The 80000 hours article you cite notes in its summary only that:
Giving some money to charity is unlikely to make you less happy, and may well make you happier. (My emphasis)
The GWWC piece reads thus:
Giving 10% of your income to effective charities can make an incredible difference to some of the most deprived people in the world. But what effect will giving have on you? You may be concerned that it will damage your quality of life and make you less happy. This is a perfectly reasonable concern, and there is no shame in wanting to live a full and happy life.
The good news is that giving can often make you happier.⊠(My emphasis)
As I noted in prior discussion, not only do these sources not claim âgiving effectively will increase your happinessâ, Iâm not aware of this being claimed by any major EA source. Thus the objection âThis line of argument confuses the effect of donating at all with the effect of donating effectivelyâ targets a straw man.
Regardless of which career you choose, you can donate 10% of your income.
Normally when we think of doing good with our careers, we think of paths like becoming a teacher or charity worker, which often earn salaries as much as 50% lower than jobs in the private sector, and may not align with your skills or interests. In that sense, giving 10% is less of a sacrifice.
Moreover, as we saw in an earlier article, once you start earning more than about $40,000 a year as an individual, any extra income wonât affect your happiness that much, while acts that help others like giving to charity probably do make you happier.
To take just one example, one study found that in 122 of 136 countries, if respondents answered âyesâ to the question âdid you donate to charity last month?â, their life satisfaction was higher by an amount also associated with a doubling of income.5 In part, this is probably because happier people give more, but we expect some of the effect runs the other way too.
(Not persuaded? Read more on whether giving 10% is better or worse for your happiness than not donating at all.)â
Right, the only disagreement I have with that piece is this part: â⊠once you start earning more than about $40,000 a year as an individual, any extra income wonât affect your happiness that muchâ
From my current understanding, extra income will continue to affect happiness quite a bit up to at least $115,000 /â year (on average for college-educated people in Western Europe and North America, in terms of subjective evaluation of oneâs life quality).
And achieving an income of $115,000 /â year is much harder than achieving one of $40,000 /â year.
I donât know if itâs more or less reliable than past research suggesting a lower satiation point, but taking the paper Jebb et al. 2018 at face value, this is the effect of a 160% increase in income, from $40k to $105k:
In North America, life satisfaction goes from 7.63 to 8.0. Zero effect on positive affect (effects on positive affect/âhappiness are always lower and itâs the measure I think is more reliable, which is why we chose the term happiness in that quote). Negative affect-free goes from 0.7 to 0.74.
Effects in Western Europe are a touch smaller.
Whether this counts as âextra income continuing to affect happiness quite a bitâ or âextra income not affecting happiness that muchâ I guess is for readers to judge.
For myself, I would regard those gains to be sufficiently small that I would think it irrational for an egoist to focus much of their attention on earning more money at that point, rather than fostering strong relationships, a sense of purpose, or improving their self-talk.
Personally, I also expect even those correlations are overestimates of the actual effect of higher income on happiness, because we know the reverse is also happening: for various reasons happiness itself causes peopleâs incomes to rise. On top of that, things like health also cause both happiness and higher incomes, increasing the correlation without increasing the causation. (Though as I describe in my income and happiness article, if you have a different causal diagram in mind, you could also try arguing that itâs an underestimate.)
Whether this counts as âextra income continuing to affect happiness quite a bitâ or âextra income not affecting happiness that muchâ I guess is for readers to judge.
I notice I have some difficulty thinking through the implications of a 0.5 bump in life satisfaction on a 0.0 to 10.0 scale, especially when the 0.5 increase is in aggregate across an entire lifetime.
On one view, 0.5 doesnât seem like that much. â7.5 instead of 8.0? Thatâs a negligible effect. Once youâre at 7.5 life-satisfaction-wise, time to focus on other things.â
On another view, the 0.5 bump is quite a lot. If 10.0 on the scale is âmost satisfying life possibleâ, going from 7.5 to 8.0 could be a big frickinâ deal. Also could be a big deal if the 0.5 bump cashes out to something like âone less terrible day per month, for the rest of your lifeâ.
