mare-of-night comments on 2014 Survey of Effective Altruists - Less Wrong

27 Post author: tog 05 May 2014 02:32AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (148)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: mare-of-night 12 May 2014 02:14:05PM 8 points [-]

Taking this was an interesting feeling. In particular, being asked (even anonymously) about donations and other concrete actions in a context where donating a lot is the norm. The scene in HP:MOR where the phoenix asks Hermione who she's saved comes to mind. That is, being asked just made it very obvious that I believe I should be an effective altruist, but from my actions it doesn't look like I am one. I have reasons for that, but it's still worrying, since I don't have much evidence that I won't just change my mind once I do have money.

For what it's worth, I just set up a bunch of email reminders throughout my last semester to make sure I put some kind of donation plan in place by the time I start working (even if it's "nevermind, I was wrong about my values").

Comment author: mare-of-night 26 July 2015 03:56:32PM 1 point [-]

That was a weird feeling; I didn't realize that this was my own comment, and only checked the username when that last paragraph seemed eerily familiar.

As a follow-up: I got a good full-time job starting in January 2015. I've got 10% of post-tax earnings from my internships set aside in a savings account to donate when Givewell announces 2015 recommendations, and I'll add 5% of this year's pre-tax salary to that donation also. Nothing actually donated yet, but it seems really unlikely that I won't do it. I'm planning to keep donating 5% of pre-tax as a token amount for the next few years, and have a few plans for how I might be able to donate more later. I was several months late in deciding to do this and setting up the savings account, so my reminder emails didn't work perfectly, but in the end I did it.