Wow, thatâs a terrible policy IMO, and the linked forum comment feels like it totally misses the pointâI personally think Quinn should go ahead and use the diamond emoji if heâs confident he would be earning far more if he wasnât making altruistic career choices.
GWWC shouldnât try to attach a sense of status and altruism to the diamond emoji and then tell people they need to do less good if they want to keep it, that seems deeply against the principles of EA to me, and the incentives we should create as a functional community of altruists
EDIT: Do the people disagree voting disagree that GWWCâs rules incentivise pledgers to do less good, or think this is an acceptable sacrifice on a difficult to solve problem, or some other disagreement with my comment?
I disagree voted, because I donât think it is a terrible policy /â think it is a hard problem and theyâve solved it in probably the most reasonable way.
I think that it probably isnât perfect and has a lot of issues, but pledged donations are counterfactual (no one would donate otherwise), while doing a direct work role is not as clearly counterfactual (the organization would usually probably hire someone else, but maybe theyâd be less good than you, etc). I think that feels messy to litigate properlyâin some cases doing direct work is way better than the counterfactual, but in others it might not be obvious, etc.
It just doesnât seem clear cut how to resolve, and I think the explicit line of âyou give away money that would otherwise be yours at this particular momentâ seems like a fine way to slice it. If the pledge was âdo the most goodâ pledge, I might agree, but then lots of other things besides taking a lower paying job or giving away money might count.
Iâm fairly sympathetic to that, but it also feels like one needs to draw a line somewhere and where they have currently drawn it seems not unreasonable to me. Though another place to draw the line kind of on the opposite extreme which could also work is just anyone who supports effective giving and is planning to donate/âsalary sacrifice a lot of their money. Maybe the worry is that is too fuzzy and diluting the core 10% message though. fyi @Luke Moore đž
Iâm sympathetic to the argument that it would be hard to operationalise a salary sacrifice pledge in ways that are hard to game, but true to the spirit of it.
But I feel annoyed that the tone of the FAQ and Lukeâs comment is not âthis is a meaningful flaw in the pledge, we donât see a good way to fix it, but acknowledge it creates bad incentivisesâ. Eg it seems terrible that the FAQ frames this as âresigning from your pledgeâ, which I consider to have strong connotations of giving up or failing.
In many cases, the above conclusion is based on misunderstandings about the 10% Pledge which are resulting in opportunities for impact being missed by people like yourself not pledging.
For example, this part of Lukeâs comment rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt like it was saying that actually people are misunderstanding the pledge, and itâs totally consistent with taking a massive pay cut to pursue direct altruistic work. But it is clearly, by design, not, and his comment felt like it was missing the point. Eg someone who leaves a job in finance or tech to take a job at half the salary to do direct work, and intends to remain in that new role for the rest of their career, is making far more of a sacrifice than if they just donated 10%, and I consider them to have no obligation to donate further. But I donât see the conditions of Lukeâs comment applying, as the salary sacrifice comes from switching industries not an arrangement with their employer. And they may never be able to donate later, if they just postpone their pledge. So they would need to resign. Which is a terrible incentive!
One thing I didnât expand on in that thread is some uncertainty I have around âYou think your sacrificed money is best spent on the non-profit you are working forâ.
Right now my charity is definitely not that cost-effective, but Iâm confident it will be one day. In my head, saving money for this charity is the best way to spend that money, but not the most cost-effective today.
I donât nearly have the arrogance to believe that my charity is going to be the most cost-effective giving opportunity of all time, so donating 100% of my sacrificed earnings to this charity probably goes against the spirit of the pledge. On the other hand, it does feel like something would be lost by not incentivising people to make this kind of sacrifice in their careers.
(But ultimately I donât care much for the status of a pledge or whatever, because I know Iâm doing the right thing here)
For these reasons I havenât considered my sacrifice as a GWWC pledge so far, but Iâm uncertain about it.
GWWC doesnât need your giving to be âthe most cost-effective⊠of all timeâ so I think your sacrificed earnings is well within the spirit of the pledge. Iâm interested so many people disagree with @Neel Nanda here on that front as well!
If your non profit will eventually be extremely cost effective, and donations now help it reach that point, then that would make donations now highly cost effective. Of course, youâre likely positively biased in favour of your non profit, so could easily be wrong in this assessment, but I am generally pro people making high conviction altruistic bets with their donations
More importantly, you are, in fact, choosing to take a lower salary in order to spend your labour on your non profit. This means you are choosing actions that lead to you not donating to other charities. If you think this is the correct thing to do, altruistically speaking, then you think this achieves more good than taking a higher paying job and donating that money. I think it would be perverse if the GWWC pledge obliged people to make ineffective decisions that did less good by their lights
The relevant GWWC FAQ is here and there was also a more detailed discussion here.
