I’m a doctor in Australia interested in doing the most good that I can.
Proponent of Earning to Give. Skeptical of longtermism.
Henry Howard
Karma: 19
Thanks! It’s mainly Bootstrap on top of some free website templates. I’m interested by how design and marketing can influence people into thinking something has authority, weight, believability.
The positive impact is normalisation of altruism, which leads to others being more altruistic in the way they think/behave/vote. The size of this effect is very hard to measure—like any social movement—but because it could be large we should be careful about throwing the “cultural change” aspect of the movement out (which I think is what’s happening with the shift in focus to impactful careers).
Personal anecdote: I’m a doctor in Australia. Doctors are paid very well and have huge potential to fund good causes and influence positive change. Despite this, I witness a lot of doctors getting caught up in jealously comparing themselves to other doctors and their lifestyles. Lavish lifestyle is the norm and I’ve seen this lead to doctors:
Advocating for redirecting public funding to increasing their own wages
Taking the first class flight to that conference in Berlin because their colleagues do
Justifying buying a new Mini because the gastroenterologist drives a Morgan
Avoiding giving to charity
These represent a huge pool of resources that aren’t being used because it’s not the norm, and that’s just within medicine.
Norms are hard to change but a coordinated movement of people giving might have a significant effect. It was certainly other people giving that inspired me to start giving.
I think we should at least consider that we might be losing effectiveness by giving too much space to 80,000 Hours-style impactful careers talk and pushing giving to the side. I haven’t seen much consideration of this on the forum
Sorry, I’m trying to say the opposite. I’ve edited for clarity.
I think the movement’s underestimating the positive impact of giving. We’re shifting focus from giving to impactful careers and in the process possibly losing a whole lot of positive impact.
The act of giving itself has positive impact
Hi! My name is Henry Howard. I’m a doctor in Australia. I’m giving 50% of my income to charity all 2021 to normalise taking only what we need and Giving What We Can. You can find me at:
website: henryach.com/workathon
twitter: @henryachoward
I love the principle of doing altruism effectively but I am hesitant to align myself with the Effective Altruism movement.
I’m worried about the Effective Altruism movement’s shifting focus to longtermism which I suspect is a “Pascal’s mugging” by a utility monster (the monster being the theoretical quintillions of future humans) and which I worry is making the movement look unhinged, impractical and is limiting its appeal and impact.
I’m mostly vegan but I’m concerned about overemphasis on animal welfare. I feel that the Effective Altruism movement overvalues animal well-being vs human well-being. I also feel it ignores that improving human welfare is an avenue to improving animal welfare (people who are struggling don’t have room to think about whether their chickens are free range).
This is great!
I’m a first-year doctor in Australia. I’m giving half my income to charity this year: (https://henryach.com/workathon). Over here I’m on track to make about 95,000-100,000 AUD (~56,000-62,000 EUR) before tax for a year of ~50 hour weeks. Not quite as much as your job in Switzerland but then this is a first year internship wage and residency wages are slightly higher.
Have you considered locum work? I don’t know if there’s much of this in Switzerland but it’s big in Australia as so much of the country is rural and it’s hard to entice doctors out there other than by paying them huge amounts for short stints. Hourly rates as a locum are usually double or more the usual rate. I work with a lot of UK doctors currently doing this.