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Err, that's exactly what 80,000 hours, the EA career advice organization, recommends. The recommendation to pursue a high-earning career is last, they recommend

Err, that's exactly what 80,000 hours, the EA career advice organization, recommends. The recommendation to pursue a high-earning career is last, they recommended pursuing research, policy, and joining altruistic organizations ahead of that. You have to adjust the message to the audience though, 80,000 hours is aimed at college students and young grads, it doesn't make as much sense to emphasize these things if you're talking to a late career software engineer. I think the EA advice regarding donations is more of a common lower denominator sort of thing. Not everyone can do research and policy work, but a lot of people have at least some disposable income. The author of this article seems only aware of GiveWell and Giving What We Can, there's other EA orgs doing things beyond advocating for charitable giving.

Karrot_Kream 6y ago
> I think the EA advice regarding donations is more of a common lower denominator sort of thing. Not everyone can do research and policy work, but a lot of people have at least some disposable income. I think this is where my opprobrium lies. A surprising amount of charitable work is very similar to the standard, non-charitable work folks do for themselves. It's about managing logistics, managing organizations of people, and tracking and accounting for donations. Actual on-the-ground work (like distribution of materials or soup kitchen work) and high-level research and policy work is a minority of the work to be done. Much like a corporation, most of the work lies in middle management, and this much is obvious if you've ever spent a long stint volunteering for an organization. And then there's the idea that one may actually discover that they are better at the kind of work involved in charitable work than they thought, since most charitable work in individualist Western countries has very little public information associated. This is what I want to challenge among EA believers; much like a market with imperfect information, alignment with charitable work may also be a case of imperfect information.

Karrot_Kream 6y ago

> I think the EA advice regarding donations is more of a common lower denominator sort of thing. Not everyone can do research and policy work, but a lot of people have at least some disposable income. I think this is where my opprobrium lies. A surprising amount of charitable work is very similar to the standard, non-charitable work folks do for themselves. It's about managing logistics, managing organizations of people, and tracking and accounting for donations. Actual on-the-ground work (like distribution of materials or soup kitchen work) and high-level research and policy work is a minority of the work to be done. Much like a corporation, most of the work lies in middle management, and this much is obvious if you've ever spent a long stint volunteering for an organization. And then there's the idea that one may actually discover that they are better at the kind of work involved in charitable work than they thought, since most charitable work in individualist Western countries has very little public information associated. This is what I want to challenge among EA believers; much like a market with imperfect information, alignment with charitable work may also be a case of imperfect information.