My tentative take is that this is on-net bad, and should not be encouraged. I give this a 10⁄10 for good intent, but a 2⁄10 for planning and avoiding foreseeable issues, including the unilateralists curse, the likely object level impacts of the pledge, and the reputational and community impacts of promoting the idea.
It is not psychologically healthy to optimize or maximize your life towards a single goal, much less commit to doing so. That isn’t the EA ideal. Promising to “maximize my ability to make a meaningful difference” is an unlimited and worryingly cult-like commitment, builds in no feedback from others who have a broader perspective about what is or is not important or useful. It implicitly requires pledgers to prioritize impact over personal health and psychological wellbeing. (The claim that it’s usually the case that burnout reduces impact is a contingent one, and seems very likely to lead many people to overcommit and do damaging things.) It leads to unhealthy competitive dynamics, and excludes most people, especially the psychologically well adjusted.
I will contrast this to the giving pledge, which is very explicitly a partial pledge, requiring 10% of your income. This is achievable without extreme measures, or giving up having a normal life. The pledge was built via consultation with and advice from a variety of individuals, especially including those who were more experienced, which also seems to sharply contrast with this one.
I agree r.e the unhealthiness of maximise, at least for me personally. Makes me wonder- what could a partial career pledge look like? Some options:
10% of my career thinking/ planning will be about the effectiveness of my choices.
I’ll spend at least 10% of my career making a direct impact (through volunteering or a full time role)
Or drop the 10% and just get people to commit to one effective career planning day a year. The Better Career Pledge can then release a guide/ hold meetups on that day, and then you get retention/ celebration/ maybe a recruiting tool.
Thanks for your feedback! I appreciate it and agree that maximize it a pretty strong world. Just to clarify the crux here, would you say that this project doesn’t make sense over-all or would you say that the text of the pledge be changed to something more manageable?
I think it’s a problem overall, and I’ve talked about this a bit in two of the articles I linked to. To expand on the concerns, I’m concerned on a number of levels, starting from community dynamics that seem to dismiss anyone not doing direct work as insufficiently EA, to the idea that we should be a community that encourages making often already unhealthy levels of commitment by young adults into pledges to continue that level of dedication for their entire careers.
As someone who has spent most of a decade working in EA, I think this is worrying, even for people deciding on their own to commit themselves. People should be OK with prioritizing themselves to a significant extent, and while deciding to work on global priorities is laudable *if you can find something that fits your abilities and skill set*, but committing to do so for your entire career, which may not follow the path you are hoping for, seems at best unwise. Suggesting that others do so seems very bad.
So again, I applaud the intent, and think it was a reasonable idea to propose and get feedback about, but I also strongly think it should be dropped and you should move to something else.
starting from community dynamics that seem to dismiss anyone not doing direct work as insufficiently EA
This seems like very unfortunate zero-sum framing to me. Speaking personally, I’ve taken the 10% pledge, been heavily involved in Giveffektivt.dk, pushed for GWWC to have (the first) pledge table at EAGxNordics ’24, and excited to support 10% pledge communities.
When I work on expanding the 10% pledge community, that does not mean I am disparaging using one’s career to do good, and vice versa.
commitment by young adults into pledges to continue that level of dedication for their entire careers
I am curious if you are see the adverse effect playing out on harm to the individual or opportunity cost as a result of harm to the individual?
Fx, I took the pledge in 2020 (iirc), and have (deliberately) earned very little working as a community builder—to such an extent that I haven’t saved a sufficient runaway. This has lead to decent amounts of stress over several years.
It’s pretty clear to me that the stress caused was “worth it”, in terms of the amount of good that money could do if given to mosquito nets.
However, I think the larger consideration is opportunity cost, as a result of me being less productive.
But does that mean I think the pledge, or the drowning child thought experiment ect. have been net negative (assuming their affects were isolated to only me)?. No, I think that’s too little resolution. I think they’ve been net-positive, it’s just that we haven’t fine-tuned our community yet.
What would this finetuning look like? I am unsure, but I think it would look like a lot of support to plan your career and look for opportunities, but also strong cultural norms for living active fulfilling lives.
I think a lot of the purported solutions to reducing burnout (and associated adverse affects) are low-resolution and facile, fx earning huge salaries.
I agree with most of what you wrote here, but think that the pledge, as a specific high resolution effort, is not helpful. You’re confusing what zero-sum does and does not mean—I agree with the point that a community that acts the way the EA community has is unfortunately exclusionary, but I also think that making more pledges does the opposite of remove those dynamics. I also think that looking at the outcomes for those who made pledges and stuck around is selecting on the outcome variable; the damage that high expectations have may be on-net worthwhile, but it would be unreasonable to come to that conclusion on the basis of talking to who stuck around.
I agree with most of what you wrote here, but think that the pledge, as a specific high resolution effort, is not helpful.
This is quite possible, but that’s why we will have M&E and are committing bounded amounts of time to this project. - Although neither of these are much help if there’s a distinct externality/direct harm to the wider community
Would you be able to explain why you think so? I can see you’ve linked to a post but it would take me >15 minutes to read and I think that would be a bad use of my time
I also think that looking at the outcomes for those who made pledges and stuck around is selecting on the outcome variable; the damage that high expectations have may be on-net worthwhile, but it would be unreasonable to come to that conclusion on the basis of talking to who stuck around.
