Interesting link, thanks. Some very good points in there.
Or consider the idea that you can have a larger impact by seeking a higher-paying job, and then donating the additional money to highly effective charities. This is obviously one way to have a larger impact. A bunch of effective altruits, including those connected with 80,000 Hours promote this idea. Yet this idea has also already upset a lot of people.
It is debatable whether spending your life working to obtain a better job to help others is much better than simply spending that time helping others. I can certainly think of many cases where it is not true. And even if the high-paying job is achieved, what if you have had a huge negative impact on society that cancels out your future positive impact? For example, you might succeed in becoming rich and setting up a huge charity foundation, but on your way to becoming rich you might have set up a huge global monopoly that unfairly destroyed competitors and halted innovation.
Of course there might be some cases where this statement is true but it is not obviously true.
It certainly is debatable. The 80,000 Hours folks have put a lot of thought into the debate. Yes, we can think of cases where it's better to use your career to help directly (e.g. I'm glad Jonas Salk was working on vaccine development and not, say, banking). But for most people, I suspect earning to give is a more helpful option than whatever they could contribute directly.
I assume you're referring to Gates. He may well have done more harm than good, since I understand the intellectual property laws pushed for software have been applied to medicines. B...
Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Montreal - Social Resilience
WHEN: 21 January 2013 06:30:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: 655 Ave. Du President-Kennedy, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The next weekly meeting of the Montreal LessWrong group, we're going to be working on improving our Social Resilience.
We will be upstairs at the Cheesecake Factory.
See you then!
Discussion article for the meetup : LessWrong Montreal - Social Resilience