One thing I often see on the forum is a conflation of ‘direct work’ and ‘working at EA orgs’. These strike me as two pretty different things, where I see ‘working at EA orgs’ as meaning ‘working at an organisation that explicitly identifies itself as EA’ and ‘direct work’ as being work that directly aims to improve lives as opposed to aiming to eg make money to donate. My view is that the vast majority of EAs should be doing direct work but not at EA orgs—working in government, at the think tanks, in foundations and in influential companies. Conflating these two concepts seems really bad because it encourages people to focus on a very narrow subset of ‘direct impact’ jobs—those that are at the very few, small organisations which explicitly identify with the EA movement.
A trap I think a lot of us fall into at some time or other is thinking that in order to be a ‘good EA’ you have to do ALL THE THINGS: have a directly impactful job, donate money to a charity you deeply researched, live frugally, eat vegan etc. When, inevitably, you don’t live up to a bunch of these standards, it’s easy to assume others will judge you. That has usually turned out to be wrong in my experience. People greatly differ in how much of a sacrifice specific things are to them, and how comfortable they are with different levels of sacrifice. I felt very guilty about eating meat for years, without succeeding in really changing my eating habits at all, until a colleague (who was vegan) donated to ACE on my behalf as an off-set and told me to quit spending emotional energy on my diet and get back to work. Another colleague, on joining the organisation, was worried people would be judging her ring for being a waste of money (which was an artificial diamond, and so cheaper than it appeared), but not a single person had noticed it except to think how pretty it was. In my experience, people we meet in this community are all trying hard to help others, and while doing that they’re appreciating the great work of those around them doing the same, regardless of what form that takes. 10 years into Giving What We Can’s life, it still blows me away that there are so many people willing to give away 10% of their incomes to make the world a better place. It’s great that we’re all pushing ourselves to do more, but I hope people feel appreciated rather than judged by the larger community.
I Jessica, IIRC the main problem you’ll likely encounter is that some naïve cost-effectiveness estimates will give you a really low figure, like donating $1 to corporate campaigns is as effective as being vegan a whole year. (Not exactly, but that order of magnitude.)
Given that I’m inclined to just make it the lowest amount that feels substantial and like it would actually plausibly be enough to make someone else veg*n for a year — for me that means about $100 a year.
I think he donated £25 for that year, but I’m not sure how he picked that number and I have to admit I haven’t been very systematic since then. I think the following year I donated £100 to ACE, then missed a year, then for 2 years did 10% of my annual donations to the animal welfare EA fund (I’m a member of Giving What We Can, so that’s 1% of my salary).
I’m not sure I have a reasoned case for donating to animal welfare charities as offsets, since the animals that are helped are different to those I harm and consequentially it would surely be best to make all my donations to the organisation I think will help sentient beings most. But it seems pretty good to remember that I think it’s important and impactful to help various groups to whom I don’t give the lions share of my donations, and it seems plausibly good to show to others that I care about them by doing something concrete. With those considerations in mind it simply seems important for the donation to be an amount that feels non-negligible to me and others, rather than an amount exactly equal to the harm I’m doing. (That may simply be a rationalisation though, because I would rather not know exactly how much harm I’m causing and it would be a hassle to figure it out.)
I’m not convinced by the idea of doing something harmful “on purpose” and then compensating for it to be able to continue the harmful behaviour without feeling guilty. Additionally, as people who have been in the EA community for a long time, I think there is a chance that we will be seen as representatives of the movement, and this gives us an additional responsibility because others might take our actions as an example and behave in a similar way (e.g. in this case, “ah! it’s ok to eat meat if I donate £25-100 a year to ACE). If I imagined that it was me, and someone was doing something harmful to me during the year and helping me to compensate for the harm so that they wouldn’t feel too bad about harming me again next year—I would find that disturbing.
This being said, I agree with the other parts of your previous comment, e.g. on ‘direct work’ and ‘working at EA orgs’; and that “people greatly differ in how much of a sacrifice specific things are to them, and how comfortable they are with different levels of sacrifice.” Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Michelle!
What do you think the typical EA Forum reader is most likely wrong about?
