To be clear, I don’t think people have turned against earning to give as a concept, as in they think it’s no longer good or something.
But I do think people have turned against “donating $5K a year to GiveWell[1] is sufficient to feel like I’m an EA in good standing, that I’m impactful, and that I can feel good about myself and what I’m doing for the world” as a concept. And this seems pretty sad to me.
Moreover, there’s been a lot of pressure over the past five more recent years of EA to push people onto concrete “direct good” career paths, especially at the (elite) university level, and this is likely a good thing, but I think the next step is that people feel like failures if they don’t succeed along this path, when that wouldn’t be the emotions I would recommend.
Feel free to substitute in Animal Charity Evaluators, non-profits working on existential risk, Rethink Priorities, etc. as “GiveWell” specifically is not the important part of my point.
To be clear, I don’t think people have turned against earning to give as a concept, as in they think it’s no longer good or something.
But I do think people have turned against “donating $5K a year to GiveWell[1] is sufficient to feel like I’m an EA in good standing, that I’m impactful, and that I can feel good about myself and what I’m doing for the world” as a concept. And this seems pretty sad to me.
Moreover, there’s been a lot of pressure over the past five more recent years of EA to push people onto concrete “direct good” career paths, especially at the (elite) university level, and this is likely a good thing, but I think the next step is that people feel like failures if they don’t succeed along this path, when that wouldn’t be the emotions I would recommend.
Feel free to substitute in Animal Charity Evaluators, non-profits working on existential risk, Rethink Priorities, etc. as “GiveWell” specifically is not the important part of my point.