participate in lobbying, fund political parties, and provide most funding for charities. Perhaps a large fraction of what is going on just relates to older people possessing different kinds of resources from young people. Do you agree or disagree?
This doesn’t surprise me. I have friends who treat protests very seriously, and though I can’t think of any, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of my friends treated them as a recreational event, either. Being activists, and philanthropists, ourselves, during, or prior, our lives as effective altruists, I imagine lots of us have friends who are involved in protest movements, to the point that we, or they, might call them(selves) ‘career activists’. That is, especially if you live a metropolitan area, some people will become involved in multiple public advocacy causes, and treat activism as part of their lifestyle, or a part-time job.
For people treating it more like a hobby than a part-time job as they integrate it into their lifestyle, they may think of it as a recreational event. For some activists, it’s easy for me to imagine protests being a recreational event and serious business, much like a ‘work function’ might be an office-sanctioned party with prospective clients present is for white-collar professionals.
In hindsight, it’d be interesting if there was greater discussion of ‘career activism’ on this forum, as people who live such a lifestyle are the closest set of people I’m aware of who claim to be dedicating their lives to doing good as seriously as effective altruists do, without actually being part of effective altruism. Of course, there is serious overlap between these two lifestyles as well.
Back when I was involved with party politics, I heard someone mention that pensioners with basically unlimited free time were a really major asset for the campaigns of the older and more established parties.
I can’t find it right now, but Leah Libresco posted on Unequally Yoked lately about how she hypothesizes that her life would be richer from having a larger demographic catchment as part of her regular social life/circle. In between that, your above comment, and the idea that ‘life experience’ can be tabooed as ‘epic procedural knowledge gaps between you and your elders’, I’m pondering “why aren’t we getting more of the older generations to join effective altruism??”.
I don’t actually want effective altruism to have an implicit ageism bias, and if it does, I hope this thread results is some proposals for resolving it.
Do you have figures for this? They could be relevant for EA groups which focus on raising funds (like local groups with older members, or older people in their social networks).
Here is a popular article on the topic. The reason for fundraising from younger people would be that they may be note willing to donate to a new charity.
I agree, because people of all different demographics not only have different kinds of resources, but different opportunities.
Young people are more likely to have time to attend protests, and involve themselves in activism. It’s easier to schedule those events around a shift at your part-time job, or a single class you have that day, than a business meeting, crucial to your career, the sort of which will become more common in your thirties. There’s also a lower cost to social status if young people do things that look weird, and deviate from societal norms, which tend to be set by an older, possibly less active, generation. At a younger age, what individuals lack is soft power, and influence. After all, if they could change things without protest action, surely they would try do so more readily.
Of course, the older generation, between the ages of 30 and 50, is hardly inactive, really. They just focus on different things, because they have different motivations. This is a time when, keeping up appearances to stay ahead in the rat race, one cannot take as many personal risks without risking career capital. People of this demographic are also more likely to have a large(r) family of dependents, such as young children, and elderly parents. In addition to the high constraints all this may place on time and money, the fact that this is family may cause people to focus less upon distant others. This is understandable. People of this cohort are still altruistic, though. However, upon focusing on their career development, family, and community, they’re more likely to support causes that have been brought to their attention by their default circle of influence. They may fund donation drives at their children’s school, or at the workplace, they may volunteer locally, and they may count the community involvement they do for fun altruistic in its own right as well. Also, because they have so much to care for, people of prime working age may be minimizing extra costs, such as donated time or money, to hedge against unknown risks such as family emergencies, etc.
As people age, their children, and other family, are no longer dependent upon them. After retirement, people have more time. Even in the later parts of one’s career, before retirement, one may own a business, or be in a position for which one doesn’t need to put in extra effort beyond the requirements to stay afloat, or get ahead. Elders have more money to donate to political causes, but they also leave legacy gifts, endowments, and the like. This happens at a time when they’re more respected in society as elders, and may have more soft power anyway. Additionally, they either have more money than they’ll ever need, or they at least have greater confidence in how secure the money they have saved will support them for the remainder of their lives. Finally, they may think about supporting grander causes in a broader way than what they did with altruism earlier in their life, as they think about how they’ll want to be known, and remembered.
