Great post! I’ve also experienced similar things during my time with EA. I think there are several ways to approach the issue of self-worth:
Its important to realize that EA is not the same as utilitarianism and therefore does not suffer from the problem of demandingness (this is also discussed in the latest 80K podcast with Benjamin Todd). EA does not prescribe how much of resources we should share, only that the ones we do share should be distributed in an effective way.
Unfortunately there is a tendency in EA to undervalue “small” contributions (i.e. those made by care workers, nurses, GPs etc). I think we need to realize that every contribution people can make to the common good is good no matter how small. I don’t think that someone who saves less than one life in expectation should feel any worse than people who saves thousands or millions of lives. In any case, I wouldn’t go around telling people that they should feel worthless if they are not working on something super important for humanity (if that was the case we’d need to reach more than 99% of humans on earth to tell them that they are worthless). This is clearly an absurd position, so why should we be telling ourselves that?
I think I mostly agree with this, and I’d also like to clarify that I don’t think this problem originates from EA or from my contact with EA. It is not that I feel that “EA” demands too much of me, rather that when I focus a lot on impact potential it becomes (even more) difficult to separate self-worth from performance.
Different versions of contingent self-worth (contingent self-esteem, performance-contingent self-esteem—there are a lot of similar concepts and I am not completely sure about which terms to use, but basically the concept that how much we like and value ourselves is connected strongly to our ability to perform) seem to be a problem for a lot of people outside of EA, that also relates to the risk for burn-out.
My thinking is that there are people with this issue in EA, possibly more than in the general population, and that even though it does not come from EA philosophy there is some relation between these types of self-worth issues and a focus on instrumental value. I’m not arguing that this is “right” or useful, I think it’d be a lot better if we could all have a strong and stable sense of non-contingent self-worth.
Great post! I’ve also experienced similar things during my time with EA. I think there are several ways to approach the issue of self-worth:
Its important to realize that EA is not the same as utilitarianism and therefore does not suffer from the problem of demandingness (this is also discussed in the latest 80K podcast with Benjamin Todd). EA does not prescribe how much of resources we should share, only that the ones we do share should be distributed in an effective way.
Unfortunately there is a tendency in EA to undervalue “small” contributions (i.e. those made by care workers, nurses, GPs etc). I think we need to realize that every contribution people can make to the common good is good no matter how small. I don’t think that someone who saves less than one life in expectation should feel any worse than people who saves thousands or millions of lives. In any case, I wouldn’t go around telling people that they should feel worthless if they are not working on something super important for humanity (if that was the case we’d need to reach more than 99% of humans on earth to tell them that they are worthless). This is clearly an absurd position, so why should we be telling ourselves that?
I think I mostly agree with this, and I’d also like to clarify that I don’t think this problem originates from EA or from my contact with EA. It is not that I feel that “EA” demands too much of me, rather that when I focus a lot on impact potential it becomes (even more) difficult to separate self-worth from performance.
Different versions of contingent self-worth (contingent self-esteem, performance-contingent self-esteem—there are a lot of similar concepts and I am not completely sure about which terms to use, but basically the concept that how much we like and value ourselves is connected strongly to our ability to perform) seem to be a problem for a lot of people outside of EA, that also relates to the risk for burn-out.
My thinking is that there are people with this issue in EA, possibly more than in the general population, and that even though it does not come from EA philosophy there is some relation between these types of self-worth issues and a focus on instrumental value. I’m not arguing that this is “right” or useful, I think it’d be a lot better if we could all have a strong and stable sense of non-contingent self-worth.