I think my suggestion for randomised outreach and follow-up here would largely control for this
My tentative take is that this is on-net bad, and should not be encouraged. I give this a 10⁄10 for good intent, but a 2⁄10 for planning and avoiding foreseeable issues, including the unilateralists curse, the likely object level impacts of the pledge, and the reputational and community impacts of promoting the idea.
It is not psychologically healthy to optimize or maximize your life towards a single goal, much less commit to doing so. That isn’t the EA ideal. Promising to “maximize my ability to make a meaningful difference” is an unlimited and worryingly cult-like commitment, builds in no feedback from others who have a broader perspective about what is or is not important or useful. It implicitly requires pledgers to prioritize impact over personal health and psychological wellbeing. (The claim that it’s usually the case that burnout reduces impact is a contingent one, and seems very likely to lead many people to overcommit and do damaging things.) It leads to unhealthy competitive dynamics, and excludes most people, especially the psychologically well adjusted.
I will contrast this to the giving pledge, which is very explicitly a partial pledge, requiring 10% of your income. This is achievable without extreme measures, or giving up having a normal life. The pledge was built via consultation with and advice from a variety of individuals, especially including those who were more experienced, which also seems to sharply contrast with this one.
I agree r.e the unhealthiness of maximise, at least for me personally. Makes me wonder- what could a partial career pledge look like? Some options:
10% of my career thinking/ planning will be about the effectiveness of my choices.
I’ll spend at least 10% of my career making a direct impact (through volunteering or a full time role)
Or drop the 10% and just get people to commit to one effective career planning day a year. The Better Career Pledge can then release a guide/ hold meetups on that day, and then you get retention/ celebration/ maybe a recruiting tool.
Thanks for your feedback! I appreciate it and agree that maximize it a pretty strong world. Just to clarify the crux here, would you say that this project doesn’t make sense over-all or would you say that the text of the pledge be changed to something more manageable?
I think it’s a problem overall, and I’ve talked about this a bit in two of the articles I linked to. To expand on the concerns, I’m concerned on a number of levels, starting from community dynamics that seem to dismiss anyone not doing direct work as insufficiently EA, to the idea that we should be a community that encourages making often already unhealthy levels of commitment by young adults into pledges to continue that level of dedication for their entire careers.
As someone who has spent most of a decade working in EA, I think this is worrying, even for people deciding on their own to commit themselves. People should be OK with prioritizing themselves to a significant extent, and while deciding to work on global priorities is laudable *if you can find something that fits your abilities and skill set*, but committing to do so for your entire career, which may not follow the path you are hoping for, seems at best unwise. Suggesting that others do so seems very bad.
So again, I applaud the intent, and think it was a reasonable idea to propose and get feedback about, but I also strongly think it should be dropped and you should move to something else.
This seems like very unfortunate zero-sum framing to me. Speaking personally, I’ve taken the 10% pledge, been heavily involved in Giveffektivt.dk, pushed for GWWC to have (the first) pledge table at EAGxNordics ’24, and excited to support 10% pledge communities.
When I work on expanding the 10% pledge community, that does not mean I am disparaging using one’s career to do good, and vice versa.
I am curious if you are see the adverse effect playing out on harm to the individual or opportunity cost as a result of harm to the individual?
Fx, I took the pledge in 2020 (iirc), and have (deliberately) earned very little working as a community builder—to such an extent that I haven’t saved a sufficient runaway. This has lead to decent amounts of stress over several years.
It’s pretty clear to me that the stress caused was “worth it”, in terms of the amount of good that money could do if given to mosquito nets.
However, I think the larger consideration is opportunity cost, as a result of me being less productive.
But does that mean I think the pledge, or the drowning child thought experiment ect. have been net negative (assuming their affects were isolated to only me)?. No, I think that’s too little resolution. I think they’ve been net-positive, it’s just that we haven’t fine-tuned our community yet.
What would this finetuning look like? I am unsure, but I think it would look like a lot of support to plan your career and look for opportunities, but also strong cultural norms for living active fulfilling lives.
I think a lot of the purported solutions to reducing burnout (and associated adverse affects) are low-resolution and facile, fx earning huge salaries.
I agree with most of what you wrote here, but think that the pledge, as a specific high resolution effort, is not helpful. You’re confusing what zero-sum does and does not mean—I agree with the point that a community that acts the way the EA community has is unfortunately exclusionary, but I also think that making more pledges does the opposite of remove those dynamics. I also think that looking at the outcomes for those who made pledges and stuck around is selecting on the outcome variable; the damage that high expectations have may be on-net worthwhile, but it would be unreasonable to come to that conclusion on the basis of talking to who stuck around.
This is quite possible, but that’s why we will have M&E and are committing bounded amounts of time to this project. - Although neither of these are much help if there’s a distinct externality/direct harm to the wider community
Would you be able to explain why you think so? I can see you’ve linked to a post but it would take me >15 minutes to read and I think that would be a bad use of my time
I think my suggestion for randomised outreach and follow-up here would largely control for this