I’ve mentioned this elsewhere — I first learned about effective altruism circa 2014 via A Modest Proposal, Scott’s polemic on using dead children as units of currency to force readers to grapple with the opportunity costs of subpar resource allocation under triage. I was young and impressionable when I encountered it, so I’ve never stopped feeling the weight of the frame of EA as duty/obligation, although its weight has lightened considerably since. I related to Tyler’s personal story (which unsurprisingly also references A Modest Proposal as a life-changing polemic) since I followed a similar life arc:
I thought my own story might be more relatable for friends with a history of devotion – unusual people who’ve found themselves dedicating their lives to a particular moral vision, whether it was (or is) Buddhism, Christianity, social justice, or climate activism. When these visions gobble up all other meaning in the life of their devotees, well, that sucks. I go through my own history of devotion to effective altruism. It’s the story of [wanting to help] turning into [needing to help] turning into [living to help] turning into [wanting to die] turning into [wanting to help again, because helping is part of a rich life].
There are other more personally-beneficial frames that arguably (persuasively, IMO) lead to much more long-run impact because they’re sustainable, e.g. Steven Byrnes’ response to a different comment seems pertinent, also Holden Karnofsky’s advice:
I think the difference between “not mattering,” “doing some good” and “doing enormous good” comes down to how you choose the job, how good at it you are, and how good your judgment is (including what risks you’re most focused on and how you model them). Going “all in” on a particular objective seems bad on these fronts: it poses risks to open-mindedness, to mental health and to good decision-making (I am speaking from observations here, not just theory).
That is, I think it’s a bad idea to try to be 100% emotionally bought into the full stakes of the most important century—I think the stakes are just too high for that to make sense for any human being.
Instead, I think the best way to handle “the fate of humanity is at stake” is probably to find a nice job and work about as hard as you’d work at another job, rather than trying to make heroic efforts to work extra hard. (I criticized heroic efforts in general here.)
I think this basic formula (working in some job that is a good fit, while having some amount of balance in your life) is what’s behind a lot of the most important positive events in history to date, and presents possibly historically large opportunities today.
That said, if you asked me to list the activities I find most joyful, I’m not sure EA-related ones would make the top five.
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere — I first learned about effective altruism circa 2014 via A Modest Proposal, Scott’s polemic on using dead children as units of currency to force readers to grapple with the opportunity costs of subpar resource allocation under triage. I was young and impressionable when I encountered it, so I’ve never stopped feeling the weight of the frame of EA as duty/obligation, although its weight has lightened considerably since. I related to Tyler’s personal story (which unsurprisingly also references A Modest Proposal as a life-changing polemic) since I followed a similar life arc:
There are other more personally-beneficial frames that arguably (persuasively, IMO) lead to much more long-run impact because they’re sustainable, e.g. Steven Byrnes’ response to a different comment seems pertinent, also Holden Karnofsky’s advice:
That said, if you asked me to list the activities I find most joyful, I’m not sure EA-related ones would make the top five.