@cdc482 I share your concerns, suspect many others to as well, and appreciate the honesty of this post.
I think a lot of whether it’s worth taking higher-risk-higher-reward paths toward doing good depends on a lot of specifics. Specifics such as those covered in 80K’s framework (https://80000hours.org/articles/framework/).
In particular, the question about earning vs. working on the front lines has to do with what sort of needs your cause has, and your would-be ‘role impact’. Is the cause more funding-constrained, research-constrained, talent-constrained in other ways? If the constraints involve certain talents, do you have, and/or could you (further) cultivate the needed talents? Also, do you have solid backup options if the risky plan doesn’t work out?
I’ll tell my own EA story a bit in case you can relate. In my case, I’m relatively set—but not dead-set—on making animal advocacy my primary cause for the majority of my life. I’m earning-to-give-and-skill-up as a software developer, at least in the short term, for the following reasons:
because I understand the animal protection movement to be more funding-constrained than starving for very particular talents that I currently have;
to skill up on tech talents that can be potentially useful to any movement;
to give myself a solid for-profit career option in the event that I tried something else;
given the high ‘exploration value’ of seeing about doing tech entrepreneurship somewhere down the line;
to give myself time to assess whether there are better causes than animal protection (x-risk is an enticing cause and I still want to think/learn more about issues like tractability, the importance of values-spreading, etc.).
@cdc482 I share your concerns, suspect many others to as well, and appreciate the honesty of this post.
I think a lot of whether it’s worth taking higher-risk-higher-reward paths toward doing good depends on a lot of specifics. Specifics such as those covered in 80K’s framework (https://80000hours.org/articles/framework/).
In particular, the question about earning vs. working on the front lines has to do with what sort of needs your cause has, and your would-be ‘role impact’. Is the cause more funding-constrained, research-constrained, talent-constrained in other ways? If the constraints involve certain talents, do you have, and/or could you (further) cultivate the needed talents? Also, do you have solid backup options if the risky plan doesn’t work out?
I’ll tell my own EA story a bit in case you can relate. In my case, I’m relatively set—but not dead-set—on making animal advocacy my primary cause for the majority of my life. I’m earning-to-give-and-skill-up as a software developer, at least in the short term, for the following reasons:
because I understand the animal protection movement to be more funding-constrained than starving for very particular talents that I currently have;
to skill up on tech talents that can be potentially useful to any movement;
to give myself a solid for-profit career option in the event that I tried something else;
given the high ‘exploration value’ of seeing about doing tech entrepreneurship somewhere down the line;
to give myself time to assess whether there are better causes than animal protection (x-risk is an enticing cause and I still want to think/learn more about issues like tractability, the importance of values-spreading, etc.).
Here is a provocative piece that challenges people to think outside of the box of merely earning-to-give long term: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/