In general, when considering whether to do direct work or earn to give, you could ask yourself: am I in the top 15% of people in terms of comparative advantage at earning to give?
I don’t see a practical way to answer this question. You may have a sense of your absolute advantage at a career relative to other people, but to know your comparative advantage you have to know what you’re good at and which skills other people are relatively good or bad at.
I think you’re talking about absolute advantage here, not comparative advantage. Even if I can’t donate $8K, earning to give could still be my comparative advantage.
Suppose the best job I can get pays $40K and I could donate $8K of that, or I could do direct work. Someone else might be able to donate $40K or they could do direct work, and they’d be better at both than I am. If they’re more than 5x better at direct work than I am then I should earn to give, but it’s really hard for me to tell how much better they are at each thing. This gets even more complicated when you’re comparing lots of people instead of just two people.
Sure, but your absolute advantage may provide some evidence of a comparative advantage. If you can give say ~10X the top 90th percentile of self-identified EAs, you might also fine some direct work that allows you to contribute much more effectively than most EAs do directly, but it means there’s a higher bar to clear.
But many of those people aren’t earning to give. If they were, they would probably give more. So the survey doesn’t indicate you are in the top 15% in comparative advantage just because you could clear $8k.
If many of those people aren’t earning to give, then either fewer EAs are earning to give than is generally assumed, or the EA survey is not a representative sample of the EA population.
Alternatively, we may question the antecedent of that conditional, and either downgrade our confidence in our ability to infer whether someone is earning to give from information about how much they give, or lower the threshold for inferring that a person who fails to give at least that much is likely not earning to give.
I think that e.g. talking to someone at 80k can help give you a sense of this—certainly better than nothing. If you’re thinking of leaving earning to give, but people at 80k can think of several examples of people who are currently earning to give and have greater comparative advantage at direct work, then we can at least say that someone’s making a mistake.
I agree with you that as phrased, this question isn’t very useful.
The only way I can think that the EA community would be able to solve this kind of problem would be if an EA organization had detailed notes on everyone earning to give, and used that information to recommend actions to individuals. (This idea is kind of half baked and crazy but I’ve been thinking recently that it might be overall worthwhile.)
I don’t see a practical way to answer this question. You may have a sense of your absolute advantage at a career relative to other people, but to know your comparative advantage you have to know what you’re good at and which skills other people are relatively good or bad at.
...The top 10% of EAs in the 2015 EA survey gave $8K/year each or more, which isn’t a high bar to clear.
I think you’re talking about absolute advantage here, not comparative advantage. Even if I can’t donate $8K, earning to give could still be my comparative advantage.
Suppose the best job I can get pays $40K and I could donate $8K of that, or I could do direct work. Someone else might be able to donate $40K or they could do direct work, and they’d be better at both than I am. If they’re more than 5x better at direct work than I am then I should earn to give, but it’s really hard for me to tell how much better they are at each thing. This gets even more complicated when you’re comparing lots of people instead of just two people.
Sure, but your absolute advantage may provide some evidence of a comparative advantage. If you can give say ~10X the top 90th percentile of self-identified EAs, you might also fine some direct work that allows you to contribute much more effectively than most EAs do directly, but it means there’s a higher bar to clear.
But many of those people aren’t earning to give. If they were, they would probably give more. So the survey doesn’t indicate you are in the top 15% in comparative advantage just because you could clear $8k.
If many of those people aren’t earning to give, then either fewer EAs are earning to give than is generally assumed, or the EA survey is not a representative sample of the EA population.
Alternatively, we may question the antecedent of that conditional, and either downgrade our confidence in our ability to infer whether someone is earning to give from information about how much they give, or lower the threshold for inferring that a person who fails to give at least that much is likely not earning to give.
I think that e.g. talking to someone at 80k can help give you a sense of this—certainly better than nothing. If you’re thinking of leaving earning to give, but people at 80k can think of several examples of people who are currently earning to give and have greater comparative advantage at direct work, then we can at least say that someone’s making a mistake.
I agree with you that as phrased, this question isn’t very useful.
The only way I can think that the EA community would be able to solve this kind of problem would be if an EA organization had detailed notes on everyone earning to give, and used that information to recommend actions to individuals. (This idea is kind of half baked and crazy but I’ve been thinking recently that it might be overall worthwhile.)