One thing I often see on the forum is a conflation of ‘direct work’ and ‘working at EA orgs’. These strike me as two pretty different things, where I see ‘working at EA orgs’ as meaning ‘working at an organisation that explicitly identifies itself as EA’ and ‘direct work’ as being work that directly aims to improve lives as opposed to aiming to eg make money to donate. My view is that the vast majority of EAs should be doing direct work but not at EA orgs—working in government, at the think tanks, in foundations and in influential companies. Conflating these two concepts seems really bad because it encourages people to focus on a very narrow subset of ‘direct impact’ jobs—those that are at the very few, small organisations which explicitly identify with the EA movement.
A trap I think a lot of us fall into at some time or other is thinking that in order to be a ‘good EA’ you have to do ALL THE THINGS: have a directly impactful job, donate money to a charity you deeply researched, live frugally, eat vegan etc. When, inevitably, you don’t live up to a bunch of these standards, it’s easy to assume others will judge you. That has usually turned out to be wrong in my experience. People greatly differ in how much of a sacrifice specific things are to them, and how comfortable they are with different levels of sacrifice. I felt very guilty about eating meat for years, without succeeding in really changing my eating habits at all, until a colleague (who was vegan) donated to ACE on my behalf as an off-set and told me to quit spending emotional energy on my diet and get back to work. Another colleague, on joining the organisation, was worried people would be judging her ring for being a waste of money (which was an artificial diamond, and so cheaper than it appeared), but not a single person had noticed it except to think how pretty it was. In my experience, people we meet in this community are all trying hard to help others, and while doing that they’re appreciating the great work of those around them doing the same, regardless of what form that takes. 10 years into Giving What We Can’s life, it still blows me away that there are so many people willing to give away 10% of their incomes to make the world a better place. It’s great that we’re all pushing ourselves to do more, but I hope people feel appreciated rather than judged by the larger community.
Could you possibly share how much the ACE off-set was? I have been having trouble finding a good number for this when people ask me about it.
I Jessica, IIRC the main problem you’ll likely encounter is that some naïve cost-effectiveness estimates will give you a really low figure, like donating $1 to corporate campaigns is as effective as being vegan a whole year. (Not exactly, but that order of magnitude.)
Given that I’m inclined to just make it the lowest amount that feels substantial and like it would actually plausibly be enough to make someone else veg*n for a year — for me that means about $100 a year.
I think he donated £25 for that year, but I’m not sure how he picked that number and I have to admit I haven’t been very systematic since then. I think the following year I donated £100 to ACE, then missed a year, then for 2 years did 10% of my annual donations to the animal welfare EA fund (I’m a member of Giving What We Can, so that’s 1% of my salary).
I’m not sure I have a reasoned case for donating to animal welfare charities as offsets, since the animals that are helped are different to those I harm and consequentially it would surely be best to make all my donations to the organisation I think will help sentient beings most. But it seems pretty good to remember that I think it’s important and impactful to help various groups to whom I don’t give the lions share of my donations, and it seems plausibly good to show to others that I care about them by doing something concrete. With those considerations in mind it simply seems important for the donation to be an amount that feels non-negligible to me and others, rather than an amount exactly equal to the harm I’m doing. (That may simply be a rationalisation though, because I would rather not know exactly how much harm I’m causing and it would be a hassle to figure it out.)
I’m not convinced by the idea of doing something harmful “on purpose” and then compensating for it to be able to continue the harmful behaviour without feeling guilty. Additionally, as people who have been in the EA community for a long time, I think there is a chance that we will be seen as representatives of the movement, and this gives us an additional responsibility because others might take our actions as an example and behave in a similar way (e.g. in this case, “ah! it’s ok to eat meat if I donate £25-100 a year to ACE).
If I imagined that it was me, and someone was doing something harmful to me during the year and helping me to compensate for the harm so that they wouldn’t feel too bad about harming me again next year—I would find that disturbing.
This being said, I agree with the other parts of your previous comment, e.g. on ‘direct work’ and ‘working at EA orgs’; and that “people greatly differ in how much of a sacrifice specific things are to them, and how comfortable they are with different levels of sacrifice.” Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Michelle!