(separated from the other comment, because they’re basically independent threads).
I’ve concluded that my impact probably comes mostly from my everyday interactions with people around me, not from money that I send across the world.
This sounds unlikely. You say you’re improving the education and mental health of on-the-order-of 100 students. Deworm the World and SCI improve attendance of schools by 25%, meaning you would have the same effect, as a first guess and to first order at least, by donating on-the-order-of $500/yr. And that’s just one of the side-effects of ~600 people not feeling ill all the time. So if you primarily care about helping people live better lives, $50/yr to SCI ought to equal your stated current efforts.
However, that doesn’t count flow-through effects. EA is rare enough that you might actually get a large portion of the credit of convincing someone to donate to a more effective charity, or even become an effective altruist: expected marginal utility isn’t conserved across multiple agents (if you have five agents who can press a button, and all have to press their buttons to save one person’s life, each of them has the full choice of saving or failing to save someone, assuming they expect the others to press the button too, so each of them has the expected marginal utility of saving a life). Since it’s probably more likely that you convince someone else to donate more effective than that one of the dewormed people will be able to have a major impact because of their deworming, flow-through effects should be very strong for advocacy relative to direct donation.
To quantify: Americans give 1% of their incomes to poverty charities, so let’s make that $0.5k/yr/student. Let’s say that convincing one student to donate to SCI would get them to donate that much more effectively about 5 years sooner than otherwise (those willing would hopefully be roped in eventually regardless). Let’s also say SCI is five times more effective than their current charities. That means you win $2k to SCI for every student you convince to alter their donation patterns.
You probably enjoy helping people directly (making you happy, which increases your productivity and credibility, and is also just nice), and helping them will earn you social credit which is more likely to convince them, so you could mostly keep doing what you’re doing, just adding the advocacy bit in the best way you see fit. Suppose you manage to convince 2.5% of each class, that means you get around $5k/year to SCI, or about 100 times more impact than what you’re doing now, just by doing the same AND advocating people to donate more effectively. That’s six thousand sick people, more than a third of them children and teens, you would be curing extra every year.
Note: this is a rough first guess. Better numbers and the addition of ignored or forgotten factors may influence the results by more than one order of magnitude. If you decide to consider this advice, check the results thoroughly and look for things I missed. 80000hours has a fewpages on advocacy, if you’re interested.
I’ll admit I don’t really have data for this. But my intuitive guess is that students don’t just need to be able to attend school; they need a personal relationship with a teacher who will inspire them. At least for me, that’s a large part of why I’m in the field that I chose.
It’s possible that I’m being misled by the warm fuzzy feelings I get from helping someone face-to-face, which I don’t get from sending money halfway across the world. But it seems like there’s many things that matter in life that don’t have a price tag.
I’ll admit I don’t really have data for this. But my intuitive guess is that …
Have you made efforts to research it? Either by trawling papers or by doing experiments yourself?
students don’t just need to be able to attend school; they need a personal relationship with a teacher who will inspire them.
Your objection had already been accounted for: $500 to SCI = around 150 people extra attend school for a year. I estimated the number of students that will have a relationship with their teacher as good as the average you provide at around 1:150.
But it seems like there’s many things that matter in life that don’t have a price tag.
That sounds deep, but is obviously false: would you condemn yourself to a year of torture so that you get one unit of the thing that allegedly doesn’t have a price tag (for example a single minute of a conversation with a student where you feel a real connection)? Would you risk a one in a million chance to get punched on the arm in order to get the same unit? If the answer to these questions is [no] and [yes] respectively, as I would expect them to be, those are outer limits on the price range. Getting to the true value is just a matter of convergence.
Perhaps more to the point, though, those people you would help halfway across the world are just as real, and their lives just as filled with “things that don’t have a price tag” as people in your environment. For $3000, one family is not torn apart by a death from malaria. For $3, one child more attends grade school regularly for a year because they are no longer ill from parasitic stomach infections. These are not price tags, these are trades you can actually make. Make the trades, and you set a lower limit. Refuse them, and the maximum price tag you put on a child’s relationship with their teacher is set, period.
It does seem very much like you’re guided by your warm fuzzies.
This is based on my own experience, and on watching my friends progress through school. I believe that the majority of successful people find their life path because someone inspired them. I don’t know where I could even look to find hard numbers on whether that’s true or not, but I’d like to be that person for as many people as I can.
That sounds deep, but is obviously false… It does seem very much like you’re guided by your warm fuzzies.
