JonahSinick comments on Earning to Give vs. Altruistic Career Choice Revisited - Less Wrong

34 Post author: JonahSinick 02 June 2013 02:55AM

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Comment author: JonahSinick 29 May 2013 12:44:14AM 2 points [-]

Thanks for the kind words.

My post is mostly a response to the position "except in exceptional cases, the best way to do good is by donating as much as possible," which is different from using "earning to give" it as a baseline.

I find your position reasonable, but I worry that salience of the "earning to give" meme and ambiguity aversion may conspire to bias people in favor of earning to give, simply because it's calculable. There is an argument for restricting ones' scope to activities where outputs are calculable, but it's possible to go too far in that direction.

Comment author: [deleted] 30 May 2013 11:29:39AM 1 point [-]

I think that it is a very real worry, and there has perhaps been too much emphasis put on 'earning to give', especially in conjunction with 'to a cost-effective public health charity'. (Although to an extent this emphasis has been important for movement-growing, and so is justifiable). Thankfully 80,000 Hours (et al) have launched research programs on other career options and other aims: animal welfare, xrisk, political advocacy, research, other non-profits, etc

Comment author: nielbowerman 05 June 2013 01:34:28PM *  5 points [-]

I find it interesting that 80,000 Hours has become so associated with earning to give in people's minds. We have always stressed that it is only one possible option, but I suppose the idea was sticky.

For example, even in Dylan Matthew's recent Washington Post article about earning to give that went viral, he says:

To be clear, neither MacAskill nor Ord nor their organizations believe that what they call “earning to give” is necessarily the best choice for all or even most people.
Not everyone is cut out to spend 80,000 hours trading derivatives. They emphasize that, say, policy work, advocacy and scientific research are other careers that could save a large number of lives. Indeed, Ord and MacAskill plan to keep up their advocacy rather than earning to give.

Yet in all of the follow up articles and discussion that this has prompted in the media, this nuance seems to have been missed.

This, in addition to less wrong posts such as this one, have reiterated to me that only the most memorable parts of a message are kept as memes evolve, while the more nuanced components, such as earning to give not being the only option, are lost.

Full disclosure: I work for 80,000 Hours

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