Thanks for this post! I’ve been thinking about similar issues.
One thing that may be worth emphasizing is that there are large and systematic interindividual differences in idea attractiveness—different people or groups probably find different ideas attractive.
For example, for non-EA altruists, the idea of “work in soup kitchen” is probably much more attractive than for EAs because it gives you warm fuzzies (due to direct personal contact with the people you are helping), is not that effortful, and so on. Sure, it’s not very cost-effective but this is not something that non-EAs take much into account. In contrast, the idea of “earning-to-give” may be extremely unattractive to non-EAs because it might involve working at a job that you don’t feel passionate about, you might be disliked by all your left-leaning friends, and so on. For EAs, the reverse is true (though earning-to-give may still be somewhat unattractive but not that unattractive).
In fact, in an important sense, one primary reason for starting the EA movement was the realization of schlep blindness in the world at large—certain ideas (earning to give, donate to the global poor or animal charities) were unattractive / uninspiring / weird but seemed to do (much) more good than the attractive ideas (helping locally, becoming a doctor, volunteering at a dog shelter, etc.).
Of course, it’s wise to ask ourselves whether we EAs share certain characteristics that would lead us to find a certain type of idea more attractive than others. As you write in a comment, it’s fair to say that most of us are quite nerdy (interested in science, math, philosophy, intellectual activities) and we might thus be overly attracted to pursue careers that primarily involve such work (e.g., quantitative research, broadly speaking). On the other hand, most people don’t like quantitative research, so you could also argue that quantitative research is neglected! (And that certainly seems to be true sometimes, e.g., GiveWell does great work relating to global poverty.)
EA should prioritise ideas that sound like no fun
I see where you’re coming from but I also think it would be unwise to ignore your passions and personal fit. If you, say, really love math and are good at it, it’s plausible that you should try to use your talents somehow! And if you’re really bad at something and find it incredibly boring and repulsive, that’s a pretty strong reason to not work on this yourself. Of course, we need to be careful to not make general judgments based on these personal considerations (and this plausibly happens sometimes subconsciously), we need to be mindful of imitating the behavior of high-status folks of our tribe, etc.)
We could zoom out even more and ask ourselves if we as EAs might be attracted to certain worldviews/philosophies that are more attractive.
What type of worldviews might EAs be attracted to? I can’t speak for others but personally, I think that I’ve been too attracted to worldviews according to which I can (way) more impact than the average do-gooder. This is probably because I derive much of my meaning and self-worth in life from how much good I believe I do. If I can change the world only a tiny amount even if I try really, really hard and am willing to bite all the bullets, that makes me feel pretty powerless, insignificant, and depressed—there is so much suffering in the world and I can do almost nothing in the big scheme of things? Very sad.
In contrast, “silver-bullet worldviews” according to which I can have super large amounts of impact because I galaxy-brained my way into finding very potent, clever, neglected levers that will change the world-trajectory—that feels pretty good. It makes me feel like I’m doing something useful, like my life has meaning. More cynically, you could say it’s all just vanity and makes me feel special and important. “I’m not like all those others schmucks who just feel content with voting every four years and donating every now and then. Those sheeple. I’m helping way more. But no big deal, of course! I’m just that altruistic.”
To be clear, I think probably something in the middle is true. Most likely, you can have more (expected) impact than the average do-gooder if you really try and reflect hard and really optimize for this. But in the (distant) past, following the reasoning of people like Anna Salamon (2010) [to be clear: I respect and like Anna a lot], I thought this might buy you like a factor of a million, whereas now I think it might only buy you a factor of a 100 or something. As usual, Brian has argued for this a long time ago. However, a factor of a 100 is still a lot and most importantly, the absolute good you can do is what ultimately matters, not the relative amount of good, and even if you only save one life in your whole life, that really, really matters.
Also, to be clear, I do believe that many interventions of most longtermist causes like AI alignment plausibly do (a great deal) more good than most “standard” approaches to doing good. I just think that the difference is considerably smaller than I previously believed, mostly for reasons related to cluelessness.
For me personally, the main take-away is something like this: Because of my desperate desire to have ever-more impact, I’ve stayed on the train to crazy town for too long and was too hesitant to walk a few stops back. The stop I’m now in is still pretty far away from where I started (and many non-EAs would think it uncomfortably far away from normal town) but my best guess is that it’s a good place to be in.
(Lastly, there are also biases against “silver-bullet worldviews”. I’ve been thinking about writing a whole post about this topic at some point.)