This consideration is probably dominated by measurement problems though. When I subjectively assess my life satisfaction, I have trouble discerning the difference between a 7 and an 8 on a 0-10 scale (though Iâm benchmarking on 10 being âbest out of the ways my life has tended to goâ, not âmost satisfying life possibleâ).
Iâve started using a 0-5 scale because of this granularity consideration. Itâs much easier for me to tell apart the difference between 3 and 4 on a 0-5 scale than it is to tell apart 7 and 8 on a 0-10 scale.
This is all to say that a 0.5 bump on a 0.0-10.0 scale might not be subjectively detectable at all to most people. (Though a 0.5 in-aggregate effect could still cash out to large subjective gains for many people.)
For myself, I would regard those gains to be sufficiently small that I would think it irrational for an egoist to focus much of their attention on earning more money at that point, rather than fostering strong relationships, a sense of purpose, or improving their self-talk.
I agree with this.
The main takeaway Iâm pushing here is something like:
âAfter a certain point, making more money has severe diminishing returns re: your happiness, as does donating lots of money.
So donât lean on making lots of money to make you happy, and donât lean on giving away lots of money to make you happy.â
Thereâs a temptation to use âdonate a lot of money to effective causesâ to scratch the âsense of purposeâ itch, which I donât think works very well (due to the diminishing returns).
Iâm not trying to target a straw man. Iâm trying to speak to a line of thought that feels alive in the EA community â something along the lines of âgiving effectively is a project worth expending substantial effort & resource on.â
Alongside this view is a corollary, something like:
Giving effectively will be good, both for you and the people youâre helping.
I think this corollary is often conveyed implicitly, but feels real regardless.
This corollary seems underspecified. I think giving effectively (and giving a lot) will be roughly as good for you as doing any giving at all. I think a more accurate version of the corollary would go something like:
Giving effectively will be about as good for you as other types of giving, but giving effectively can be more demanding than other types of giving. So thereâs often a tradeoff between your personal happiness & effective giving, especially if youâre giving large amounts out of an income less than $115,000.
Itâs quite possible that EA leaders already agree with this amended corollary, in which case all Iâm advocating for is being clear about the happiness<>giving tradeoff.
(And in the case where folks disagree with the amended corollary, Iâm advocating for something like âthis tradeoff is real & we shouldnât paper over it.â)
Neither of your examples backs up your point.
The 80000 hours article you cite notes in its summary only that:
The GWWC piece reads thus:
As I noted in prior discussion, not only do these sources not claim âgiving effectively will increase your happinessâ, Iâm not aware of this being claimed by any major EA source. Thus the objection âThis line of argument confuses the effect of donating at all with the effect of donating effectivelyâ targets a straw man.
While that piece on income and happiness seems solid, Milan might not like the vibe of this section in our article No matter your job, hereâs 3 evidence-based ways anyone can have a real impact. Iâve just tinkered with the wording to make it harder for anyone to misunderstand what weâre claiming:
âHow much sacrifice will this involve?
Regardless of which career you choose, you can donate 10% of your income.
Normally when we think of doing good with our careers, we think of paths like becoming a teacher or charity worker, which often earn salaries as much as 50% lower than jobs in the private sector, and may not align with your skills or interests. In that sense, giving 10% is less of a sacrifice.
Moreover, as we saw in an earlier article, once you start earning more than about $40,000 a year as an individual, any extra income wonât affect your happiness that much, while acts that help others like giving to charity probably do make you happier.
To take just one example, one study found that in 122 of 136 countries, if respondents answered âyesâ to the question âdid you donate to charity last month?â, their life satisfaction was higher by an amount also associated with a doubling of income.5 In part, this is probably because happier people give more, but we expect some of the effect runs the other way too.
(Not persuaded? Read more on whether giving 10% is better or worse for your happiness than not donating at all.)â
Right, the only disagreement I have with that piece is this part: â⊠once you start earning more than about $40,000 a year as an individual, any extra income wonât affect your happiness that muchâ
From my current understanding, extra income will continue to affect happiness quite a bit up to at least $115,000 /â year (on average for college-educated people in Western Europe and North America, in terms of subjective evaluation of oneâs life quality).
