I work as Software Tester and donate a part of my income.
I got into EA in 2012.
I work as Software Tester and donate a part of my income.
I got into EA in 2012.
In the early years of my EA journey, I tried to live on a small budget so I could donate more. I learned that I could be productive on a small budget.
There were times I worked on an old laptop. Some actions might have taken a few seconds longer, and I did not have much screen space. It was fine. What matters most about productivity is to do the right things, not to do the things slightly faster.
I exercise to keep my mind fresh. I don’t go to the gym or take sports classes. I just do a bodyweight workout at home. Completely free. I also cook my own meals. I can only spend so many hours working behind a computer screen. Ordering food delivery or buying pre-prepared food does not save me time.
The biggest problem with frugality is socializing. To meet people, I need to travel and participate in the activities that they do. Sometimes it may be better to not be too frugal.
For example, my team works in the office one day per week. We have lunch in a restaurant—which is quite expensive where I live. When I joined the team, I brought my own food and ate it alone in the office. I felt unhappy about this. After a while, I decided to join and spend a lot of money on the “unnecessary luxury” of not socially excluding myself.
Participating in the Forum is seen as a pretty important “badge” of belonging in EA,
Why do you believe this is true? I’ve met—online and offline—many higly involved people who never post or comment on the forum. Maybe that’s even the majority of the EA people I know. Some of them even never or seldom read anything here (I guess).
I agree we should be careful with the “spend money to save time” guideline. It can be self-serving because spending time to save money can be unpleasant.
Also, there is the danger that you get used to the luxury of spending money to save time. If your situation changes, or need to update your estimate of the value of your time to a lower value, you should be willing to spend the time and not the money! (I hope this does not happen to you, but it may happen e.g. you need to move to your career plan B/C/Z)
This also applies to other luxuries.
Does most of GWWC’s impact come from a very few wealthy or high-income members?
I am grateful to the organizers of EAGxVirtual that they are going to make this event happen.
I am excited about this event in particular, because it is accessible to people who live far away from EA hotspots, and to people who—for whatever reason—cannot travel easily (financially, work related, health, family, etc.).
How to prevent that projects with large downside risk get funded?
LTFF might be able to detect and turn down those projects. But some members of your funder network might not.
CEA is not funding constrained. I wonder where the EtG/direct work trade-off lies in more funding constrained or less talent constrained cause areas.
I avoid flying and travel by train instead (most of the time)=> even if it costs me a substantial part of my limited vacation time. I could compensate my extra emissions many times if I donated (my hourly salary)*(time saving) to a giving green top charity—but I don’t do it.
I don’t think this is very inconsistent with EA values.
I can totally relate to the feeling of wanting to do more than “just donate”. I strongly agree with Henry (and others) that donating is an accessible way to have an impact, small donations from individuals are valuable. But “just donate” may not be enough for people with a strong altruistic motivation.
It can be for someone that donating is not only a way to have some impact, but actually the way to have the most impact with their career, given their limited talent. I don’t know if that is the case for you, nor for the person who is reading along here, but it might apply to some people. I do believe that it applies to me, and I have been working in normal jobs for 8 years and donating a significant part of my income.
In my experience, being altruistically motivated and “just donate” is a challenging combination. My monkey brain wants connection to the community, and to the organization and the cause I am donating to. If I were less motivated, I would just be satisfied throwing 10 percent of my income at whatever charity GiveWell recommends . If I were less “dumb” had a different set of talents, I would do fulltime direct work. I experience a lot of excitement and commitment for EA causes, but I need to hold myself back, because my priority is be to optimize my income and keep my living budget modest. What helped me deal with it, is to remind myself that it is just bad luck that I need to live with both high motivation and unfitting abilities—and that doing something is much much better than doing nothing (see also this comment above).
This comment (seen on Kerry Vaughan’s Twitter) hit me hard:
I clicked through to the source. I feel this person. They made a significant commitment because they wanted to help others, and they followed through on it.
This is the type of person I would love to meet. But not at EAG, because I do not want to go to EAG. I don’t fit there, and there are other events (e.g. EAGx or online events) that fit me better.
What is your view on frugality? Is it helpful is people are more frugal to donate (a bit) more?
If you don’t want to (fully) rely on ACE, you might want to look at the Animal Welfare Fund or Founder’s Pledge. Also Open Philanthropy Project works on animal welfare.
In 2018, someone expressed concerns with ACE’s research (link) and ACE responded to these concerns (link). I vaguely remember they were relying too heavily on the cost-effectiveness of things like leafletting and online ads, which later turned out to be not as cost-effective as initially thought. There was also the criticism that they did not independently check the charity’s claims about how successful corporate campagins are. (e.g. if corporates follow through)
ACE has a more challenging task than GiveWell regarding evidence-based charity. There has been much more research from RCTs and other studies in global health and development, than in animal welfare. However, has been a lot of progress in corporate campagns in recent years, so I guess ACE can build upon a larger evidence base now than they could back in 2018.
There was also criticism about ACE’s approach to social justice. See here and please also note the edits and responses linked on the top. As always, social justice is a sensitive topics.
I personally decided to trust ACE’s assessment of charities.
See also this recent comment .
There is an EAGx Virtual. This EAGx happens online.
I hope they are friendly for the less western timezones as well!
Isn’t that a good thing? I hope it stays like this. Then the forum stays interesting for people who are specialized in certain fields or cause areas.
How important is it for (small-ish) donors to be knowledgeable about effective giving? They can just defer to charity evaluators.
Is this page of GWWC what you have in mind?
Edit: this page is even better.
Strong upvoted because of the clear distinction between productivity/business expenses and spending money for fun/personal consumption.
Bay Area is one of GWWC’s priority areas to start a local group.
I temporarily left the EA community in 2018 and that ended up well.
I took a time-out from EA to focus on a job search. I had a job that I wanted to leave, but needed a lot of time and energy to handle all the difficulties that come with a job search. My career path is outside of EA organizations.
How I did it practically:
- I had a clear starting point and wrap up existing commitments. I stopped and handed over my involvement in local community building and told my peers about the time-out. I donated my entire year’s donation budget in February.
- I set myself some rules for what I would and would not do. No events, no volunteering, no interaction with the community. I deleted social media accounts that I only used for EA. I blocked a few websites, most notably 80000hours.org. I would have donated if my time-out took longer, but without any research.
- I did not set an end point. The time-out would be as long as needed. I returned soon after I signed the new contract, 8 months after my starting point. It could have been much longer.
This helped a lot to get the job search done.
I could not, and did not want to, stop aiming for a positive impact on the world. I probably did more good overall than if I stayed involved in EA during the job search.
I can recommend this to others and my future self in a similar situation.