Thanks for this post! I’ve been thinking about similar issues.
One thing that may be worth emphasizing is that there are large and systematic interindividual differences in idea attractiveness—different people or groups probably find different ideas attractive.
For example, for non-EA altruists, the idea of “work in soup kitchen” is probably much more attractive than for EAs because it gives you warm fuzzies (due to direct personal contact with the people you are helping), is not that effortful, and so on. Sure, it’s not very cost-effective but this is not something that non-EAs take much into account. In contrast, the idea of “earning-to-give” may be extremely unattractive to non-EAs because it might involve working at a job that you don’t feel passionate about, you might be disliked by all your left-leaning friends, and so on. For EAs, the reverse is true (though earning-to-give may still be somewhat unattractive but not that unattractive).
In fact, in an important sense, one primary reason for starting the EA movement was the realization of schlep blindness in the world at large—certain ideas (earning to give, donate to the global poor or animal charities) were unattractive / uninspiring / weird but seemed to do (much) more good than the attractive ideas (helping locally, becoming a doctor, volunteering at a dog shelter, etc.).
Of course, it’s wise to ask ourselves whether we EAs share certain characteristics that would lead us to find a certain type of idea more attractive than others. As you write in a comment, it’s fair to say that most of us are quite nerdy (interested in science, math, philosophy, intellectual activities) and we might thus be overly attracted to pursue careers that primarily involve such work (e.g., quantitative research, broadly speaking). On the other hand, most people don’t like quantitative research, so you could also argue that quantitative research is neglected! (And that certainly seems to be true sometimes, e.g., GiveWell does great work relating to global poverty.)
I see where you’re coming from but I also think it would be unwise to ignore your passions and personal fit. If you, say, really love math and are good at it, it’s plausible that you should try to use your talents somehow! And if you’re really bad at something and find it incredibly boring and repulsive, that’s a pretty strong reason to not work on this yourself. Of course, we need to be careful to not make general judgments based on these personal considerations (and this plausibly happens sometimes subconsciously), we need to be mindful of imitating the behavior of high-status folks of our tribe, etc.)
We could zoom out even more and ask ourselves if we as EAs might be attracted to certain worldviews/philosophies that are more attractive.
What type of worldviews might EAs be attracted to? I can’t speak for others but personally, I think that I’ve been too attracted to worldviews according to which I can (way) more impact than the average do-gooder. This is probably because I derive much of my meaning and self-worth in life from how much good I believe I do. If I can change the world only a tiny amount even if I try really, really hard and am willing to bite all the bullets, that makes me feel pretty powerless, insignificant, and depressed—there is so much suffering in the world and I can do almost nothing in the big scheme of things? Very sad.
In contrast, “silver-bullet worldviews” according to which I can have super large amounts of impact because I galaxy-brained my way into finding very potent, clever, neglected levers that will change the world-trajectory—that feels pretty good. It makes me feel like I’m doing something useful, like my life has meaning. More cynically, you could say it’s all just vanity and makes me feel special and important. “I’m not like all those others schmucks who just feel content with voting every four years and donating every now and then. Those sheeple. I’m helping way more. But no big deal, of course! I’m just that altruistic.”
To be clear, I think probably something in the middle is true. Most likely, you can have more (expected) impact than the average do-gooder if you really try and reflect hard and really optimize for this. But in the (distant) past, following the reasoning of people like Anna Salamon (2010) [to be clear: I respect and like Anna a lot], I thought this might buy you like a factor of a million, whereas now I think it might only buy you a factor of a 100 or something. As usual, Brian has argued for this a long time ago. However, a factor of a 100 is still a lot and most importantly, the absolute good you can do is what ultimately matters, not the relative amount of good, and even if you only save one life in your whole life, that really, really matters.
Also, to be clear, I do believe that many interventions of most longtermist causes like AI alignment plausibly do (a great deal) more good than most “standard” approaches to doing good. I just think that the difference is considerably smaller than I previously believed, mostly for reasons related to cluelessness.
For me personally, the main take-away is something like this: Because of my desperate desire to have ever-more impact, I’ve stayed on the train to crazy town for too long and was too hesitant to walk a few stops back. The stop I’m now in is still pretty far away from where I started (and many non-EAs would think it uncomfortably far away from normal town) but my best guess is that it’s a good place to be in.
(Lastly, there are also biases against “silver-bullet worldviews”. I’ve been thinking about writing a whole post about this topic at some point.)
This is a fantastic comment