Don’t worry, it is a fine answer and probably has more structure than what I wrote, so good job on that :D
I’m going to an EA meetup of the few people that do exist in EA in my country for the first time, I’m very much looking forward to what they have to say. Thanks for the reply!
Thank you so much for writing this.
I feel a very similar way. Every so often I get that feeling and excitement again about doing so much good, and after reading some posts and listening to podcasts for a few days, I get incredibly depressed because I don’t study at Oxford and I’m not good at mathematics and I even struggle to make a okay-ish cost-benefit analysis for very basic things and I have no idea how to take all those seemingly complicated things like moral uncertainty into count. It’s just exhausting.
But it has also taught me a lot things that I previously thought differently, less rationally about (like nuclea, organic farming, technology in general, …). Except a lot of that came all at once and it was very overwhelming that it made me feel very lost (and to this day still does). I’d love to do more good, but I feel that the only way of doing that is completely throwing my life around and leaving all my family and friends for something in a country far away that has a tiny chance of succeeding, but with very big rewards if it does.
I study geography, something I’m very interested in, but (un)fortunately there are not a lot of neglected existential problems in those fields of science. I see a lot of other people writing about comparative advantage in the comment section here, but I don’t really know where mine lies, or even how to figure out where mine is. I’ll admit that I’m scared that the conclusion might be that I have to drop out of university, something I don’t want to do. I could go study mathematics or physics, but I’d have an incredibly hard time there and I would not be happy for one second there. But it probably does also mean I can have a bigger impact. Is it then worth it? For the world, probably. For me, no.
The EA group in my country is very small, and really only exists in the capital. A forum post here explained how most students who are sympathetic to EA ideas haven’t heard of it. These things gave me the idea to go around lecture halls in the beginning of the academic year and pitch EA to try and start a local group. I do think I’m half-decent at giving oral presentations and I quite enjoy it. But say a couple of people reach out, what then? How does that all work and where would the comparative advantage of our group lie? I don’t have friends who are EA-sympathetic and I haven’t really made any connections since I started following EA about a year and a half ago. So I’d have to start an organization that I don’t fit in all by myself and somehow motivate people to join it and spend significant amounts of time and money on.
I have had some other ideas but again no connections to make it work or even pitch it to or even how to figure out if it’s an idea that’s worth my time. EA has made me think and question a lot, but has failed to explain how to find answers to those questions. I’m sorry for this rather incoherent rant that talks only about myself. These thoughts have been on my mind for many months, but I’ve never really had the chance to express them to people who might understand. I hope some poeple here do.