I relate to that a lot, and I want to share how I resolved some of this tension. You currently allow your heart to only say “I want to reduce suffering and increase happiness” and then your brain takes over and optimizes, ignoring everything else your heart is saying. But it’s an arbitrary choice to only listen to the most abstract version of what the heart is saying. You could also allow your heart to be more specific like “I want to help all the animals!”, or even “I want to help this specific animal!” and then let your brain figure out the best way to do that. The way I see it, there is no objectively correct choice here. So I alternate on how specific I allow my heart to be.
In practice, it can look like splitting your donations between charities that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling, and charities that seem most cost-effective when you coldly calculate, as advised in Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately. Here is an example of someone doing this. Unfortunately, it can be much more difficult to do this when you contribute with work rather than donations.
Mmm yeah, I really like this compromise, it leaves room for being human, but indeed, I’m thinking more about career currently. Since I’ve struggled to find a career that is impactful and I am good at, I’m thinking I might actually choose a career that is a relatively stable normal job that I like (Like therapist for enlightened people/people who meditate), and then I can use my free time to work on projects that could be maximally massively impactful.
I relate to that a lot, and I want to share how I resolved some of this tension. You currently allow your heart to only say “I want to reduce suffering and increase happiness” and then your brain takes over and optimizes, ignoring everything else your heart is saying. But it’s an arbitrary choice to only listen to the most abstract version of what the heart is saying. You could also allow your heart to be more specific like “I want to help all the animals!”, or even “I want to help this specific animal!” and then let your brain figure out the best way to do that. The way I see it, there is no objectively correct choice here. So I alternate on how specific I allow my heart to be.
In practice, it can look like splitting your donations between charities that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling, and charities that seem most cost-effective when you coldly calculate, as advised in Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately. Here is an example of someone doing this. Unfortunately, it can be much more difficult to do this when you contribute with work rather than donations.
Mmm yeah, I really like this compromise, it leaves room for being human, but indeed, I’m thinking more about career currently. Since I’ve struggled to find a career that is impactful and I am good at, I’m thinking I might actually choose a career that is a relatively stable normal job that I like (Like therapist for enlightened people/people who meditate), and then I can use my free time to work on projects that could be maximally massively impactful.