Don’t try to wake up and save the world. Don’t be bycatch. Take 15 years and become a domain expert. Take a career and become a macrostrategy expert. Mentor. Run small and non-EA projects. Circle back to EA periodically with your newfound skills and see what a difference you can make then. There is absolutely no way we can have a longtermist movement if we can’t be longtermist about our own lives and careers. But if we can, then we can.
Many social movements I have been a part of (political, sports, religious etc.) have a sort of “more is more” aspect to them that I see a lot in EA. The basic idea is this: it is fine if you just want try things out, but the more involved you are in the organization, the more events you go to, the more you align your life around the mission of the organization, the better. To a large part, this is why I have often experienced “organizational burnout”: when due to changing circumstances I cannot or do not want to be as involved anymore, it is often easier to quit altogether rather than to scale things back. With most of my commitments these days I try to follow a “less is more” approach, where I try to capture about ~10% of the scope of an organization or movement. The 10% scope of EA seems to be the thinking that we should consider how important a problem is when choosing a career or where to donate our funds. If we get more involved than this, there is a danger of not being able to sustain it over a long time. The other advantage of being minimally involved is that we can join a larger number of organizations and get a diverse and rich set of benefits that exceed what any one organization can provide.
Many social movements I have been a part of (political, sports, religious etc.) have a sort of “more is more” aspect to them that I see a lot in EA. The basic idea is this: it is fine if you just want try things out, but the more involved you are in the organization, the more events you go to, the more you align your life around the mission of the organization, the better. To a large part, this is why I have often experienced “organizational burnout”: when due to changing circumstances I cannot or do not want to be as involved anymore, it is often easier to quit altogether rather than to scale things back. With most of my commitments these days I try to follow a “less is more” approach, where I try to capture about ~10% of the scope of an organization or movement. The 10% scope of EA seems to be the thinking that we should consider how important a problem is when choosing a career or where to donate our funds. If we get more involved than this, there is a danger of not being able to sustain it over a long time. The other advantage of being minimally involved is that we can join a larger number of organizations and get a diverse and rich set of benefits that exceed what any one organization can provide.