Comment author: Wei_Dai 14 July 2011 06:16:36PM *  7 points [-]

I believe that, given my aptitudes, I am best able to make a positive impact on the world by attempting to maximize the money I earn, and donating that.

I'm curious how you came to that belief. For example one possible way might be something like:

For maximum efficiency, altruists should divide up into "donors" and "doers". We need X donors to support each doer. In order to decide whether I should be a donor or doer, I should compare my (expected) ratio of money-making ability to [whatever ability is needed to be a doer] with others, and aim to be a donor if my ratio is among the top X/(X+1) fraction of all altruists.

Or is it more like:

It seems that currently there are many people wanting to be "doers" but few wanting to be "donors", as a result of which the marginal utility of my becoming a donor is higher than the marginal utility of becoming a doer (even if in a first-best world I would be a doer instead).

Or perhaps:

Eliezer's plan of building FAI in a basement with a dozen or so geniuses is basically sound. I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to be one of those FAI builders or their support staff, so I should be a donor instead.

Or something else? (I'm not sure if you've given the question that much thought, or if you just went with instinct, but if it's the former, explaining your thought process might help others make the same decision.)

Comment author: Caesium 14 July 2011 08:31:42PM 4 points [-]

I believe that, given my aptitudes, I am best able to make a positive impact on the world by attempting to maximize the money I earn, and donating that. I'm curious how you came to that belief.

I arrived at the belief primarily instinctively, and am not particularly confident in it; I'd be happy to revise it on the basis of any more data I receive.

My rational is, roughly, that most adequately funded philanthropic organisations have no difficulties attracting talent, and sot the number of "doers" is determined primarily by demand-side factors. Therefore, by becoming a doer, I would be preventing another would-be doer from attaining a job. Whilst it's possible that this person would go on and contribute in other ways, such as by being a donor, I think it's very likely that they would not (most people seem to be strongly attracted to personally making a difference.)

Therefore, were my becoming a "doer" to have a positive impact, I would have to do such a better job than the person who has been displaced by me, that it would outweigh the loss of donations that I would otherwise have made. Whilst it would probably would be true that I would be more capable than the person who has lost out on getting a job because of me (supply growing should result in the least-capable losing out most), I don't believe that I have any major advantage over other people.

Whilst there seems to be no shortage of talented people looking for non-profit jobs, there is always a shortage of money, and my donating would be unlikely decrease anyone else's donations. So, I feel this is the more effective option.

I think I'm partly also influenced by a heuristic I sometimes use, that of avoiding what seems to be the easy option out. Most people seem to want to be intimately involved with the causes they help, yet there seems to be little justification for this, so I feel compelled to do the opposite. However, it occurs to me that I might in fact be attracted to the status and other benefits of high-paying jobs, so this may be just a rationalization.

I'm much less confident of this conclusion now than when I began writing this comment, which I think is probably a good thing. I'd be interested to hear arguments from people who've come to opposing conclusions to me.

Comment author: Caesium 14 July 2011 04:55:47PM *  7 points [-]

Well, I'm new here, but I thought I might as well just try it. As far as I can tell, a large segment of LessWrong readers are highly interested in philanthropy, especially existential risk reduction. Given this, there seems to have been surprisingly little discussion as to how to best lead ones life to maximize its positive impact.

Whilst there has been some discussion with regard to selecting between charities, I have seen almost no discussion on choosing between careers, or on how to structure ones life more generally. If the type of rationality taught on this site is to be widely applicable, then it should be able to be applied to such situations successfully.

Whilst obviously these choices are highly individual, I nevertheless think that a group effort should be able to shed some light on the problem. In particular, the standard to beat is quite low -- most people have only very limited knowledge of the careers they go into, and make their decision with only limited analysis. It is even rarer for people to seriously consider what actions they can do to maximise the impact they have on the world, although many people choose careers nominally in order to help people.

Whilst I don't want this post to be about myself, here are a few details about myself: I'm just about to enter university (the university is generally considered to be somewhere amongst the top 10 in the world, and is certainly in the top 4 in my country, the UK) to read Mathematics. I believe that, given my aptitudes, I am best able to make a positive impact on the world by attempting to maximize the money I earn, and donating that. I am undecided between existential risk reduction and more ordinary causes. I don't subscribe to any formal moral system, but my feelings are quite closely aligned with preference utilitarianism. I'm unsure on how much money I should donate, but feel that in the long term I should certainly aim to donate any money I earn whose consumption would not serve to further increase my happiness. If anyone wants more details about my personal situation, feel free to PM me.

Smart, (young), ambitious and clueless -- what to do to maximize goodness?

