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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

This resonates with me. I remember reading of a Stanford graduate who was delivering meals to indigents in San Francisco and the Bay Area. I immediately thought: how selfish. To give up a possibly lucrative employment in finance, so she could personally experience charitable work, was a net loss to that organization. Why not work on Wall Street and donate 90% of her income instead?

This is a real choice. Joining the Peace Corp or helping rebuild levys after a flood is humbling, giving and selfish, all at once. Instead work at what you can do best; then donate so others can do the real work. This is practical selflessness.

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You've redefined a word. There's nothing selfish about doing something selfless because it's not being done in the 'optimum' way (as defined by you). It might be inefficient, but it's not selfish.

Regardless of your linguistic tricks, would they even have the motivation to make money on wall street? Would your 'optimum' plan even work with their personality? Is it actually optimal or merely fantasy?

You'd be better off thinking "how generous of them to be doing something" instead of having your intellectually questionable revelation.

On the subject of the long history of humans arguing over the meaning of words, this pg essay tackles the subject well:

http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

Oh well, you're not convinced. It is however the entire point of the OP.

We might consider similar acts like eco-tourism, or disaster tourism, and so on. Where one spends enormous effort and money to visit the less-fortunate and go through the motions of helping. Arguably, to feel better about oneself. In those cases its clearly pretty selfish, and clearly better to have simply donated the money to a real charity instead.

Convinced? You're committed a magestic logical fallacy. Sorry you don't understand the mistake you've made and you're going to continue sneering at good people.

Don't switch from volunteering to disaster tourism. There are millions of people who volunteer, and only a handful of people who travel overseas to help.

What have you done recently? Do you actually donate? And did you read about the money the Red Cross can't explain? Is it really better donating money?

Your rhetorical style here is off-putting. I don't think he's committed any logical fallacy. It's perfectly possible to do charitable work selfishly. For example, if you were offered a choice between saving two lives or, for the same money, saving only one life but getting a nice packet documenting the one life saved, it's selfish to choose the latter for the purpose of making yourself feel better. Even though you're still doing good.

Actually you're wrong, using a variant of a false dilemma, both options are selfless, you're also annoyingly redefining the word selfish. Yes my last reply was a bit harsh, but the previous guy's a bit of an idiot in trying to claim I was 'not convinced' rather than admit his obvious mistake.

The key to your intellectual fallacy is that you've presented it as a 'choice', while missing out option 3, which is do nothing, or option 4, which is exploit the situation and ask to be paid for saving the life, or option 5 which is to expediate the deaths.

Suddenly both option 1 & 2 look good.

Both you and the op are suggesting we live in a world where perfection is the only possible way you can be selfless. The real world is a spectrum of white to black. In the real world it's impossible to be perfect and pretty good outcomes are still morally acceptable.

That binary outlook is convenient for you, but not the whole story. Something can be more selfish when compared with something else. It isn't a switch. I understand ignoring that makes for righteous indignation which feels good, so go right ahead.

Joe, this is Derek, the author of the piece linked above. I think you make a good point. When I first heard Will explain "earning to give," a part of me considered it off-putting and radical, but I've come to see it as an expansive view of doing good, because I think there are a lot of people who (a) wouldn't be good at charitable work or (b) would be good at charitable work but are better at - and enjoy! - other work. For these people, it's inspiring to think they can make a huge difference, too.

There is always the question: What happens if you discourage too many wonderful, smart people from working at charities? And here, Will's answer would be, I think, that if that starts happening, then we should reevaluate the advice. But for now, I think, the earning to give philosophy carries tremendous upside for getting more people to think of themselves as essential contributors to charitable causes, no matter where they work.

As a counterpoint, a friend of mine was knocked by when she volunteered for a local charity. "What qualifications do you have?"

The question sounds elitist, but the point was that charities often have metric shitloads of untrained helping hands. What they need, right now, is people that know how to manage, run finances, computer networking. Advanced skillsets.