Wow, thatâs a terrible policy IMO, and the linked forum comment feels like it totally misses the pointâI personally think Quinn should go ahead and use the diamond emoji if heâs confident he would be earning far more if he wasnât making altruistic career choices.
GWWC shouldnât try to attach a sense of status and altruism to the diamond emoji and then tell people they need to do less good if they want to keep it, that seems deeply against the principles of EA to me, and the incentives we should create as a functional community of altruists
EDIT: Do the people disagree voting disagree that GWWCâs rules incentivise pledgers to do less good, or think this is an acceptable sacrifice on a difficult to solve problem, or some other disagreement with my comment?
I disagree voted, because I donât think it is a terrible policy /â think it is a hard problem and theyâve solved it in probably the most reasonable way.
I think that it probably isnât perfect and has a lot of issues, but pledged donations are counterfactual (no one would donate otherwise), while doing a direct work role is not as clearly counterfactual (the organization would usually probably hire someone else, but maybe theyâd be less good than you, etc). I think that feels messy to litigate properlyâin some cases doing direct work is way better than the counterfactual, but in others it might not be obvious, etc.
It just doesnât seem clear cut how to resolve, and I think the explicit line of âyou give away money that would otherwise be yours at this particular momentâ seems like a fine way to slice it. If the pledge was âdo the most goodâ pledge, I might agree, but then lots of other things besides taking a lower paying job or giving away money might count.
Iâm fairly sympathetic to that, but it also feels like one needs to draw a line somewhere and where they have currently drawn it seems not unreasonable to me. Though another place to draw the line kind of on the opposite extreme which could also work is just anyone who supports effective giving and is planning to donate/âsalary sacrifice a lot of their money. Maybe the worry is that is too fuzzy and diluting the core 10% message though.
fyi @Luke Moore đž
Iâm sympathetic to the argument that it would be hard to operationalise a salary sacrifice pledge in ways that are hard to game, but true to the spirit of it.
But I feel annoyed that the tone of the FAQ and Lukeâs comment is not âthis is a meaningful flaw in the pledge, we donât see a good way to fix it, but acknowledge it creates bad incentivisesâ. Eg it seems terrible that the FAQ frames this as âresigning from your pledgeâ, which I consider to have strong connotations of giving up or failing.
For example, this part of Lukeâs comment rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt like it was saying that actually people are misunderstanding the pledge, and itâs totally consistent with taking a massive pay cut to pursue direct altruistic work. But it is clearly, by design, not, and his comment felt like it was missing the point. Eg someone who leaves a job in finance or tech to take a job at half the salary to do direct work, and intends to remain in that new role for the rest of their career, is making far more of a sacrifice than if they just donated 10%, and I consider them to have no obligation to donate further. But I donât see the conditions of Lukeâs comment applying, as the salary sacrifice comes from switching industries not an arrangement with their employer. And they may never be able to donate later, if they just postpone their pledge. So they would need to resign. Which is a terrible incentive!
One thing I didnât expand on in that thread is some uncertainty I have around âYou think your sacrificed money is best spent on the non-profit you are working forâ.
Right now my charity is definitely not that cost-effective, but Iâm confident it will be one day. In my head, saving money for this charity is the best way to spend that money, but not the most cost-effective today.
I donât nearly have the arrogance to believe that my charity is going to be the most cost-effective giving opportunity of all time, so donating 100% of my sacrificed earnings to this charity probably goes against the spirit of the pledge. On the other hand, it does feel like something would be lost by not incentivising people to make this kind of sacrifice in their careers.
(But ultimately I donât care much for the status of a pledge or whatever, because I know Iâm doing the right thing here)
For these reasons I havenât considered my sacrifice as a GWWC pledge so far, but Iâm uncertain about it.
GWWC doesnât need your giving to be âthe most cost-effective⊠of all timeâ so I think your sacrificed earnings is well within the spirit of the pledge. Iâm interested so many people disagree with @Neel Nanda here on that front as well!
If your non profit will eventually be extremely cost effective, and donations now help it reach that point, then that would make donations now highly cost effective. Of course, youâre likely positively biased in favour of your non profit, so could easily be wrong in this assessment, but I am generally pro people making high conviction altruistic bets with their donations
More importantly, you are, in fact, choosing to take a lower salary in order to spend your labour on your non profit. This means you are choosing actions that lead to you not donating to other charities. If you think this is the correct thing to do, altruistically speaking, then you think this achieves more good than taking a higher paying job and donating that money. I think it would be perverse if the GWWC pledge obliged people to make ineffective decisions that did less good by their lights