These are wise words on a very important topic. It is difficult to navigate the dilemma between caring but small-scale interventions, and large-scale but uncaring ones. Yes, things should scale. And yet, sometimes “things should scale” becomes an infohazard—when it discourages people from making the individual small contributions because “on the large scale, what’s the point?”. (Unfortunately, the discouraging effect does scale.)
What about “culture”, from this perspective? Culture can make people care, and culture can scale. If you convince millions of people that caring about their neighbors is the right thing to do...
It’s weirdly terrifying to consider that you could be the CEO of a company devoted to feeding the world, spend your life developing the Food-o-Matic which can feed everyone on the planet, but if you neglect to care for your kids, then your kids just have to live with your neglect.
Here is the thing you could do to improve the world: provide babysitting for the CEO’s children. Give them the same care you would give to your own kids, and then the CEO is free to focus on feeding the world. More generally, consider the things that don’t scale well, and provide them strategically to the people you believe are bringing the most good to the world.
Uhm, the CEO almost by definition is someone who is good at organizing things, so maybe they don’t need your help to arrange for babysitting. But consider some other profession, for example a researcher trying to find the cure for cancer. How many relatively trivial inconveniences could you get out of their way, thereby indirectly saving the lives of millions? There might be a lot of low-hanging fruit in contacting people you know that you admire and asking them “is there anything I could help you with? just say it, no matter how big or small the thing is”. There may be someone working hard to save the world, who at the same time struggles with something stupid and unrelated, and is too shy to ask for help.
These are wise words on a very important topic. It is difficult to navigate the dilemma between caring but small-scale interventions, and large-scale but uncaring ones. Yes, things should scale. And yet, sometimes “things should scale” becomes an infohazard—when it discourages people from making the individual small contributions because “on the large scale, what’s the point?”. (Unfortunately, the discouraging effect does scale.)
What about “culture”, from this perspective? Culture can make people care, and culture can scale. If you convince millions of people that caring about their neighbors is the right thing to do...
Here is the thing you could do to improve the world: provide babysitting for the CEO’s children. Give them the same care you would give to your own kids, and then the CEO is free to focus on feeding the world. More generally, consider the things that don’t scale well, and provide them strategically to the people you believe are bringing the most good to the world.
Uhm, the CEO almost by definition is someone who is good at organizing things, so maybe they don’t need your help to arrange for babysitting. But consider some other profession, for example a researcher trying to find the cure for cancer. How many relatively trivial inconveniences could you get out of their way, thereby indirectly saving the lives of millions? There might be a lot of low-hanging fruit in contacting people you know that you admire and asking them “is there anything I could help you with? just say it, no matter how big or small the thing is”. There may be someone working hard to save the world, who at the same time struggles with something stupid and unrelated, and is too shy to ask for help.