I feel like you should be able to “unpledge” in that case, and further I don’t think you should feel shame or face stigma for this. There’s a few reasons I think this:
You’re working for an EA org. If you think your org is ~as effective as where you’d donate, it doesn’t make sense for them to pay you money that you then donate (unless if you felt there was some psychological benefit to this, but clearly you feel the reverse)
The community has a LOT of money now. I’m not sure what your salary is, but I’d guess it’s lower than optimal given community resources, so you donating money to the community pot is probably the reverse of what I’d want.
I don’t want the community to be making people feel psychologically worse, and insofar as it is, I want an easy out for them. Therefore, I want people in your situation in general to unpledge and not feel shame or face stigma. My guess is that if you did so, you’d be sending a signal to others that doing so is acceptable.
You signed the pledge under a set of assumptions which appear to no longer hold (eg., about how you’d feel about the pledge years out, how much money the community would have, etc)
I’m generally pro-[people being able to “break contract” and similar without facing large penalties] (other than paying damages, but damages here would be zero since presumably no org made specific plans on the assumption that you’d continue to follow the pledge) – this reduces friction in making contracts to begin with and allows for more dynamism. Yes, a “pledge” in some ways has more meaning than a contract, but seeing as you (apparently) made the pledge relatively hastily (and perhaps under pressure from other? I find this unclear from your post), it doesn’t seem like it was appropriate for you to have been making a lifelong commitment to the pledge, and I think we as a community should recognize that and adjust our response accordingly.
Here is the relevant version of the pledge, from December 2014:
I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good in the developing world. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that for the rest of my life or until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to help people in developing countries, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.
A large part of the point of the pledge is to bind your future self in case your future self is less altruistic. If you allow people to break it based on how they feel, that would dramatically undermine the purpose of the pledge. It might well be the case that the pledge is bad because it contains implicit empirical premises that might cease to hold—indeed I argued this at the time! - but that doesn’t change the fact that someone did in fact make this commitment. If people want to make a weak statement of intent they are always able to do this—they can just say “yeah I will probably donate for as long as I feel like it”. But the pledge is significantly different from this, and attempting to weaken it to be no commitment at all entails robbing people of the ability to make such commitments.
Your argument about damages seems quite strange. If I buy something from a small business, promise to pay in 30 days, and then do not do so, my failure to pay damages them. This is the case even if they hadn’t made any specific plans for what to do with that cashflow, and even if I bought through an online platform and hence don’t know exactly who would have received the money. The damages are precisely equal to the amount of money I owe the firm—and hence, in the case of the pledge, the damages would be equal to (the NPV of) the pledged income.
I agree with Buck that people should take lifelong commitments more seriously than they have. Part of taking them seriously is respecting their lifelong nature.
I feel like you should be able to “unpledge” in that case, and further I don’t think you should feel shame or face stigma for this. There’s a few reasons I think this:
You’re working for an EA org. If you think your org is ~as effective as where you’d donate, it doesn’t make sense for them to pay you money that you then donate (unless if you felt there was some psychological benefit to this, but clearly you feel the reverse)
The community has a LOT of money now. I’m not sure what your salary is, but I’d guess it’s lower than optimal given community resources, so you donating money to the community pot is probably the reverse of what I’d want.
I don’t want the community to be making people feel psychologically worse, and insofar as it is, I want an easy out for them. Therefore, I want people in your situation in general to unpledge and not feel shame or face stigma. My guess is that if you did so, you’d be sending a signal to others that doing so is acceptable.
You signed the pledge under a set of assumptions which appear to no longer hold (eg., about how you’d feel about the pledge years out, how much money the community would have, etc)
I’m generally pro-[people being able to “break contract” and similar without facing large penalties] (other than paying damages, but damages here would be zero since presumably no org made specific plans on the assumption that you’d continue to follow the pledge) – this reduces friction in making contracts to begin with and allows for more dynamism. Yes, a “pledge” in some ways has more meaning than a contract, but seeing as you (apparently) made the pledge relatively hastily (and perhaps under pressure from other? I find this unclear from your post), it doesn’t seem like it was appropriate for you to have been making a lifelong commitment to the pledge, and I think we as a community should recognize that and adjust our response accordingly.
Here is the relevant version of the pledge, from December 2014:
A large part of the point of the pledge is to bind your future self in case your future self is less altruistic. If you allow people to break it based on how they feel, that would dramatically undermine the purpose of the pledge. It might well be the case that the pledge is bad because it contains implicit empirical premises that might cease to hold—indeed I argued this at the time! - but that doesn’t change the fact that someone did in fact make this commitment. If people want to make a weak statement of intent they are always able to do this—they can just say “yeah I will probably donate for as long as I feel like it”. But the pledge is significantly different from this, and attempting to weaken it to be no commitment at all entails robbing people of the ability to make such commitments.
Your argument about damages seems quite strange. If I buy something from a small business, promise to pay in 30 days, and then do not do so, my failure to pay damages them. This is the case even if they hadn’t made any specific plans for what to do with that cashflow, and even if I bought through an online platform and hence don’t know exactly who would have received the money. The damages are precisely equal to the amount of money I owe the firm—and hence, in the case of the pledge, the damages would be equal to (the NPV of) the pledged income.
I agree with Buck that people should take lifelong commitments more seriously than they have. Part of taking them seriously is respecting their lifelong nature.