> 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 peop

> 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.