6 Caesium 14 July 2011 04:06PM

You're smart, want to help the world and are willing to work hard. You have no serious ties such as children or a marriage that would prevent you from making serious changes to your life, and you are willing to place others needs ahead of your own hedonistic desires. Given this, what should you do?

Should you aim to get involved personally with causes you feel passionately about? You can have greater control over your contribution if you do this, but can you achieve the most good in this way? Should you operate at a meta-level, such as by trying to convince other people to change their charitable giving, attempting to influence government policy, or by raising awareness of existential risks, or should you try and directly tackle the problems facing the world -- such as by donating money yourself, or by tackling open problems in friendly AI?

Once you've figured out what to do, you still have to find a way to support yourself, and fund any organizations or projects you wish to support. You could work for an existing organization active in the area that you are interested in - bearing in mind that ones contribution will only be the benefit of hiring you rather than the next-best guy. Or you could work in a completely unrelated job, and work part-time on the cause you are interested in; this is a route followed by many open source developers, e.g. the prolific Fabrice Bellard. Alternatively, you could aim to earn as much money as possible, and use this money to fund causes or projects you are interested in; this is the route followed by Jeff Hawkins, who founded Palm, Inc. in order to fund AI and neuroscience research, as well as notable philantropists such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

The problem is a simple one: how should one lead ones life in order to maximize the positive impact it has on others? There is an ample amount of data to draw from, such as charity rankings by GiveWell, salary data and personal experience. If rationality has any real-world benefits, then a discussion amongst rationalists should make it possible for substantially better decisions to be made than would otherwise be the case.

References

Existential Risk Reduction Careers Network

Thiel Fellows

Income and happiness (Wikipedia)

Cost effectiveness of aid (GiveWell)

Comments (40)
Comment author: pjeby 26 June 2011 02:04:50AM 26 points [-]

Way too much of my motivation for ‘having true beliefs’ breaks down to ‘maybe then they’ll like me.’

Way too much of everyone's motivation for anything breaks down to "maybe then group X will have/stop having attitude Y towards me". And the vast majority of the time, we're completely unaware of it.

So actually, you've got a leg up over all the people who are doing the same thing, but have a different X and Y than you and are unaware of it. (AFAICT, people who orient on "true beliefs" tend to be more about respect/status rather than affiliation, but apart from motivating slightly different behaviors, it might as well be the same thing. Affiliation-based motivation often results in "nicer" behaviors though, so that's actually a plus for you.)

Comment author: Caesium 03 July 2011 07:23:01AM 1 point [-]

Do you have any recommendations on how to combat this? Obviously, mixing with groups that reward behaviour you wish to cultivate would be a good first step, but what other steps can one take? Do you think making a concious effort to identify more/feel friendlier towards people whose behaviour you consider laudable would help? This would be a step much more readily made for most people than changing their actual social group.

Comment author: amcknight 01 July 2011 04:53:21PM 2 points [-]

Though I do tend to be contrarian, I've always thought that acting independently from others is the correct stance. Does everyone agree that being contrarian or conformist are both forms of bias to be avoided? I think that at best they can be seen as very weak/indirect reasons to believe something or do something, and only relative to your context. (You need to pick your battles as a contrarian and you need to break from conforming with the wrong people as a conformist)

Comment author: Caesium 03 July 2011 07:13:13AM 2 points [-]

The beliefs of other people are evidence of some fashion. In some cases (e.g. scientific consensus), a belief being widely held is a very strong signal of correctness. In other cases (e.g. religion), less so.

Of course, our social instinct to conform do not take into account the reliability of the beliefs of the group that one is part of -- although, they do take into account whether you identify yourself as part of that group, which gives one some control (only identify yourself with groups that have a good track-record of correctness.)

I'd be hesitant to classify being either contrarian or conformist as being examples of bias per se. For something to be a bias, it must influence ones beliefs in such a way that is not rationally justified. Being contrarian regarding e.g. the religious beliefs and beliefs stemming from religious beliefs of your parents is, probably, rational; conforming to the beliefs of people with more experience than you working in a field that strongly rewards and punishes success or failure (e.g. stock trading) is, again, probably rational.

Of course, being conformist can be considered to bring great gains in instrumental rationality. A large proportion of the beliefs people hold do not change in any significant way the way they lead their lives, but they do hold a large signalling value -- that one is part of a group, and not some insane, socially inept geek that believes in crazy things such as the singularity. Fortunately, it is possible to get almost all of the same benefits of actual conformity by simply pretending to conform; normally one does not even need to lie, just holding ones tongue is often enough. The only advantage I can see to actually conforming is that it may make it easier to empathize with and predict others behaviour in that group, but I don't think that this is normally much of an advantage.

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