It seems to me your key disagreement is with my view that promoting effective giving is compatible with (even complementary to) encouraging people to do direct work. Though, I’m not exactly sure I understand your precise claim — there are two I think you might be making, and I’ll respond to each.
One way to interpret what you’re saying is that you think that promoting effective giving actually reduces the number of people doing direct work:
Because in fact, effective giving is in tension with pursuing direct work.
As an example, you suggest that GWWC members, upon reading this post, might fail to switch to direct work due to its emphasis. I don’t agree, in part because I don’t think people are going to make career decisions based on the “emphasis” of a post, in spite of the fact that same post has a section titled “So, should I earn to give?” which highlights that:
It’s possible for donations to be impactful, but for direct work to be much more impactful.
And in part I disagree because I more broadly think that a journey from improving the world by effective giving, to doing direct work, is one many have already taken, and I expect many future people will continue to take. But I’m not sure how to resolve our disagreement about this broad point (as mentioned, I’ll be providing more arguments for it in an upcoming post).
But perhaps you aren’t making as strong a claim as this (that GWWC, and promoting effective giving generally, actually reduces the amount of people doing direct work). Another way to interpret you (based more off what you’ve said in our personal conversations than your comments here) is that, though GWWC and promoting effective giving likely does help encourage people to do direct work, it’s not “optimal” or “the best strategy now.”
The issue with this less strong view is I’m not sure I follow it, because I don’t know what you mean by optimal or “best strategy.” My claim is that effective giving should remain a part of the effective altruism portfolio, in part because effective giving — even from a longtermist perspective — is still impactful. The reason I think it should be part of the effective altruism portfolio isn’t because I think it provides the best marginal use of money or time from a longtermist perspective (I don’t think that’s the relevant bar).
Perhaps I can state my position in your terms: I think it wouldn’t be optimal for GWWC to stop promoting effective giving (from a longtermist worldview, but perhaps especially from other plausible non-longtermist worldviews). I also think it wouldn’t be optimal for us to be squeamish about mentioning that we think donations can be extremely impactful, for fear of making people mistakenly pursuing earning to give when direct work would have been better.
This is mostly responding to the negative case against effective giving, and I want to flag that I’m excited about promoting effective giving much more because of its positive case than my scepticism of the negative one! But I thought there was enough in this comment already for you to respond to.
Thanks for your reply.
It seems to me your key disagreement is with my view that promoting effective giving is compatible with (even complementary to) encouraging people to do direct work. Though, I’m not exactly sure I understand your precise claim — there are two I think you might be making, and I’ll respond to each.
One way to interpret what you’re saying is that you think that promoting effective giving actually reduces the number of people doing direct work:
As an example, you suggest that GWWC members, upon reading this post, might fail to switch to direct work due to its emphasis. I don’t agree, in part because I don’t think people are going to make career decisions based on the “emphasis” of a post, in spite of the fact that same post has a section titled “So, should I earn to give?” which highlights that:
And in part I disagree because I more broadly think that a journey from improving the world by effective giving, to doing direct work, is one many have already taken, and I expect many future people will continue to take. But I’m not sure how to resolve our disagreement about this broad point (as mentioned, I’ll be providing more arguments for it in an upcoming post).
But perhaps you aren’t making as strong a claim as this (that GWWC, and promoting effective giving generally, actually reduces the amount of people doing direct work). Another way to interpret you (based more off what you’ve said in our personal conversations than your comments here) is that, though GWWC and promoting effective giving likely does help encourage people to do direct work, it’s not “optimal” or “the best strategy now.”
The issue with this less strong view is I’m not sure I follow it, because I don’t know what you mean by optimal or “best strategy.” My claim is that effective giving should remain a part of the effective altruism portfolio, in part because effective giving — even from a longtermist perspective — is still impactful. The reason I think it should be part of the effective altruism portfolio isn’t because I think it provides the best marginal use of money or time from a longtermist perspective (I don’t think that’s the relevant bar).
Perhaps I can state my position in your terms: I think it wouldn’t be optimal for GWWC to stop promoting effective giving (from a longtermist worldview, but perhaps especially from other plausible non-longtermist worldviews). I also think it wouldn’t be optimal for us to be squeamish about mentioning that we think donations can be extremely impactful, for fear of making people mistakenly pursuing earning to give when direct work would have been better.
This is mostly responding to the negative case against effective giving, and I want to flag that I’m excited about promoting effective giving much more because of its positive case than my scepticism of the negative one! But I thought there was enough in this comment already for you to respond to.