I actually think the 'earning to give' mindset would really just end up as more consciential salve rather than a new way of thinking, much like people already do with minor donations. "Working on Wall St" changes the way you think. Case in point: another friend of mine was in a relationship with a hardcore Anarchist for 5 years, and came from a poorish middle-class background herself. She'd worked shitty working class jobs. She was pretty exposed to the plight of the poor and aware of poverty issues. Then she got a job in banking. A year later she got a raise of $10k, and she was negative about it, bitching about "the government taking half in tax" and it going to "useless welfare". Complaining that despite her tax load (seriously, got a raise, and all she could do was complain), she still had to help out her single-mother sister with money. Welfare was worthless, why should she have to pay so much tax? She got a bit of a shock when I said "So... what about all those other women like your sister who don't have a sister in banking?".

And here in our software bubble, I have a friend who earns 50% more than the national average household income (average, not median). He talks as if he's poor - and I see similar when I read conversations here on HN. It's awfully common for a software developer to see someone else doing the same thing and making a few dollars more, to then reclassify themselves as 'poor'.

The point is that where you work and who you associate with change who you are and how you behave - and, ultimately, have a good chance of removing people from the pool of 'people who care' (like my banker friend above). I guess that it's not that she didn't care, it's just that she no longer saw...

I think that's a really important concern. At 80,000 Hours when we encourage people to earn to give we ensure they're embedded in the effective altruism community, take things like the Giving What We Can Pledge and so on - mechanisms by which to ensure that our future selves don't fail to live up to our ideals.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the rate of people becoming disillusioned when they do direct work in charities also (anecdotally seems to me) to be very high. Reason is that it's often very hard, often you don't feel like you're having much of an impact. Whereas if you enjoy working in the lucrative career you're in, the 'sacrifice' of donating even 50% isn't really that great, so it's potentially easier to continue in that path. I'm genuinely really unsure which has the greater dropout rate: earning to give, or direct charity work. If I had to bet I'd say it was direct charity work.

ugh, what is it with me and typos? "knocked by" => "knocked back" (too late to edit)

Hi Derek! Nice to see you here!|

I actually already think that earning to give isn't the best path for most altruistic people who would be willing to work anywhere. This is a change of view from a few years ago. The reasons are: i) quite a few people are already very successfully earning to give and need really amazing opportunities to donate to; ii) a rising number of very wealthy people are donating most of their wealth (e.g. Giving Pledge). This means that on the margin we really need more talent to spend these donations well.

What I do think is: - donating to highly effective charities (e.g. GiveWell recommendations) is a means by which anyone who's got a job in an affluent country can make a truly massive difference - earning to give should be an option that's at least on the table for altruistically minded folks - as you say, for people who would really enjoy very high-earning careers they shouldn't necessarily think "well I should do something I enjoy less because what I'm doing now doesn't have much social value." (I shudder when I see high-flying lawyers or financiers quitting and doing non-profit consulting outside their area of expertise). Via earning to give, these people really can have their cake and eat it. - some careers are dual-benefit - e.g. entrepreneurship can generate huge social value in and of itself, and also be very lucrative - for young people, the most important thing in the short term if you want to do good in the long term is to build skills, and you often build more skills in for-profits than in non-profits. While there, you should earn to give.

Overall I think that at the moment maybe 10% of the altruistic people who would be happy working anywhere should aim to earn to give long-term. It depends a lot on cause, though - some areas are more money-constrained; some more talent-constrained.

Here's a thought question:

You are: a higher up at a very large company, whose process in some ways causes human suffering. Let's say the product, or byproduct causes cancer, and part of your job even, is to dispel the people who call your company out.

Who it better for you to,

(a Continue working the job, giving a very unreasonable amount of your salary to charity, which incidentally, attempts to research ways this human suffering

(b Work a different job that causes significantly less suffering (all jobs exploit someone/something else, let's be honest), but also causes you to make significantly less

(c Quit your career and join the Peacecorps full time, until retirement, using intelligent ways to invest in your previous earnings.

a2) Continue working the job for now, donate a substantial fraction of your income to charity, climb the ladder as rapidly as possible, and work to change the company in a direction you consider preferable if you think it's salvageable. (While there's a small set of jobs that are nearly irredeemable, such as the folks in a tobacco company or free-to-play gaming company researching how to make their product more addictive, there's a much larger set of jobs with a balance of questionable activities, with potentially some amount of influence over those activities.)

