I think there are some reasons to care about how much sacrifice people make (and related things, like effort, motivation etc.) independent of impact. One obvious one: you can ask and expect people different things of people who are making or are willing to make huge sacrifices compared to those who will only sacrifice a bit. Drawing the distinction is necessary to do a lot of practical tasks. It’s also very important to what kind of movement EA is as a whole: if we are 90% diehard EAs who will donate their last penny to effective charity that’s a very different movement to if we are 90% people who don’t much care for sacrifice.
It seems we also want to recognise the efforts of people who sacrifice a lot but don’t produce so much impact. Even if we try to avoid it we’re inevitably always shuffling around symbolic status and recognition. We want to respect ‘the widow’s mite’ - rather than assign recognition purely based on what actually gets done, given that being able to do a lot depends on the privilege of being able to get a lot done.
I think it can also be incredibly useful PR-wise. The trader making 150K after taxes and living on minimum wage might be doing less good with her donations than the trader making 500K and living on 250K, but emotionally, the former is generally seen as a LOT more admirable, in some sense better for young idealistic people to live up to, and (most importantly) generate more press for people to first hear about the movement and then later find out that they can do a lot of good without being as extreme.
Also (and I’m less sure about this), I think in some sense anchoring people to “large sacrifice” and then learning about how you can do a lot of good while making a smaller sacrifice, or being able to do good in ways that don’t feel like sacrifices at all, is a better recruitment measure than anchoring people to “ridiculously awesome ways to make an impact.” and then hearing that you can do much less, but still a lot of good.
My perspective is that telling people “hey, you can take these small steps to do awesome good things” is a highly beneficial step to take, but not necessarily a recruitment mechanism—that requires more consideration about the kind of people we’re attracting to the movement.
I agree about respecting the widow’s mite—thanks for that term, David, didn’t know about it before and had to look it up, appreciate the knowledge gained :-)
I think it may be better to phrase contributions in terms of resources rather than money. If one can use one’s time to influence others to donate to EA causes, for example, this can be a much more useful activity for advancing flourishing than donating money. This way of framing things also addresses the talent gap in EA better.
Yeh the use of “diehard EAs who will donate their last penny” is purely an example, I don’t mention money other than that (and the proverbial mite of course).
I think there are some reasons to care about how much sacrifice people make (and related things, like effort, motivation etc.) independent of impact. One obvious one: you can ask and expect people different things of people who are making or are willing to make huge sacrifices compared to those who will only sacrifice a bit. Drawing the distinction is necessary to do a lot of practical tasks. It’s also very important to what kind of movement EA is as a whole: if we are 90% diehard EAs who will donate their last penny to effective charity that’s a very different movement to if we are 90% people who don’t much care for sacrifice.
It seems we also want to recognise the efforts of people who sacrifice a lot but don’t produce so much impact. Even if we try to avoid it we’re inevitably always shuffling around symbolic status and recognition. We want to respect ‘the widow’s mite’ - rather than assign recognition purely based on what actually gets done, given that being able to do a lot depends on the privilege of being able to get a lot done.
I think it can also be incredibly useful PR-wise. The trader making 150K after taxes and living on minimum wage might be doing less good with her donations than the trader making 500K and living on 250K, but emotionally, the former is generally seen as a LOT more admirable, in some sense better for young idealistic people to live up to, and (most importantly) generate more press for people to first hear about the movement and then later find out that they can do a lot of good without being as extreme.
Also (and I’m less sure about this), I think in some sense anchoring people to “large sacrifice” and then learning about how you can do a lot of good while making a smaller sacrifice, or being able to do good in ways that don’t feel like sacrifices at all, is a better recruitment measure than anchoring people to “ridiculously awesome ways to make an impact.” and then hearing that you can do much less, but still a lot of good.
My perspective is that telling people “hey, you can take these small steps to do awesome good things” is a highly beneficial step to take, but not necessarily a recruitment mechanism—that requires more consideration about the kind of people we’re attracting to the movement.
I agree about respecting the widow’s mite—thanks for that term, David, didn’t know about it before and had to look it up, appreciate the knowledge gained :-)
I think it may be better to phrase contributions in terms of resources rather than money. If one can use one’s time to influence others to donate to EA causes, for example, this can be a much more useful activity for advancing flourishing than donating money. This way of framing things also addresses the talent gap in EA better.
Yeh the use of “diehard EAs who will donate their last penny” is purely an example, I don’t mention money other than that (and the proverbial mite of course).
Same page, then :-)