EA - Why I view effective giving as complementary to direct work by JulianHazell

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why I view effective giving as complementary to direct work, published by JulianHazell on July 31, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Epistemic status Feelings, anecdotes, and impressions. Declaration I used to work at Giving What We Can, but in this capacity I’m writing about my personal experience with the Pledge. Introduction I have the impression that, at least among effective altruists who are directly using their careers to do good, donating is somewhat falling out of style. I feel neither happy nor sad about this. Perhaps ironically, my stance on whether someone doing directly impactful work should donate is that it’s a personal decision, to borrow an eye-roll-inducing platitude from the philanthropic field. I hold this belief because I view the decision of whether to donate as vastly different from the decision of where to donate. The former can often hinge on personal circumstances, such as where one is at in their career, what their financial situation looks like, and if they have any dependents. I view the claim that the choice of where to donate is a personal decision as much more tenuous; I’m preaching to the choir here, but one ought to support charities that do more good than less, all else being equal. I understand why some of my peers who work directly on the world’s most pressing problems choose not to take the Giving What We Can Pledge. At the end of the day, I don’t care how the good is done, so long as it is done. My default is to trust the judgement of people who are making a good faith effort to think carefully about what they can do to help others as much as possible. If you feel that donating isn’t the best road to impact, I have faith in the reasoning behind your belief. Yet as someone who is working directly on what I view as one of the world’s most pressing problems, I still feel that effective giving is a core part of my plan to do what I can to make the world as good as possible. Here’s why. Nothing can take donating away from me, not even a bad day I’m currently spending my time researching ways to steer the development of transformative artificial intelligence in a positive direction. This means that I work in a field with little-to-no clear feedback loops — at least ones that can concretely indicate whether or not the things I’m doing are actually improving others’ lives. Like many, I have struggled with imposter syndrome, and this has been exacerbated by the messy and opaque causal links between the things I do on a day-to-day basis and actual downstream improvements in others’ lives. Questions like “Am I smart enough to belong in this community?”, “Am I actually doing any good?” and “Will this paper I’m writing help anyone?” pop into my head more than I’d like to admit. These kinds of thoughts and feelings suck. They aren’t helpful, and I recognise that. But sometimes they’re hard to avoid, and they can be debilitating when they strike. I want to help others so badly, and the thought of failing to do that is agonising. Being able to donate makes me hopeful. No matter how rough of a day I have, or how unclear the impact of my work is, nothing can take donating away from me. There is no imposter: I can literally see a number on my Giving What We Can dashboard, and I can feel proud about knowing those funds are going to help others. Hitting a brick wall on figuring out AI governance, or having colossal uncertainties about what I ought to do with my career won’t change that. In fact, nothing will, and the sense of agency that brings me is incredibly motivating. To be clear, I believe the vast majority of my positive impact on the world will come from using my career to work on problems that could negatively impact humanity’s long run potential. But in my mind, that has little bearing on the reality that $3,500 can save someone’s life...