I feel like you hear a lot from people who are like “I have this natural tendency to be very scrupulous and hard on myself and self-sacrificing, and EA ideas exacerbate that, so I have to really set boundaries and practice self-care” and so on
and I feel like that experience probably gets overrepresented due to selection bias, so to do my part in correcting that I just want to say that my natural tendencies are to be kinda lazy and self-interested, and I’m really glad the EA memeplex pushes against those tendencies, even though I’m still more lazy and self-interested than I’d like to be
My natural tendency is to be lazy and self-interested, and I’m glad the EA memeplex includes components compatible with those tendencies. Donating 10% of my income to effective charities as assessed by GiveWell or similar organizations is very low-effort, not a big enough hit to my quality-of-life to be incompatible with my self-interest, and nonetheless does a whole bunch of good in the world; the EA memeplex did a very good job of raising that opportunity to my attention, thus enabling me to fulfill my values altruism-wise far better than I otherwise could have done without abandoning my laziness and self-interest in the process. (Which I’m unlikely to do, since it would go against my self-interest.)
It is in my self-interest to live in a thriving world, and I’m glad the EA memeplex gives me more ways to help make that happen.
Tags:
#donating 10% of my income *would* be a big hit to my quality-of-life #(because every dollar counts when you’re only making like ten grand a year in the first place) #my charity budget is‚ like‚ less than one percent #maybe someday I’ll have reached a point where my house isn’t falling apart and I can reassess that #effective altruism #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see
Brinens and Things 