To what extent would people turn off if I told them that I give an amount that is unreasonable in their point of view? Or that I sometimes choose to deny myself something because I think I can do much more good to people far away. Making priorities that are not optimal for your own happy and comfortable lifestyle seems to be socially undesirable even if the people near to you don’t suffer from it. E.g. I tell I give $x per month, which they would not expect from any sensible person with a modest income and would definitely not see themselves doing. Would it be better if I did not mention any number?
ImmaSix
Meetup : Debiasing Techniques
Meetup : Meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism and Politics
Meetup : Utrecht: Artificial Intelligence
Meetup : Utrecht: Climate Change
This could lead to good habits, but it might also make you focus on details rather than the big picture. Thinking EA too much can be exhausting, make you feel more guilty than necessary or you could become estranged from the people you meet in everyday life.
On the thoughts you sum up, you might add:
Is the small mistake I made today really bad?
Is this small thing a good step in the way to a greater goal?
For example, I always forgive myself if I happen to spend a few dollars more in the supermarket than absolutely necessary in order to eat healthy, and I there are a lot of bigger mistakes I should forgive myself as well. It’s more important to spend enough time on my career and donation strategy.
You might want to ask local group organisers to distribute the survey among their members.
There is a lot of discussion about what to DO in the context of EA. But for everything I do, there is something else that I don’t.
What have you decided NOT to do, because it has a (somewhat) lower priority than other things?
Things that I downprioritized:
some recreational activities: playing the guitar, cooking, baking cakes, reading novels.
I quit volunteering in an online education project. It was low time cost anyway.
meditating (would that increase productivity more than the time spent on it? I don’t really care about the other benefits.)
keep an EA blog, because there are already good ones. My comparative advantage would be to write in Dutch to a local public, but that’s a small group of people who can easily read English.
Meetup : Game Theory: People Respond to Incentives… How?
Meetup : Utrecht: Rationality Games
Meetup : Utrecht: Game Theory
Meetup : Utrecht
Meetup : Utrecht: a critique of effective altruism
Sorry, the date was wrong. It is 14 December, not 7 December.
Meetup : A critique of effective altruism
Does anyone know (from experience) good articles/books on not-necessarily-AI technology risks or non-AI technology risk?
Is “Global Catastrophic Risks” by Bostrom worth reading in this context? It’s from 2008; my concern is that it might be outdated.
Evan, I feel the same shyness about my giving behaviour. Ironically, is the social standard of being open about giving within the EA community that helps to overcome this.