And achieving an income of $115,000 /â year is much harder than achieving one of $40,000 /â year.
I donât know if itâs more or less reliable than past research suggesting a lower satiation point, but taking the paper Jebb et al. 2018 at face value, this is the effect of a 160% increase in income, from $40k to $105k:
In North America, life satisfaction goes from 7.63 to 8.0. Zero effect on positive affect (effects on positive affect/âhappiness are always lower and itâs the measure I think is more reliable, which is why we chose the term happiness in that quote). Negative affect-free goes from 0.7 to 0.74.
Effects in Western Europe are a touch smaller.
Whether this counts as âextra income continuing to affect happiness quite a bitâ or âextra income not affecting happiness that muchâ I guess is for readers to judge.
For myself, I would regard those gains to be sufficiently small that I would think it irrational for an egoist to focus much of their attention on earning more money at that point, rather than fostering strong relationships, a sense of purpose, or improving their self-talk.
Personally, I also expect even those correlations are overestimates of the actual effect of higher income on happiness, because we know the reverse is also happening: for various reasons happiness itself causes peopleâs incomes to rise. On top of that, things like health also cause both happiness and higher incomes, increasing the correlation without increasing the causation. (Though as I describe in my income and happiness article, if you have a different causal diagram in mind, you could also try arguing that itâs an underestimate.)
I notice I have some difficulty thinking through the implications of a 0.5 bump in life satisfaction on a 0.0 to 10.0 scale, especially when the 0.5 increase is in aggregate across an entire lifetime.
On one view, 0.5 doesnât seem like that much. â7.5 instead of 8.0? Thatâs a negligible effect. Once youâre at 7.5 life-satisfaction-wise, time to focus on other things.â
On another view, the 0.5 bump is quite a lot. If 10.0 on the scale is âmost satisfying life possibleâ, going from 7.5 to 8.0 could be a big frickinâ deal. Also could be a big deal if the 0.5 bump cashes out to something like âone less terrible day per month, for the rest of your lifeâ.
This consideration is probably dominated by measurement problems though. When I subjectively assess my life satisfaction, I have trouble discerning the difference between a 7 and an 8 on a 0-10 scale (though Iâm benchmarking on 10 being âbest out of the ways my life has tended to goâ, not âmost satisfying life possibleâ).
Iâve started using a 0-5 scale because of this granularity consideration. Itâs much easier for me to tell apart the difference between 3 and 4 on a 0-5 scale than it is to tell apart 7 and 8 on a 0-10 scale.
This is all to say that a 0.5 bump on a 0.0-10.0 scale might not be subjectively detectable at all to most people. (Though a 0.5 in-aggregate effect could still cash out to large subjective gains for many people.)
I agree with this.
The main takeaway Iâm pushing here is something like:
âAfter a certain point, making more money has severe diminishing returns re: your happiness, as does donating lots of money.
So donât lean on making lots of money to make you happy, and donât lean on giving away lots of money to make you happy.â
Thereâs a temptation to use âdonate a lot of money to effective causesâ to scratch the âsense of purposeâ itch, which I donât think works very well (due to the diminishing returns).
Iâm not trying to target a straw man. Iâm trying to speak to a line of thought that feels alive in the EA community â something along the lines of âgiving effectively is a project worth expending substantial effort & resource on.â
Alongside this view is a corollary, something like:
I think this corollary is often conveyed implicitly, but feels real regardless.
This corollary seems underspecified. I think giving effectively (and giving a lot) will be roughly as good for you as doing any giving at all. I think a more accurate version of the corollary would go something like:
Itâs quite possible that EA leaders already agree with this amended corollary, in which case all Iâm advocating for is being clear about the happiness<>giving tradeoff.
(And in the case where folks disagree with the amended corollary, Iâm advocating for something like âthis tradeoff is real & we shouldnât paper over it.â)