One thing worth pointing out is that doing non-meta work is actually quite hard. For instance, Harvard Effective Altruism has really struggled sometimes to find things to do other than organizing talks and outreach events. In a somewhat similar vein, it’s a lot easier for most people to earn money to fund eg global poverty causes, than to work directly on global poverty causes in an effective way.
Which is I think why actually doing some cool stuff would be attractive for people / demostrate that we aren’t just a cultish group of people that tithe/give in a slightly different way to several billion people doing it already.
I think Peter was primarily referring to launching and funding whole projects and/or organizations doing meta-work, not earning to give to an object-level cause as an individual.
Awesome post. Wholeheartedly agree.
One thing worth pointing out is that doing non-meta work is actually quite hard. For instance, Harvard Effective Altruism has really struggled sometimes to find things to do other than organizing talks and outreach events. In a somewhat similar vein, it’s a lot easier for most people to earn money to fund eg global poverty causes, than to work directly on global poverty causes in an effective way.
Which is I think why actually doing some cool stuff would be attractive for people / demostrate that we aren’t just a cultish group of people that tithe/give in a slightly different way to several billion people doing it already.
I think Peter was primarily referring to launching and funding whole projects and/or organizations doing meta-work, not earning to give to an object-level cause as an individual.