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The Effective Altruism community is working really hard to combat this. It's definitely a real problem. Jeff Kaufman has written a lot about this, and one argum
by krstck 12y ago
The Effective Altruism community is working really hard to combat this. It's definitely a real problem. Jeff Kaufman has written a lot about this, and one argument that stood out to me was making very public commitments to charitable giving. You'll feel more compelled to keep donating if a large part of your public identity hinges upon it.
- ceras 12y agoDo you know how well this actually works for people in practice? My friends, acquaintances, and coworkers know I'm frugal, but I avoid telling them it's because I donate a lot of my money. People can become very defensive and judgmental hearing about people who donate or are otherwise "do-gooders," and I just don't like that kind of attention.
- krstck 12y agoYeah - it's helpful to make public commitments about charitable giving if, e.g. you have a blog where you have enough space to explain the philosophical underpinnings of your need to publicly broadcast how much money you're giving away. Without that context, it can look like you're bragging about how much money you have. We spend a lot of time agonizing over how much to tell "normal" people about what we're doing and the cost of being "weird". This isn't so much of a factor if you live in a nice EA hub like Oxford-Boston-San Francisco, but for those of us that don't....we're stuck with the internet.