This is a very interesting piece Jonah. These are all good considerations, and it could well be that for particular individuals, a career of the type you describe does do more good. However I still think that there’s (at least) two good reasons for continuing to treat Earning to Give (E2G?) as the baseline.
Firstly it’s somewhat calculable: you can work out average earnings in various fields, compare this with estimates on ‘how much to save a year of healthy life’ (or how many research-hours can I purchase, etc) and arrive at an estimate of much good you can do with your career. Then the challenge is to show that you’re likely to do better than that in another career.
Secondly it’s challenging. Because its slightly counter-intuitive, it can act as an interesting and provocative prompt into a discussion of career choice. It begins to lead people away from the ‘ethical careers are the best’ mindset, and gets them to question the good that various careers can do.
I’d just like to add that it’s great to see more people thinking about and writing on career choice—its the best way for us to make progress.
My post is mostly a response to the position “except in exceptional cases, the best way to do good is by donating as much as possible,” which is different from using “earning to give” it as a baseline.
I find your position reasonable, but I worry that salience of the “earning to give” meme and ambiguity aversion may conspire to bias people in favor of earning to give, simply because it’s calculable. There is an argument for restricting ones’ scope to activities where outputs are calculable, but it’s possible to go too far in that direction.
I think that it is a very real worry, and there has perhaps been too much emphasis put on ‘earning to give’, especially in conjunction with ‘to a cost-effective public health charity’. (Although to an extent this emphasis has been important for movement-growing, and so is justifiable). Thankfully 80,000 Hours (et al) have launched research programs on other career options and other aims: animal welfare, xrisk, political advocacy, research, other non-profits, etc
I find it interesting that 80,000 Hours has become so associated with earning to give in people’s minds. We have always stressed that it is only one possible option, but I suppose the idea was sticky.
For example, even in Dylan Matthew’s recent Washington Post article about earning to give that went viral, he says:
To be clear, neither MacAskill nor Ord nor their organizations believe that what they call “earning to give” is necessarily the best choice for all or even most people. Not everyone is cut out to spend 80,000 hours trading derivatives. They emphasize that, say, policy work, advocacy and scientific research are other careers that could save a large number of lives. Indeed, Ord and MacAskill plan to keep up their advocacy rather than earning to give.
Yet in all of the follow uparticlesanddiscussion that this has prompted in the media, this nuance seems to have been missed.
This, in addition to less wrong posts such as this one, have reiterated to me that only the most memorable parts of a message are kept as memes evolve, while the more nuanced components, such as earning to give not being the only option, are lost.
This is a very interesting piece Jonah. These are all good considerations, and it could well be that for particular individuals, a career of the type you describe does do more good. However I still think that there’s (at least) two good reasons for continuing to treat Earning to Give (E2G?) as the baseline.
Firstly it’s somewhat calculable: you can work out average earnings in various fields, compare this with estimates on ‘how much to save a year of healthy life’ (or how many research-hours can I purchase, etc) and arrive at an estimate of much good you can do with your career. Then the challenge is to show that you’re likely to do better than that in another career.
Secondly it’s challenging. Because its slightly counter-intuitive, it can act as an interesting and provocative prompt into a discussion of career choice. It begins to lead people away from the ‘ethical careers are the best’ mindset, and gets them to question the good that various careers can do.
I’d just like to add that it’s great to see more people thinking about and writing on career choice—its the best way for us to make progress.
Thanks for the kind words.
My post is mostly a response to the position “except in exceptional cases, the best way to do good is by donating as much as possible,” which is different from using “earning to give” it as a baseline.
I find your position reasonable, but I worry that salience of the “earning to give” meme and ambiguity aversion may conspire to bias people in favor of earning to give, simply because it’s calculable. There is an argument for restricting ones’ scope to activities where outputs are calculable, but it’s possible to go too far in that direction.
I think that it is a very real worry, and there has perhaps been too much emphasis put on ‘earning to give’, especially in conjunction with ‘to a cost-effective public health charity’. (Although to an extent this emphasis has been important for movement-growing, and so is justifiable). Thankfully 80,000 Hours (et al) have launched research programs on other career options and other aims: animal welfare, xrisk, political advocacy, research, other non-profits, etc
I find it interesting that 80,000 Hours has become so associated with earning to give in people’s minds. We have always stressed that it is only one possible option, but I suppose the idea was sticky.
For example, even in Dylan Matthew’s recent Washington Post article about earning to give that went viral, he says:
Yet in all of the follow up articles and discussion that this has prompted in the media, this nuance seems to have been missed.
This, in addition to less wrong posts such as this one, have reiterated to me that only the most memorable parts of a message are kept as memes evolve, while the more nuanced components, such as earning to give not being the only option, are lost.
Full disclosure: I work for 80,000 Hours