Why isn’t “Earning to give”, or even just “donate effectively” sufficient to have the large positive effects “Task Y” could have?
I see “donate effectively” as “Task Y”, and would love to see that get wider acceptance. To get around concerns that people might “set and forget” their giving at a low level, I think messaging around effectiveness should include the idea of improving one’s giving over time. For instance, people can take a “personal best” approach to giving and try to give better (give more, give more effectively, do more research, etc.) each year.
My sense is this would go a long way in reducing some of the elitism concerns @John_Maxwell_IV mentioned. And rather than reducing option value, I think it would give EA a lot more flexibility and robustness if it could draw on a large pool of people with diverse skills who were sympathetic to core EA ideas. For instance, it’d be a lot easier to close the “operations gap” if there were a lot of EA sympathetic people with strong ops experience, and the same will be true of the next talent gap that comes along (my guess is that a “management gap” is the next natural progression).
I see “donate effectively” as “Task Y”, and would love to see that get wider acceptance. To get around concerns that people might “set and forget” their giving at a low level, I think messaging around effectiveness should include the idea of improving one’s giving over time. For instance, people can take a “personal best” approach to giving and try to give better (give more, give more effectively, do more research, etc.) each year.
My sense is this would go a long way in reducing some of the elitism concerns @John_Maxwell_IV mentioned. And rather than reducing option value, I think it would give EA a lot more flexibility and robustness if it could draw on a large pool of people with diverse skills who were sympathetic to core EA ideas. For instance, it’d be a lot easier to close the “operations gap” if there were a lot of EA sympathetic people with strong ops experience, and the same will be true of the next talent gap that comes along (my guess is that a “management gap” is the next natural progression).