My emotional brain is still struggling to accept that, and I don’t know why. I’ll see if I can coax a coherent reason from it later. But my rational brain says that you’re right and I was wrong. Thanks.
(separated from the other comment, because they’re basically independent threads).
This sounds unlikely. You say you’re improving the education and mental health of on-the-order-of 100 students. Deworm the World and SCI improve attendance of schools by 25%, meaning you would have the same effect, as a first guess and to first order at least, by donating on-the-order-of $500/yr. And that’s just one of the side-effects of ~600 people not feeling ill all the time. So if you primarily care about helping people live better lives, $50/yr to SCI ought to equal your stated current efforts.
However, that doesn’t count flow-through effects. EA is rare enough that you might actually get a large portion of the credit of convincing someone to donate to a more effective charity, or even become an effective altruist: expected marginal utility isn’t conserved across multiple agents (if you have five agents who can press a button, and all have to press their buttons to save one person’s life, each of them has the full choice of saving or failing to save someone, assuming they expect the others to press the button too, so each of them has the expected marginal utility of saving a life). Since it’s probably more likely that you convince someone else to donate more effective than that one of the dewormed people will be able to have a major impact because of their deworming, flow-through effects should be very strong for advocacy relative to direct donation.
To quantify: Americans give 1% of their incomes to poverty charities, so let’s make that $0.5k/yr/student. Let’s say that convincing one student to donate to SCI would get them to donate that much more effectively about 5 years sooner than otherwise (those willing would hopefully be roped in eventually regardless). Let’s also say SCI is five times more effective than their current charities. That means you win $2k to SCI for every student you convince to alter their donation patterns.
You probably enjoy helping people directly (making you happy, which increases your productivity and credibility, and is also just nice), and helping them will earn you social credit which is more likely to convince them, so you could mostly keep doing what you’re doing, just adding the advocacy bit in the best way you see fit. Suppose you manage to convince 2.5% of each class, that means you get around $5k/year to SCI, or about 100 times more impact than what you’re doing now, just by doing the same AND advocating people to donate more effectively. That’s six thousand sick people, more than a third of them children and teens, you would be curing extra every year.
Note: this is a rough first guess. Better numbers and the addition of ignored or forgotten factors may influence the results by more than one order of magnitude. If you decide to consider this advice, check the results thoroughly and look for things I missed. 80000hours has a few pages on advocacy, if you’re interested.
(Sorry, I didn’t see this until now.)
I’ll admit I don’t really have data for this. But my intuitive guess is that students don’t just need to be able to attend school; they need a personal relationship with a teacher who will inspire them. At least for me, that’s a large part of why I’m in the field that I chose.
It’s possible that I’m being misled by the warm fuzzy feelings I get from helping someone face-to-face, which I don’t get from sending money halfway across the world. But it seems like there’s many things that matter in life that don’t have a price tag.
Have you made efforts to research it? Either by trawling papers or by doing experiments yourself?
Your objection had already been accounted for: $500 to SCI = around 150 people extra attend school for a year. I estimated the number of students that will have a relationship with their teacher as good as the average you provide at around 1:150.
That sounds deep, but is obviously false: would you condemn yourself to a year of torture so that you get one unit of the thing that allegedly doesn’t have a price tag (for example a single minute of a conversation with a student where you feel a real connection)? Would you risk a one in a million chance to get punched on the arm in order to get the same unit? If the answer to these questions is [no] and [yes] respectively, as I would expect them to be, those are outer limits on the price range. Getting to the true value is just a matter of convergence.
Perhaps more to the point, though, those people you would help halfway across the world are just as real, and their lives just as filled with “things that don’t have a price tag” as people in your environment. For $3000, one family is not torn apart by a death from malaria. For $3, one child more attends grade school regularly for a year because they are no longer ill from parasitic stomach infections. These are not price tags, these are trades you can actually make. Make the trades, and you set a lower limit. Refuse them, and the maximum price tag you put on a child’s relationship with their teacher is set, period.
It does seem very much like you’re guided by your warm fuzzies.
This is based on my own experience, and on watching my friends progress through school. I believe that the majority of successful people find their life path because someone inspired them. I don’t know where I could even look to find hard numbers on whether that’s true or not, but I’d like to be that person for as many people as I can.
My emotional brain is still struggling to accept that, and I don’t know why. I’ll see if I can coax a coherent reason from it later. But my rational brain says that you’re right and I was wrong. Thanks.