This model above is a hypothesis for a trend. Of course, there will be outliers. Mark Zuckerburg is influencing the world in ways many in their twenties couldn’t have dreamed of, while they’re still trying to get on the career track. On the converse, it would be crass of us to just assume the typical senior has money they’re sitting on that they could give away, when many pensioners themselves are in need. Indeed, I believe that increasing the healthspan of seniors could be considered one of the most effective altruism opportunities available, given the right research, and application of it. Anyway, this model seems simple enough to verify, or falsify, by checking the right sort of data.
What I’m trying to show is that it seems intuitively plausible that everyone has ideals, and everyone cares, but society drives people to care about different things in different ways over the course of their lives. To a parent, ‘ensuring my child grows up happy, healthy, and safe’ may be an ideal felt as strongly by a young activist yet without children pushing for some greater equity, or equality, in society. Cynicism of any particular generation doesn’t need to be rejected on the basis that it’s unattractive; rather, the cynical approach of older generations don’t care, or young people are too naive, may not explain as much as simply as this other model.
Ryan, if you think this hypothesis may hold weight, where could someone access the data to check? If not you, would someone at 80,000 Hours know? I feel as if that if we could figure this out, it could be not only an optimistic but also truer message that, e.g., Will MacAskill could put into his book. For people of any age, effective altruism will be non-conformist. If we can paint a positive picture that everyone cares, and wants to care, about the world, but just socially pushed in different directions, people new to effective altruism might realize that they can get off the hedonic treadmill anytime they like, rethink where they focus their resources for doing good, and find support in others.
Are young people really more idealistic than older people? More young people attend protests but more older people participate in lobbying, fund political parties, and provide most funding for charities. Perhaps a large fraction of what is going on just relates to older people possessing different kinds of resources from young people. Do you agree or disagree?
Many young people I know basically treat protests as a recreational event.
This doesn’t surprise me. I have friends who treat protests very seriously, and though I can’t think of any, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of my friends treated them as a recreational event, either. Being activists, and philanthropists, ourselves, during, or prior, our lives as effective altruists, I imagine lots of us have friends who are involved in protest movements, to the point that we, or they, might call them(selves) ‘career activists’. That is, especially if you live a metropolitan area, some people will become involved in multiple public advocacy causes, and treat activism as part of their lifestyle, or a part-time job.
For people treating it more like a hobby than a part-time job as they integrate it into their lifestyle, they may think of it as a recreational event. For some activists, it’s easy for me to imagine protests being a recreational event and serious business, much like a ‘work function’ might be an office-sanctioned party with prospective clients present is for white-collar professionals.
In hindsight, it’d be interesting if there was greater discussion of ‘career activism’ on this forum, as people who live such a lifestyle are the closest set of people I’m aware of who claim to be dedicating their lives to doing good as seriously as effective altruists do, without actually being part of effective altruism. Of course, there is serious overlap between these two lifestyles as well.
I think old people just have more resources than young people, so they give less as a proportion of their resources.
Alternatively, you might think old people have had a lot of time to develop commitments to various causes, and so feel obligated to give more.
Back when I was involved with party politics, I heard someone mention that pensioners with basically unlimited free time were a really major asset for the campaigns of the older and more established parties.
I can’t find it right now, but Leah Libresco posted on Unequally Yoked lately about how she hypothesizes that her life would be richer from having a larger demographic catchment as part of her regular social life/circle. In between that, your above comment, and the idea that ‘life experience’ can be tabooed as ‘epic procedural knowledge gaps between you and your elders’, I’m pondering “why aren’t we getting more of the older generations to join effective altruism??”.
I don’t actually want effective altruism to have an implicit ageism bias, and if it does, I hope this thread results is some proposals for resolving it.
Do you have figures for this? They could be relevant for EA groups which focus on raising funds (like local groups with older members, or older people in their social networks).
