It is possible that a graph plotting a typical EA’s degree of involvement/commitment with the movement would not look like a horizontal line but rather like a zigzag.
It would be very encouraging if this is a common phenomenon and many people ‘dropping out’ might potentially come back at some point to EA ideals. It provides a counterexample to something I have commented earlier:
It is worth pointing out that most of this discussion is just speculation. The very limited anecdata we have from Joey and others seems too weak to draw detailed conclusions. Anyway: From talking to people who are in their 40s and 50s now, it seems to me that a significant fraction of them were at some point during their youth or at university very engaged in politics and wanted to contribute to ‘changing the world for the better’. However, most of these people have reduced their altruistic engagement over time and have at some point started a family, bought a house etc. and have never come back to their altruistic roots. This common story is what seems to be captured by the saying (that I neither like nor endorse): “If you’re not a socialist at the age of 20 you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no head”.
Regarding your related point:
Is it optimal to expect a constant involvement/commitment with the movement? As EAs, we should think of maximizing our lifetime contributions (...) and find ways of accommodating it within a “lifetime contribution strategy”
I strongly agree with this, which was my motivation to write the post in the first place! I don’t think constant involvement/commitment to (effective) altruism is necessary to maximise your lifetime impact. That said, it seems like for many people there is a considerable chance to never ‘find their way back’ to this commitment after they spent years/decades in non-altruistic environments, on starting a family, on settling down etc. This is why I’d generally think people with EA values in their twenties should consider ways to at the least stay loosely involved/updated over the mid- to long-term to reduce the chance of this happening. So it provides a great example to hear that you actually managed to do just that! In any case, more research is needed on this—I somewhat want to caution against survivorship bias, which could become an issue if we mostly talk to the people who did what is possibly exceptional (e.g. took up a strong altruistic commitment in their forties or having been around EA for for a long time).
Good points. If I were doing a write up on this subject it would be something like this:
“As the years go by, you will likely go through stages during which you cannot commit as much time or other resources to EA. This is natural and you should not interpret lower-commitment stages as failures: the goal is to maximize your lifetime contributions and that will require balancing EA with other goals and demands. However, there is a risk that you may drift away from EA permanently if your engagement is too low for a long period of time. Here are some tools you can use to prevent that from happening:”
Great points, thanks for raising them!
It would be very encouraging if this is a common phenomenon and many people ‘dropping out’ might potentially come back at some point to EA ideals. It provides a counterexample to something I have commented earlier:
Regarding your related point:
I strongly agree with this, which was my motivation to write the post in the first place! I don’t think constant involvement/commitment to (effective) altruism is necessary to maximise your lifetime impact. That said, it seems like for many people there is a considerable chance to never ‘find their way back’ to this commitment after they spent years/decades in non-altruistic environments, on starting a family, on settling down etc. This is why I’d generally think people with EA values in their twenties should consider ways to at the least stay loosely involved/updated over the mid- to long-term to reduce the chance of this happening. So it provides a great example to hear that you actually managed to do just that! In any case, more research is needed on this—I somewhat want to caution against survivorship bias, which could become an issue if we mostly talk to the people who did what is possibly exceptional (e.g. took up a strong altruistic commitment in their forties or having been around EA for for a long time).
Good points. If I were doing a write up on this subject it would be something like this:
“As the years go by, you will likely go through stages during which you cannot commit as much time or other resources to EA. This is natural and you should not interpret lower-commitment stages as failures: the goal is to maximize your lifetime contributions and that will require balancing EA with other goals and demands. However, there is a risk that you may drift away from EA permanently if your engagement is too low for a long period of time. Here are some tools you can use to prevent that from happening:”