But even if people were also miserable in their personal life, why would that exclude us from making their lives better in the workplace? It’s still 80,000 hours of your life (actually 90,000 hours) and improving your work life will improve your life overall.
For having a baby specifically, postpartum depression affects 10-20% of new mothers. A fair fraction experience suicidal ideation, and suicide does occur.
One reason we may see more explicit discussion of the stresses and dissatisfactions of working life is social acceptability bias, which is powerful enough that it can completely distort our common-sense perceptions of how the population at large feels.
Nothing precludes us from helping with people’s working life even if the rest of life also makes us miserable. However, I think it is good to approach this with clarity. For example, is there reason to think helping with the stressors of working life is more tractable, important, and neglected than helping with personal life stressors?
That’s an interesting hypothesis. I’d love to read a literature review if you want to write one.
Edit: Perhaps a better way to have phrased this is: postpartum depression would be a totally different cause area. I feel like dismissing a literature review on a cause area proposal because ‘an idea for a different cause area I just thought of could hypothetically be better and you should first research that before we take your cause area seriously’ is a standard we don’t hold any other proposal to. We don’t expect a proposal post for e.g. a fish farming cause area to also do research on malaria nets, nuclear risk, or anything else a commenter comes up with.
Yes, he is, so what? Does that mean he has to do all the work alone? Surely not. Bob pointed out a neglected area that should be investigated. By who? Probably by those best placed to do this within EA. Are you suggesting Bob is this person?
I do think Bob is this person. He is motivated, has looked into it the most, and has apparently higher credence in the idea than others. That doesn’t mean he has to go it alone, which is not something I suggested. You are welcome to help him out, for example.
I see my role here as doing informal peer review. Bob responded to my comment in a way that seemed rude and dismissive, or put the onus on me to commit to a literature review if I wanted to voice skepticism. That’s way out of line relative to the commenting norms on this forum. So I responded in a way that briefly pointed out why I don’t think that is a fair request.
You could forgive a man for losing motivation given the negative reaction this has received. I’m not too excited to spend this much effort on another post that will lose me karma/voting-power.
I really would like it if someone took it from here, perhaps an economist could do an impact analysis or a psychologist could look into the effect a higher average salary and a lower chance of being fired has on the families of the employees (my guess is it would be positive).
[LATE EDIT at 4 karma and −1 agreement:] The post and my comments now have positive karma thanks to Jobst’s intervention. So expressing socialist sentiment is not a guaranteed loss of karma but it’s still risky so my overall attitude remains the same.
Only 21% of global employees report being engaged at work, and 19% are straight up miserable.
I don’t find it plausible that mantras like “living for the weekend” and “work is just a paycheck”, and social movements like “quiet quitting” and “躺平 (lying flat)” are prominent because people think of a job as stressful but rewarding, like having a baby.
But even if people were also miserable in their personal life, why would that exclude us from making their lives better in the workplace? It’s still 80,000 hours of your life (actually 90,000 hours) and improving your work life will improve your life overall.
For having a baby specifically, postpartum depression affects 10-20% of new mothers. A fair fraction experience suicidal ideation, and suicide does occur.
One reason we may see more explicit discussion of the stresses and dissatisfactions of working life is social acceptability bias, which is powerful enough that it can completely distort our common-sense perceptions of how the population at large feels.
Nothing precludes us from helping with people’s working life even if the rest of life also makes us miserable. However, I think it is good to approach this with clarity. For example, is there reason to think helping with the stressors of working life is more tractable, important, and neglected than helping with personal life stressors?
That’s an interesting hypothesis. I’d love to read a literature review if you want to write one.
Edit: Perhaps a better way to have phrased this is: postpartum depression would be a totally different cause area. I feel like dismissing a literature review on a cause area proposal because ‘an idea for a different cause area I just thought of could hypothetically be better and you should first research that before we take your cause area seriously’ is a standard we don’t hold any other proposal to. We don’t expect a proposal post for e.g. a fish farming cause area to also do research on malaria nets, nuclear risk, or anything else a commenter comes up with.
You’re the one proposing the new cause area :)
Yes, he is, so what? Does that mean he has to do all the work alone? Surely not. Bob pointed out a neglected area that should be investigated. By who? Probably by those best placed to do this within EA. Are you suggesting Bob is this person?
I do think Bob is this person. He is motivated, has looked into it the most, and has apparently higher credence in the idea than others. That doesn’t mean he has to go it alone, which is not something I suggested. You are welcome to help him out, for example.
I see my role here as doing informal peer review. Bob responded to my comment in a way that seemed rude and dismissive, or put the onus on me to commit to a literature review if I wanted to voice skepticism. That’s way out of line relative to the commenting norms on this forum. So I responded in a way that briefly pointed out why I don’t think that is a fair request.
You could forgive a man for losing motivation given the negative reaction this has received. I’m not too excited to spend this much effort on another post that will lose me karma/voting-power.
I really would like it if someone took it from here, perhaps an economist could do an impact analysis or a psychologist could look into the effect a higher average salary and a lower chance of being fired has on the families of the employees (my guess is it would be positive).
[LATE EDIT at 4 karma and −1 agreement:] The post and my comments now have positive karma thanks to Jobst’s intervention. So expressing socialist sentiment is not a guaranteed loss of karma but it’s still risky so my overall attitude remains the same.