I quite like this idea, and many of the most frugal people I know also do a ton of these things as well. I think a bunch of them pretty clearly signal altruism. Interestingly, I would say that things that make EA soft and cushy financially seem to cross apply to non-financial areas as well. E.g. I am not sure the average EA is working more hours compared to what they worked 5 years ago; even with the increases in salary, PAs and time to money tradeoffs.
I also agree there are a lot more that could be listed. I think “leave a fun and/or high-status job for an unpleasant and/or low-status one” hints at the idea of decisions that need to be made with competing values. I think this is maybe the biggest way more dedicated EAs have really different impacts vs less dedicated ones, e.g. it may not be the biggest part of someones impact if someone works 5% more or takes 5% less salary but it correlates (due to selection effect) with when hard choices come up with impact on one side and personal benefit on the other. The person is more likely to pick impact and this can lead to huge differences in impact. E.g. The charity research I find most fun to do might have ~0 impact whereas research I think is the highest impact might be considerably less fun, but significantly more valuable.
I quite like this idea, and many of the most frugal people I know also do a ton of these things as well. I think a bunch of them pretty clearly signal altruism. Interestingly, I would say that things that make EA soft and cushy financially seem to cross apply to non-financial areas as well. E.g. I am not sure the average EA is working more hours compared to what they worked 5 years ago; even with the increases in salary, PAs and time to money tradeoffs.
I also agree there are a lot more that could be listed. I think “leave a fun and/or high-status job for an unpleasant and/or low-status one” hints at the idea of decisions that need to be made with competing values. I think this is maybe the biggest way more dedicated EAs have really different impacts vs less dedicated ones, e.g. it may not be the biggest part of someones impact if someone works 5% more or takes 5% less salary but it correlates (due to selection effect) with when hard choices come up with impact on one side and personal benefit on the other. The person is more likely to pick impact and this can lead to huge differences in impact. E.g. The charity research I find most fun to do might have ~0 impact whereas research I think is the highest impact might be considerably less fun, but significantly more valuable.