As someone who intuitively relates to Maya & can understand where they’re coming from, I really enjoyed your comment. In particular, I thought your point on “maximising our resources does mean taking into account the importance of human connection and acting accordingly” was eloquently articulated.
I will note, however, that this frame isn’t wholly satisfactory to me as it can lead me to view self-care etc. only as instrumental to the goal of optimizing for impact. While this is somewhat addressed by the postAiming for the minimum of self-care is dangerous, this outcome-focused frame (e.g., “self-care is necessary to sustainably make impact”) still leads me to feel like I have no value outside of the impact I can have and ties my self-worth too much to consequences.
But I know this isn’t a problem for everyone—maybe this is just because I don’t identify as a consequentialist, or because of my mental health issues! Regardless, I appreciated your thorough response to this post.
While the point I was making was about authenticity rather than self-care, (“the importance of human connection” being about 1:1′s with potential EA’s, rather than all human connection in one’s life) I think your frame could apply to both.
It’s definitely true that self-care is necessary for sustainable impact. However, given the question of “In the least convenient possible world, if you actually could maximise your overall lifetime impact by throwing self-care under the bus, should you?” I notice that I am still reluctant to do this or recommend it to anyone else, and that applies to authenticity too. I don’t think we should expect anyone to sacrifice their own happiness or their own morality, even if doing so actually would maximise impact.*
It would be wrong to say we should never sacrifice. Some of us sacrifice money, some of us sacrifice time, some of us sacrifice the causes that intuitively feel dear to us in favor of ones that are further away in space or time and don’t feel as compelling. But there are definitely things I would never ask anyone to sacrifice, and happiness/morals are two of them.
Part of the reason is consequential. The more demanding EA as a group is, the less people we attract and the greater the risk of burnout we already have. But even in the least convenient possible world where this wasn’t a problem, I think that if I had the ability to mandate what people in EA should sacrifice, I would still say “Sacrifice what you can without meaningfully impacting your quality of life”. If someone wants to sacrifice more I wouldn’t stop them, but I wouldn’t ask it of them.
And if the amount someone can sacrifice without meaningfully impacting their quality of life is next-to-nothing, I would tell them to focus on taking care of themselves and building themselves up. Not because it would lead to maximum impact later, even though it probably would. But because it’s the right thing to do.
*I could imagine ridiculous scenarios like “Do something you find morally wrong or the entire planet blows up” where this no longer applies, but here I’m referring mostly to the real tradeoffs we face every day.
As someone who intuitively relates to Maya & can understand where they’re coming from, I really enjoyed your comment. In particular, I thought your point on “maximising our resources does mean taking into account the importance of human connection and acting accordingly” was eloquently articulated.
I will note, however, that this frame isn’t wholly satisfactory to me as it can lead me to view self-care etc. only as instrumental to the goal of optimizing for impact. While this is somewhat addressed by the post Aiming for the minimum of self-care is dangerous, this outcome-focused frame (e.g., “self-care is necessary to sustainably make impact”) still leads me to feel like I have no value outside of the impact I can have and ties my self-worth too much to consequences.
But I know this isn’t a problem for everyone—maybe this is just because I don’t identify as a consequentialist, or because of my mental health issues! Regardless, I appreciated your thorough response to this post.
While the point I was making was about authenticity rather than self-care, (“the importance of human connection” being about 1:1′s with potential EA’s, rather than all human connection in one’s life) I think your frame could apply to both.
It’s definitely true that self-care is necessary for sustainable impact. However, given the question of “In the least convenient possible world, if you actually could maximise your overall lifetime impact by throwing self-care under the bus, should you?” I notice that I am still reluctant to do this or recommend it to anyone else, and that applies to authenticity too. I don’t think we should expect anyone to sacrifice their own happiness or their own morality, even if doing so actually would maximise impact.*
It would be wrong to say we should never sacrifice. Some of us sacrifice money, some of us sacrifice time, some of us sacrifice the causes that intuitively feel dear to us in favor of ones that are further away in space or time and don’t feel as compelling. But there are definitely things I would never ask anyone to sacrifice, and happiness/morals are two of them.
Part of the reason is consequential. The more demanding EA as a group is, the less people we attract and the greater the risk of burnout we already have. But even in the least convenient possible world where this wasn’t a problem, I think that if I had the ability to mandate what people in EA should sacrifice, I would still say “Sacrifice what you can without meaningfully impacting your quality of life”. If someone wants to sacrifice more I wouldn’t stop them, but I wouldn’t ask it of them.
And if the amount someone can sacrifice without meaningfully impacting their quality of life is next-to-nothing, I would tell them to focus on taking care of themselves and building themselves up. Not because it would lead to maximum impact later, even though it probably would. But because it’s the right thing to do.
*I could imagine ridiculous scenarios like “Do something you find morally wrong or the entire planet blows up” where this no longer applies, but here I’m referring mostly to the real tradeoffs we face every day.