The percentage of EAs earning to give is too low
I think there are 3 questions that feed into this for me:
Should EAs doing direct work switch to Earning to Give?
My opinion: Strongly no, on a population level.
Should EAs not doing direct work start Earning to Give?
My opinion: Yes, on a population level. Ideally after having ruled out direct work.
Should the EA community grow & use Earning to Give as one central way to contribute?
My opinion: I’m pretty uncertain, but leaning towards yes.
Currently, I’d expect older people to donate less to animal welfare than younger people. In the future, the way donation patterns differ might change. But there might be some differences that stay consistent over time, e.g. older people donating in a more/less risk-averse manner.
(I haven’t looked deeply into the model.)
One thing is that ‘donations at death’ are likely qualitatively different to ‘donations during life’. This difference might be important in terms of how effective/desirable the individual donations are.
Afaict the model doesn’t apply well to effective altruists as a sub-population.
Most EAs are young, and unless the movement suddenly becomes popular among older people, few are likely to die in the next 40 years[1]. Even if you fully buy this type of argument, and you believe donation opportunities are roughly uniformly distributed over time, the members of the community should probably do some ‘donation smoothing’ while alive.
(If there’s an existential catastrophe, donating at death won’t matter anyway.)
I think someone shared on Twitter that they worked with Phoebe Brooks who also created a video series for GWWC.
I’ve thought about this a bit, and I don’t think I fully understand the point you’re making.
Surely, absent more context, a 10k donation is a strong signal? It only becomes weaker if you assume the donor is very rich (e.g. “it’s <5% of their income”). But in the effective altruism community, that assumption would often be wrong.
Being vegan is a less noisy signal of personal commitment than giving 10k to charity, so people will take this more seriously, whether that’s fair or not.
I don’t know whether this is correct on average, but it likely depends a lot on context. For example, being vegan in Hollywood might be seen as trend-following or health-related, while being vegan at a university might come across as principled and self-sacrificing.
Also, I don’t think it’s true that most of the people you’re trying to signal to don’t have important information about you. If you’re telling friends you donated 10k, they likely know whether that’s a major sacrifice for you. And if a news story says “doctor donates 10% of her salary”, most readers will grasp the significance.
I’m not sure it’s true that people generally see a 10k donation as less of a personal sacrifice than going vegan. But even if they did, I doubt the effect is especially important?
I just don’t think it’s good proof of personal sacrifice in all cases and was arguing against this specific argument.
In general I’d argue against overly general statements about how much personal sacrifice something is. You’ll often need to understand & trust someone a bit before you can really judge this.
Examples:
My guess is that long-term veganism correlates strongly with not perceiving it as a large sacrifice.
Some people see choosing an EA-aligned career as a major personal cost, while others would have made similar choices anyway.
One billionaire might see donating $1 million as a small gesture (“just 1/2000 of my net worth”), another might see it as a big deal (“that’s $1 million of my money”).
Whether you’re on Struggle St or you’re Bill Gates, giving up eggs and cheese sucks to a similar degree.
Disagree, giving up eggs and cheese is easier when you are rich (e.g. because you can buy fancy replacement products) and much easier when you’re super rich (e.g. you can have world class private chefs, go to the best vegan restaurants in the world, etc.).
Interesting that 80% disagree can mean “depopulation is pretty likely good” (e.g. this seems to be Alfredo Parra’s view) or “depopulation likely hardly matters” (which I think is your view).
Morality is Objective
I’m pretty confused about this, but currently I look at it something like this:
Moral sentences state beliefs whose validity doesn’t depend on whether or not anyone approves of them. These beliefs are about facts in the world, the same world that physics describes, just different aspects of it.
Epistemically, I am a coherentist: a belief is more justified the better it fits within the most explanatorily coherent system of beliefs. I see reflective equilibrium as a useful method for approaching that coherence.
In physics, we have a dense and well-corroborated network of beliefs, supported by prediction and intervention. Ethics, by contrast, has a thinner and more contested network, and lacks comparably strong validation tools. So, my confidence in particular moral propositions, and in moral realism itself, is correspondingly weaker.
Still, I treat improvements in moral theory (better explanations, resolution of paradoxes, maybe convergence across cultures) as evidence that we’re tracking real features of the world, just as progress in physics suggests we’re tracking reality. The quality and coherence of our moral theories should inform how confident we are in moral realism.
I’d put my credence around 60%. Coherent moral theories face enough external constraints and show some explanatory success that I slightly lean toward thinking they track real features of conscious beings and their interactions.
Not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but this post seems relevant.
Good reminder that you should red team your Theory of Change!
I’m slightly confused about how they distinguish between ‘the model reached ASL-3’ and ‘treating the model as if it had reached ASL-3’.
We are deploying Claude Opus 4 with our ASL-3 measures as a precautionary and provisional action. To be clear, we have not yet determined whether Claude Opus 4 has definitively passed the Capabilities Threshold that requires ASL-3 protections.
This doesn’t change anything about your point that they changed their initial commitment, but does it mean that they didn’t (technically) break their initial commitment with this release?
I don’t think that people need to be non-speciecist and enthusiastic about neglected issues to want to donate to shrimp welfare. People might donate because they are opportunistic donors and this seems like a worthy cause, because they found Andrés trustworthy and want to donate to trustworthy projects, or because of memes (the internet is into shrimp), etc.
The best-case scenario for increasing donation volume is probably thoughtful, high-net-worth individuals getting interested in whether this is a thing, deciding that it is, and partially adjusting their donation decisions. I don’t think they need to fully buy into effective altruism to do this.
I’d certainly be interested in whether this video leads to a notable uptick in donations (both the number and volume) :)
The video has 418K youtube views – and I’d guess it will stagnate somewhere between 500k and 1 million views. In a 5-minute search I couldn’t find any other video seriously considering shrimp welfare with over 5k views, and I’d guess there are only 15–40 such videos with more than 1k views. So this video might have increased exposure to shrimp welfare concerns through youtube something like 3–15x. Seems plausible that it will lead to substantially more donations.
But I feel also sad that the ideas have largely not slipped into the public consciousness over the last 14 years.
I kinda like that we’re back (so back?) to “a new movement called effective altruism”.
I’m still confused about the overall shape of what Thiel believes.
He’s concerned about the antichrist opposing Jesus during Armageddon. But afaik standard theology says that Jesus will win for certain. And revelation says the world will be in disarray and moral decay when the Second Coming happens.
If chaos is inevitable and necessary for Jesus’ return, why is expanding the pre-apocalyptic era with growth/prosperity so important to him?
If Thiel’s goal is to maximise human flourishing until the, inevitably bad, end, isn’t that goal quite similar to more standard goals of keeping societies open, innovative and prosperous? Does Thiel see some additional spiritual element here (e.g. number of souls saved)?
Why is longevity so important to Thiel? It would seem to me that lifespan matters less personally if you’re a Christian. And on a societal level, longer lifespans might decrease dynamism and increase stagnation through more deeply entrenched interest groups, etc.