It is always painful to see burnt out people who didn’t have the wisdom to attempt to save the world with less effort and then overcorrect in the opposite direction. I see it as a failure of applying consequentialism to the naive utilitarian reasoning. Yes, if you just dedicate 100% of your efforts towards saving the world it would be better than dedicating only 50% of your efforts, all things being equal. But things are unlikely to be equal. It’s better to leave yourself some slack so that you could keep saving the world after 10 years, instead of deciding that it’s all was a mistake and then agitating aginst saving the world, saying that it’s only for some special people.
I think the correct balance isn’t “Don’t save the world, unless you want to do it for non-worldsaving reasons”. I think it’s more like “Save the world not more than 20% beyond what you are comfortable with. If you are in the situation where you feel constant guilt and stress because you are not yet a god—then you need to decrease the amount of effort you put towards attempts of world saving. If you have never even tried to save the world—then doing 10% EA pledge seems as a sound idea.
Exploring your limits is okay. Constantly pushing yourself beyond them, without any feeling of satisfaction is neither sustainable nor productive. Saving the world mustn’t suck. Just keep it at “mildly inconvinient” level at worst.
It is always painful to see burnt out people who didn’t have the wisdom to attempt to save the world with less effort and then overcorrect in the opposite direction. I see it as a failure of applying consequentialism to the naive utilitarian reasoning. Yes, if you just dedicate 100% of your efforts towards saving the world it would be better than dedicating only 50% of your efforts, all things being equal. But things are unlikely to be equal. It’s better to leave yourself some slack so that you could keep saving the world after 10 years, instead of deciding that it’s all was a mistake and then agitating aginst saving the world, saying that it’s only for some special people.
I think the correct balance isn’t “Don’t save the world, unless you want to do it for non-worldsaving reasons”. I think it’s more like “Save the world not more than 20% beyond what you are comfortable with. If you are in the situation where you feel constant guilt and stress because you are not yet a god—then you need to decrease the amount of effort you put towards attempts of world saving. If you have never even tried to save the world—then doing 10% EA pledge seems as a sound idea.
Exploring your limits is okay. Constantly pushing yourself beyond them, without any feeling of satisfaction is neither sustainable nor productive. Saving the world mustn’t suck. Just keep it at “mildly inconvinient” level at worst.