My impression is that part of EAās pitch has been that you donāt have to do radical things to do radical amounts of good. 10% of your income is something you can survive without, but others will literally die without that money. Over time weāve shifted to be a more demanding community, taking us closer to SMAās explicit ideas of Perseverance and Action.
[...]
SMA agrees, and acknowledges that this simply cannot stand. We donāt want the world to be like this, so we should take strong action to fix it. In fact, if I Google āquit your bullshit job,ā the fourth result is Rutger Bregmanās article in The Guardian where he promotes Moral Ambition. What he means is that traditional ideas of prestige should be discarded in favor of considering whatās actually valuable for society.
I think both EA and SMA underestimate the impact of donating more and better, and that this is the best strategy to maximise impact for the vast majority of people:
Benjamin Todd thinks āitās defensible to say that the best of all interventions in an area are about 10 times more effective than [as effective as] the mean, and perhaps as much as 100 timesā.
Donating 10 % more to an organisation 10 to 100 times as cost-effective as one one could join is 10 (= 0.1*10/ā0.1) to 100 (= 0.1*100/ā0.1) times as impactful as working there if the alternative hire would be 10 % less impactful.
In concrete terms, the protein transition has become one of the biggest cause areas within SMA.
I think decreasing the consumption of animal-based foods is harmful due to effects on wild animals. I estimateSchool Plates in 2023, and Veganuary in 2024 harmed soil animals 5.42 k and 3.58 k times as much as they benefited farmed animals.
Thanks for the post!
I think both EA and SMA underestimate the impact of donating more and better, and that this is the best strategy to maximise impact for the vast majority of people:
Benjamin Todd thinks āitās defensible to say that the best of all interventions in an area are about 10 times more effective than [as effective as] the mean, and perhaps as much as 100 timesā.
Donating 10 % more to an organisation 10 to 100 times as cost-effective as one one could join is 10 (= 0.1*10/ā0.1) to 100 (= 0.1*100/ā0.1) times as impactful as working there if the alternative hire would be 10 % less impactful.
I think decreasing the consumption of animal-based foods is harmful due to effects on wild animals. I estimate School Plates in 2023, and Veganuary in 2024 harmed soil animals 5.42 k and 3.58 k times as much as they benefited farmed animals.