This all sounds super fascinating to me, but perhaps a new post would be better for this.
My current best guess is that some people are “intrinsically” interested in the world, and for others the interest is only “instrumental”. The intrinsically interested are learning things about the real world because it is fascinating and because it is real. The instrumentally interested are only learning about things they assume might be necessary for satisfying their material needs. Throwing lots of money at them will remove chains from the former, but will turn off the engine for the latter.
For me another shocking thing about people in tech is how few of them are actually interested in the tech. Again, seems to be this intrinsical/instrumental distinction. The former group studies Haskell or design patterns or whatever. The latter group is only interested in things that can currently increase their salary, and even there they are mostly looking for shortcuts. Twenty years ago, programmers were considered nerdy. These days, programmers who care about e.g. clean code are considered too nerdy by most programmers.
I also don’t like the way it insulates people from noticing how much death, suffering, and injustice there is going on.
I often communicate with people outside my bubble, so my personal wealth does not isolate me from hearing about their suffering. If I won a lottery, I would probably spend more time helping people, because that’s the type of thing I sometimes do, and I would now have more free time for that. I would expect this to be even stronger for any effective altruist.
(There is a voice in my head telling me that this all might be a fundamental attribution error, that I am assuming fixed underlying personality traits that only get better expressed as people get rich, and underestimate the effect of the environment, such as peer pressure of other rich people.)
Your next comment (people for whom having “right opinions” is super important) sounds to me like managers. Having an opinion different from other managers is a liability; it signals that you are either not flexible enough or can’t see what your superiors want you to think.
This all sounds super fascinating to me, but perhaps a new post would be better for this.
My current best guess is that some people are “intrinsically” interested in the world, and for others the interest is only “instrumental”. The intrinsically interested are learning things about the real world because it is fascinating and because it is real. The instrumentally interested are only learning about things they assume might be necessary for satisfying their material needs. Throwing lots of money at them will remove chains from the former, but will turn off the engine for the latter.
For me another shocking thing about people in tech is how few of them are actually interested in the tech. Again, seems to be this intrinsical/instrumental distinction. The former group studies Haskell or design patterns or whatever. The latter group is only interested in things that can currently increase their salary, and even there they are mostly looking for shortcuts. Twenty years ago, programmers were considered nerdy. These days, programmers who care about e.g. clean code are considered too nerdy by most programmers.
I often communicate with people outside my bubble, so my personal wealth does not isolate me from hearing about their suffering. If I won a lottery, I would probably spend more time helping people, because that’s the type of thing I sometimes do, and I would now have more free time for that. I would expect this to be even stronger for any effective altruist.
(There is a voice in my head telling me that this all might be a fundamental attribution error, that I am assuming fixed underlying personality traits that only get better expressed as people get rich, and underestimate the effect of the environment, such as peer pressure of other rich people.)
Your next comment (people for whom having “right opinions” is super important) sounds to me like managers. Having an opinion different from other managers is a liability; it signals that you are either not flexible enough or can’t see what your superiors want you to think.