Here is a popular article on the topic. The reason for fundraising from younger people would be that they may be note willing to donate to a new charity.
I agree, because people of all different demographics not only have different kinds of resources, but different opportunities.
Young people are more likely to have time to attend protests, and involve themselves in activism. It’s easier to schedule those events around a shift at your part-time job, or a single class you have that day, than a business meeting, crucial to your career, the sort of which will become more common in your thirties. There’s also a lower cost to social status if young people do things that look weird, and deviate from societal norms, which tend to be set by an older, possibly less active, generation. At a younger age, what individuals lack is soft power, and influence. After all, if they could change things without protest action, surely they would try do so more readily.
Of course, the older generation, between the ages of 30 and 50, is hardly inactive, really. They just focus on different things, because they have different motivations. This is a time when, keeping up appearances to stay ahead in the rat race, one cannot take as many personal risks without risking career capital. People of this demographic are also more likely to have a large(r) family of dependents, such as young children, and elderly parents. In addition to the high constraints all this may place on time and money, the fact that this is family may cause people to focus less upon distant others. This is understandable. People of this cohort are still altruistic, though. However, upon focusing on their career development, family, and community, they’re more likely to support causes that have been brought to their attention by their default circle of influence. They may fund donation drives at their children’s school, or at the workplace, they may volunteer locally, and they may count the community involvement they do for fun altruistic in its own right as well. Also, because they have so much to care for, people of prime working age may be minimizing extra costs, such as donated time or money, to hedge against unknown risks such as family emergencies, etc.
As people age, their children, and other family, are no longer dependent upon them. After retirement, people have more time. Even in the later parts of one’s career, before retirement, one may own a business, or be in a position for which one doesn’t need to put in extra effort beyond the requirements to stay afloat, or get ahead. Elders have more money to donate to political causes, but they also leave legacy gifts, endowments, and the like. This happens at a time when they’re more respected in society as elders, and may have more soft power anyway. Additionally, they either have more money than they’ll ever need, or they at least have greater confidence in how secure the money they have saved will support them for the remainder of their lives. Finally, they may think about supporting grander causes in a broader way than what they did with altruism earlier in their life, as they think about how they’ll want to be known, and remembered.
This model above is a hypothesis for a trend. Of course, there will be outliers. Mark Zuckerburg is influencing the world in ways many in their twenties couldn’t have dreamed of, while they’re still trying to get on the career track. On the converse, it would be crass of us to just assume the typical senior has money they’re sitting on that they could give away, when many pensioners themselves are in need. Indeed, I believe that increasing the healthspan of seniors could be considered one of the most effective altruism opportunities available, given the right research, and application of it. Anyway, this model seems simple enough to verify, or falsify, by checking the right sort of data.
What I’m trying to show is that it seems intuitively plausible that everyone has ideals, and everyone cares, but society drives people to care about different things in different ways over the course of their lives. To a parent, ‘ensuring my child grows up happy, healthy, and safe’ may be an ideal felt as strongly by a young activist yet without children pushing for some greater equity, or equality, in society. Cynicism of any particular generation doesn’t need to be rejected on the basis that it’s unattractive; rather, the cynical approach of older generations don’t care, or young people are too naive, may not explain as much as simply as this other model.
Ryan, if you think this hypothesis may hold weight, where could someone access the data to check? If not you, would someone at 80,000 Hours know? I feel as if that if we could figure this out, it could be not only an optimistic but also truer message that, e.g., Will MacAskill could put into his book. For people of any age, effective altruism will be non-conformist. If we can paint a positive picture that everyone cares, and wants to care, about the world, but just socially pushed in different directions, people new to effective altruism might realize that they can get off the hedonic treadmill anytime they like, rethink where they focus their resources for doing good, and find support in others.
I’m not sure. I think the data you want is who donates and volunteers more, and how does this relate to age and income? Maybe census data would help?
Yeah, that’s the sort of data I’m thinking of. Honestly, I’m not very thoughtful when it comes to these things. Thanks for the pointer.