diegocaleiro 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: diegocaleiro 29 May 2013 12:46:38AM *  11 points [-]

There were more than two hundred applicants in GWWC last time they opened places for a position (or two) where you have no security and hold nearly no income. That is a hundred probably well connected, smart people in the effective altruist community fighting for the tiny little one space and little money there was available for them. (Source: Personal conversation)

This seems to me to be evidence in favour of earning to give...

Comment author: nielbowerman 05 June 2013 01:02:29PM 2 points [-]

This isn't quite right, and sorry if I had misinformed you about this Diego. I don't have the numbers to hand (I can find them if this information becomes central the the argument), but it was almost certainly less than 200 and I think more like 100.

One relevent data point is that neither Giving What We Can nor 80,000 Hours hired permenant staff in that recruitment round despite wanting to, though they did hire temporary staff and interns, some of whom may take permenant roles in the future.

Disclaimer: I was involved in the recruitment round at the Centre for Effective Altruism, which includes both Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours.

Comment author: JonahSinick 29 May 2013 01:08:15AM 0 points [-]
  1. Applying to a job isn't the same as being willing to take it.
  2. Being willing to take a job isn't the same as being willing to stay at it for a long time.
  3. It's unclear how much the applicants could make in earnings outside of GWWC. Being smart and well connected within the effective altruist community doesn't necessarily transfer to having high earning power. So the expected donations from these people might not be so high, even if they were to try to maximize income.
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 May 2013 01:39:36AM 5 points [-]

I don't think 1-3 combined can modify the conclusion that most of these applicants should be earning to give to support the one selected applicant, creating a prior of 200:1. The only realistic way this could be false is if the premise has been misremembered, or if people are vastly more willing to work for GWWC than to earn money and give it to GWWC (the motivational issue mentioned before).

Comment author: JonahSinick 29 May 2013 02:05:04AM *  4 points [-]

But there's not a dichotomy "work at GWWC" vs. "earn to give" – the 200 people can do other work of direct social value. You seem to be making an assumption that differences in comparative advantage (those aren't picked up by the market mechanism, but that are nevertheless useful for having a positive social impact) are sufficiently small so that one should ignore them, or making assumption that having someone work at GWWC is far more valuable than having someone work somewhere else, or some combination of these things, or another assumption that I'm not picking up on.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 May 2013 03:22:22AM 0 points [-]

or making assumption that having someone work at GWWC is far more valuable than having someone work somewhere else

Ah, right, I'm thinking in MIRIan terms where you can't go off and do comparable direct work somewhere else.

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