I think this post does a great job of capturing something I’ve heard from quite a few people recently.
Especially for longtermist EAs, it seems direct work is substantially more valuable relative to donations than it was in the past, and I think your thought experiment about the number of GWWC pledges it’d make sense to trade for one person working on an 80k priority pathway is a reasonably clear way of illustrating that point.
But I think that this is a false dilemma (as you suggest it might be). This isn’t just because I doubt that the pledge (or effective giving generally) are in tension, but because I think they’re mutually supportive. Effective giving is a reasonably common way to enter the effective altruism community. Noticing that you can have an extraordinary impact with donations — which, even from a longtermist perspective, I still think you can have — can inspire people to begin to taking action to improve the world, and potentially continue onto working directly. I think historically it’s been a pretty common first step, and though I anticipate more direct efforts to recruit highly engaged EAs to become relatively more prominent in future, I still expect the path from effective giving --> priority path career, to continue much more often than effective giving --> someone not taking a priority path.
I’ve heard a lot of conflicting views on whether the above is right; it seems quite a few people disagree with me, and think there’s much more of a tension here than I do, and I’d be interested to hear why. (For disclosure, I work at GWWC and personally see getting more people into EA as one of the main ways GWWC can be impactful).
I suppose the upshot on this, if I’m right, is that the norm that “10% and you’re doing your part” can continue, and it’s not so obvious that it’s in tension with the fact that doing direct work may be many times more impactful. While it may be uncomfortable that there are significant differences in the impactfulness of members of the community, I think this is/was/always will be the case.
Another thing worth adding is that I think there’s also room for multiple norms on what counts as “doing your part”. For example, I think you should also be commended and feel like you’ve done your part if you apply to several priority paths, even if you don’t get one / it doesn’t work out for whatever reason. Maybe Holden’s suggestion of trying to get kick-ass at something, while being on standby to use your skill for good, could be another.
By way of conclusion, I feel like what I’ve written above might seem dismissive of the general issue that EA has yet to figure out — given the new landscape — how to think about demandingness. But I really think there is something to work out here, and so I really interesting this post for raising it quite explicitly as an issue.
“I still expect the path from effective giving --> priority path career, to continue much more often than effective giving --> someone not taking a priority path.”
I parsed this as over 50% of people who do effective giving or take the GWWC pledge of similar go on to (or you predict will go on to) do full time impact work. Is that what was intended?
I interpreted the arrows to be causal and not just temporal. So effective giving is more often going to cause people to work in a priority path than it will cause people to not work in a priority path where they otherwise would.
What Bec Hawk said is right: my claim is that that the number of people effective giving causes to go into direct work will be greater than the number people it causes to not go into direct work (who otherwise would).
For what it’s worth, I don’t think >50% of people who take the GWWC pledge will go onto doing direct work.
I think this post does a great job of capturing something I’ve heard from quite a few people recently.
Especially for longtermist EAs, it seems direct work is substantially more valuable relative to donations than it was in the past, and I think your thought experiment about the number of GWWC pledges it’d make sense to trade for one person working on an 80k priority pathway is a reasonably clear way of illustrating that point.
But I think that this is a false dilemma (as you suggest it might be). This isn’t just because I doubt that the pledge (or effective giving generally) are in tension, but because I think they’re mutually supportive. Effective giving is a reasonably common way to enter the effective altruism community. Noticing that you can have an extraordinary impact with donations — which, even from a longtermist perspective, I still think you can have — can inspire people to begin to taking action to improve the world, and potentially continue onto working directly. I think historically it’s been a pretty common first step, and though I anticipate more direct efforts to recruit highly engaged EAs to become relatively more prominent in future, I still expect the path from effective giving --> priority path career, to continue much more often than effective giving --> someone not taking a priority path.
I’ve heard a lot of conflicting views on whether the above is right; it seems quite a few people disagree with me, and think there’s much more of a tension here than I do, and I’d be interested to hear why. (For disclosure, I work at GWWC and personally see getting more people into EA as one of the main ways GWWC can be impactful).
I suppose the upshot on this, if I’m right, is that the norm that “10% and you’re doing your part” can continue, and it’s not so obvious that it’s in tension with the fact that doing direct work may be many times more impactful. While it may be uncomfortable that there are significant differences in the impactfulness of members of the community, I think this is/was/always will be the case.
Another thing worth adding is that I think there’s also room for multiple norms on what counts as “doing your part”. For example, I think you should also be commended and feel like you’ve done your part if you apply to several priority paths, even if you don’t get one / it doesn’t work out for whatever reason. Maybe Holden’s suggestion of trying to get kick-ass at something, while being on standby to use your skill for good, could be another.
By way of conclusion, I feel like what I’ve written above might seem dismissive of the general issue that EA has yet to figure out — given the new landscape — how to think about demandingness. But I really think there is something to work out here, and so I really interesting this post for raising it quite explicitly as an issue.
“I still expect the path from effective giving --> priority path career, to continue much more often than effective giving --> someone not taking a priority path.”
I parsed this as over 50% of people who do effective giving or take the GWWC pledge of similar go on to (or you predict will go on to) do full time impact work. Is that what was intended?
I interpreted the arrows to be causal and not just temporal. So effective giving is more often going to cause people to work in a priority path than it will cause people to not work in a priority path where they otherwise would.
What Bec Hawk said is right: my claim is that that the number of people effective giving causes to go into direct work will be greater than the number people it causes to not go into direct work (who otherwise would).
For what it’s worth, I don’t think >50% of people who take the GWWC pledge will go onto doing direct work.