Here are some of my thoughts on what you’ve written. Of course, there isn’t a consensus on what qualifies someone as a “good person” but we can certainly speculate on the relationship between “being good” and “being impactful”. To me, we can look at these as distinct but related ideas. You say that many people are “desperately trying to increase their impact to help them feel like they’re a good person”. I would suggest that someone might be desperately trying to increase their impact because the desire to make that effort is indicative of a good person, not the achievement of the impact itself. It’s like layers that are built upon each other:
Layer 1: I want to be a good person with good intentions Layer 2: A good person with good intentions would want to make the world better Layer 3: A strong desire to improve the world pushes me to achieve maximal impact
Layers 1 and 2 are what matter when we think about what a good person is. They might not be someone who has a huge positive impact (because this is, to a notable degree, out of our hands) but they are somebody who would want to, or have the intention to, have a huge positive impact.
If Amy and Sam (random names I picked) are both good people, then they both have the desire to change the world in a positive way. Amy gets a job in AI safety and Sam gets a job in an animal welfare organisation. They are both working on meaningful projects. After a couple of years, due to funding issues, the animal welfare organisation shuts down. Sam has not yet had a significant impact. On the other hand, Amy has been influential in shaping policy around safer AI development. Is Amy a better person than Sam? I’d bet that pretty much everyone would say no, even the people desperately trying to increase their impact. We can’t always control what we achieve, but we can control what we want to achieve.
Here are some of my thoughts on what you’ve written. Of course, there isn’t a consensus on what qualifies someone as a “good person” but we can certainly speculate on the relationship between “being good” and “being impactful”. To me, we can look at these as distinct but related ideas. You say that many people are “desperately trying to increase their impact to help them feel like they’re a good person”. I would suggest that someone might be desperately trying to increase their impact because the desire to make that effort is indicative of a good person, not the achievement of the impact itself. It’s like layers that are built upon each other:
Layer 1: I want to be a good person with good intentions
Layer 2: A good person with good intentions would want to make the world better
Layer 3: A strong desire to improve the world pushes me to achieve maximal impact
Layers 1 and 2 are what matter when we think about what a good person is. They might not be someone who has a huge positive impact (because this is, to a notable degree, out of our hands) but they are somebody who would want to, or have the intention to, have a huge positive impact.
If Amy and Sam (random names I picked) are both good people, then they both have the desire to change the world in a positive way. Amy gets a job in AI safety and Sam gets a job in an animal welfare organisation. They are both working on meaningful projects. After a couple of years, due to funding issues, the animal welfare organisation shuts down. Sam has not yet had a significant impact. On the other hand, Amy has been influential in shaping policy around safer AI development. Is Amy a better person than Sam? I’d bet that pretty much everyone would say no, even the people desperately trying to increase their impact. We can’t always control what we achieve, but we can control what we want to achieve.