> Rather, I'd say: live mindfully in a broken system. Pick a job that meets your needs with minimal intentional side-effects, donate some surplus to bettering t

> Rather, I'd say: live mindfully in a broken system. Pick a job that meets your needs with minimal intentional side-effects, donate some surplus to bettering the world. Do not be a paperclip maximizer or "ends justify the means". I think that is a very valid philosophy and one I would agree with. However, EA has a large overlap with longtermism, which has some very paperclip maximizer like features: > Providing we are capable of colonising the rest of our galaxy and nearby ones, a 1% reduction in the risk of extinction on such a time horizon would be the equivalent of saving 1032 lives. In such a perspective, nothing else matters. > That year, Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, dedicated to mitigating risk. He elaborated on his theory of longtermism in a book in 2008, urging people to be “good ancestors” by practising “altruism toward our descendants”. He didn’t mean composting or stopping driving, but mitigating existential risks to humanity – “x-risks” in community parlance – from hazards such as advanced artificial intelligence and bio-hacking, that could potentially wipe out or severely deplete humankind. (from the linked article). I think this a very problematic view, because (as noted) almost everything is justifiable if you think you are avoiding extinction of the human race.