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Viliam comments on Celebrating All Who Are in Effective Altruism - Less Wrong
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I wouldn't judge anyone for donating more or less per se. It's just weird to hear people describe themselves as "effective altruists" if their current level is "actually, as a student I don't have any income, so I never really donated anything, but a few years later I am totally going to donate". It makes you wonder how large is exactly the set of effective altruists who have already donated at least one cent. Also, it cheapens the meaning of the words.
Perhaps mathematically speaking, the difference between donating 0 and donating 1 is much smaller than between donating 1 and donating 1000. But psychologically it is probably the other way round. The person who has already donated $1 to a GiveWell charity has already overcome the trivial inconveniences; all that is necessary is to repeat the same steps again with a different number. But the difference between 0 and 1 is the difference between "all talk, no action" and making the first step.
Hardcore EAs -- awesome; softcore EAs -- still very good; zerocore EAs -- please stop using the label.
I wonder what is the real distribution among people who publicly identify as EAs.
Maybe there could be some verification system, like a website that would publicly certify that you have donated at least $1 to an effective charity. (Or maybe multiple tiers, but this is already more or less what James_Miller suggested. Just saying that the minimal amount could be small, but definitely nonzero.)
I haven't met any zerocore EAs, but I trust your experience they exist. I tend to use the term "resources" instead of money, as some people have time/talent to give. If people have not contributed resources to EA causes, I agree they should not call themselves EAs.
I haven't met them either, but I remember reading about them in some articles people shared on facebook. The articles didn't make any judgement about this subset, they merely mentioned that some of the EAs don't donate anything, because they were students.
And my reaction was: this is so bad for PR. I mean, the whole message of effective altruism is kinda "instead of donating to cute puppies, we use the same money to heal children with malaria". And the obvious reply in such case would be: "well, at least I donated to the cute puppies, while you only participate at the conferences talking about healing children with malaria". A less charitable reply would point out that participating at the EA conferences also costs money.
But maybe in real life the subset is negligible. Internet often exaggerates things.
There's some discussion, including numbers and graphs, here. Fraction of self-reported EAs self-reporting as donating zero (this was in an LW survey) varies from ~13% to ~43% depending on age. (Younger people are more likely to report donating nothing, especially the under-20 category which is presumably full of impoverished students.)
Would be curious to see the difference between donations and volunteering - statistics show that young people tend to volunteer more. Do you know of any information on EA volunteering?
No. Sorry.
I don't think the whole message about effective altruism is about how to donate money. 80,000 hours for example recently wrote Why you should focus more on talent gaps, not funding gaps.
Exactly.
I know several students are working hard to gain the skills necessary to make big impacts, especially on XRisk reduction. They identify as EAs, and I think it would be the wrong move to tell them they're not "real EAs" because they aren't donating money to EA charities.
On one hand, I agree at least somewhat about the importance of preventing free riders. On the other hand, claiming that someone isn't a "real" effective altruist makes them believe they're less of an effective altruist, which makes them less committed to the cause. Conversely, every time a non-donating EA proclaims their EAness, it becomes a more integral part of their identity, raising their level of commitment to donating when they get income.
Wouldn't donating a symbolic dollar create even stronger psychological effect?
Only if they actually do it. It seems to follow that anyone willing to donate a symbolic dollar is already fairly likely to stay the course and therefore a low-priority target, whereas the people who wouldn't donate the symbolic dollar are also the easiest to alienate.
EA as a movement is about the idea that charity is not about engaging in symbolic actions but about actually having an effect.
Then people who don't donate at all shouldn't describe themselves as effective altruists.
They are aspiring effective altruists; they plan to donate in the future, but they may also change their minds later. Talk is cheap.
Everyone has done something for others in their lives, including students who haven't donated money to charities. And even most of those people have probably given money to other people at one point or another: a beggar, a friend, a child. So I don't think it's reasonable to talk about "zerocore" people.
I don't think the definition of effective altruism should be about donating money. There are many ways to be altruistic. Especially ways with more impact than donation one symbolic dollar.