“So if a $50 Uber ride saves me half an hour, my half an hour must be more valuable than a three months of someone else’s life. That’s a pretty big claim.”
That line hit hard. Something about reducing it to such a small scale made it really hit home—I can actually viscerally understand why there are people who agonise over every purchase and struggle so much with guilt. I’ve always been able to emotionally remain distant—to donate my 10%, save lives each year, and yet somehow be okay with not donating more, even though I could. Thinking of it in terms of a single purchase and weeks/months of someone’s life makes it feel so much more real all of a sudden, and my justifications of Schelling points and sustainable giving feel much more hollow.
Damn. Yeah I guess I implicitly think like this a lot, I feel very torn between telling you it’s okay don’t worry about it each person has their own comfort level, versus yeah, it’s real and those are real people and we’re really sacrificing their lives for petty pleasures.
I think a few things that help me:
Personally I feel I have much higher leverage with direct work rather than donations, so while money is a consideration it isn’t as important as time and focus on what’s highest leverage. Also, with direct work you can sometimes get sharply increasing returns, an effective entrepreneur or content creator may be many orders of magnitude better than an unsuccessful one. This may or may not apply to you.
I don’t feel things I can spend money on is a primary determinant of my happiness . Most luxuries on the hedonic treadmill don’t actually significantly make me happier long-term, what makes me happy is doing healthy things like diet & exercise (which also improve my productivity), spending time with people I love, and most of all, living by my values and knowing I am doing my best to help those in need (and so being able to help them a massive amount is a positive)
I don’t believe other people are full separate or different than myself. In some profound and deep sense helping them feels like helping myself, firstly enlightened self-interest where it feels good and makes me happier to help others, but in another sense maybe we fundamentally are the same universal consciousness behind each mask of individuality, a position called “open individualism.” Basically my consciousness is literally the same consciousness in each conscious being. Sorry if it sounds a little new-agey, but it really does help me not feel like I’m sacrificing so much, even if there’s only a small chance it’s true, since I have such absurd leverage the selfish expected value that it might be true could still bex extremely high.
“So if a $50 Uber ride saves me half an hour, my half an hour must be more valuable than a three months of someone else’s life. That’s a pretty big claim.”
That line hit hard. Something about reducing it to such a small scale made it really hit home—I can actually viscerally understand why there are people who agonise over every purchase and struggle so much with guilt. I’ve always been able to emotionally remain distant—to donate my 10%, save lives each year, and yet somehow be okay with not donating more, even though I could. Thinking of it in terms of a single purchase and weeks/months of someone’s life makes it feel so much more real all of a sudden, and my justifications of Schelling points and sustainable giving feel much more hollow.
Damn. Yeah I guess I implicitly think like this a lot, I feel very torn between telling you it’s okay don’t worry about it each person has their own comfort level, versus yeah, it’s real and those are real people and we’re really sacrificing their lives for petty pleasures.
I think a few things that help me:
Personally I feel I have much higher leverage with direct work rather than donations, so while money is a consideration it isn’t as important as time and focus on what’s highest leverage. Also, with direct work you can sometimes get sharply increasing returns, an effective entrepreneur or content creator may be many orders of magnitude better than an unsuccessful one. This may or may not apply to you.
I don’t feel things I can spend money on is a primary determinant of my happiness . Most luxuries on the hedonic treadmill don’t actually significantly make me happier long-term, what makes me happy is doing healthy things like diet & exercise (which also improve my productivity), spending time with people I love, and most of all, living by my values and knowing I am doing my best to help those in need (and so being able to help them a massive amount is a positive)
I don’t believe other people are full separate or different than myself. In some profound and deep sense helping them feels like helping myself, firstly enlightened self-interest where it feels good and makes me happier to help others, but in another sense maybe we fundamentally are the same universal consciousness behind each mask of individuality, a position called “open individualism.” Basically my consciousness is literally the same consciousness in each conscious being. Sorry if it sounds a little new-agey, but it really does help me not feel like I’m sacrificing so much, even if there’s only a small chance it’s true, since I have such absurd leverage the selfish expected value that it might be true could still bex extremely high.
Hope this helps, let me know your thoughts!