Another way of guarding against being demoralized is comparing one’s absolute impact to people outside of EA. For instance, you could take your metric of impact, be it saving lives, improving unit human welfare, reducing animal suffering, or improving the long-term future, and compare the effectiveness of your donation to the average donation. For instance, with the median EA donation of $740, if you thought it were 100 times more effective than the average donation, this would correspond roughly to the 99.9th percentile of income typical donation in the US. And if you thought it were 10,000 times more effective, you could compete with billionaires!
Another way of guarding against being demoralized is comparing one’s absolute impact to people outside of EA. For instance, you could take your metric of impact, be it saving lives, improving unit human welfare, reducing animal suffering, or improving the long-term future, and compare the effectiveness of your donation to the average donation. For instance, with the median EA donation of $740, if you thought it were 100 times more effective than the average donation, this would correspond roughly to the 99.9th percentile of income typical donation in the US. And if you thought it were 10,000 times more effective, you could compete with billionaires!