Interesting thought exercise: suppose you woke up tomorrow with the position (and requisite skills and connections) of running a company most people would consider irredeemable, such as a tobacco company. Could you, within a reasonable number of years, turn them into a well-respected company that's a net positive influence on society (and not just by dismantling them and donating the results)? I'd bet I could, within 8-10 years. (A bit less for a company for which the plan doesn't involve a few components of scientific research and advancement.)

You bet you could turn a tobacco company into something that's a net positive for society in 8-10 years? I'd like to see you try.

No, really, I actually would. I'm pretty sure it would do more good for humanity than working in computer science and donating your spare income to a cause you believe is an efficient use of your disposable income, even if you're particularly well paid or hit the startup jackpot...

I think what he was saying was if he woke up the CEO of a tobacco company and everyone he knew, all of his connections, everyone who worked at his company and, most importantly, the shareholders were on board with his plan... He could then pivot the company into something beneficial.

> Why not work on Wall Street and donate 90% of her income instead?

Hrm... I seem to recall large numbers of protestors recently whose general point was that working on Wall St was in itself, not a morally positive or neutral proposition. Is it morally defensible to screw people over to help different people?

The other problems with positions like yours is that you get a lot of juice out of conflating a particular academic definition of selfish with the general public definition; a lingual bait-and-switch.

Still, the point is clear. This was a terrible waste of a Stanford education. Hundreds of thousands in public, private and family funds and now she's in a low-paying feel-good job that anybody could do.

That's not a waste of education. There's no such thing as a waste of education. Maybe her experiences at Stanford reinforced her desire to do this, or strengthened her ability to make sacrifices.

There's more to education than making money. For one, if she didn't have that education, you wouldn't be talking about her.

Oh there most certainly is such a thing. Dining at a host home in the Phillippines while on a medical mission, we were introduced to the daughter of the family, as 'Dr'. Oh, what do you practice? Oh I don't practice says the daughter, as if it would be beneath her.

Now, there are precious few slots in that country for medical education. Such that exist are supported by the nation and the people directly and indirectly through taxes. One of those slots was 'wasted' on this human being, who's degree was an ornament on her wall. In a country where medical treatment is a privilege of the wealthy (thus the medical mission).

So pardon me if I regard education as a sacred trust, to be exercised to the best of your ability. Anything less is, at best, an affordable affectation. At worst, a moral failing and a crime against society.

A Stanford education is an asset to a human. A human is not a vessel with which to apply a Stanford eduction to the world.

It's also not like Wall St jobs have trouble filling positions. Charities do have trouble filling skilled positions.

Charity grunt work brings forward compassion, acceptance, frugality and other qualities that wouldn't arise from working in finance. If you don't see the problem up close you won't want to donate 90% of your income. Furthermore, smart people with the conviction to solve the problem and the guts to get their hands dirty eventually accomplish great things. Norman Borlaug comes to mind.

That's the bit that gets missed. Smart Stanford grads might not be initially effective at doling out food, but sometimes their smarts can do a lot more for their supply chain or donor base than their future cashflow from a conventional job.

Its pretty clear that a person who would dedicate their young years to charity work, already have those qualities. I'm thinking she might have retains some fragments of that, as she worked at her real skills and donated significantly.

That's like saying: "Anyone who would want to go to the gym is already pretty fit, so they don't need to go to the gym." The emotional muscles of charity need a workout just as much as our physical muscles. If you don't exercise them, they atrophy.

I agree she would she would retain some fragments of that, but she still could be substantially changed. See vacri's sibling (cousin?) post for an anecdote.

This is a really common argument that people make, but I think it's missing some essential externalities. I've worked in the nonprofit space for ~7 years now, and this is the most common over-cocktails argument folks tend to make.

First of all, and most importantly, most people do not give very much of their income away. And as you accumulate more money, your rate of giving tends to decrease. There are counter examples, thankfully (!), but this tends to be the trend.

There are also very important questions about the counter force of the labor you engage in to earn money. "Wall Street" type jobs make a great example here: say you earn $1M in a year by, say, funding expansive oil palm plantation development in southeast asian peat swamps. You may end up giving away a generous (!) 10% of your after-tax earnings, but you probably won't make up for the negative impact that you, or your money, had.

This particular externality is huge when you think about how investment works. For instance, all the major charitable foundations have large endowments that are tied up in various capital markets. Almost all of these foundations only give away their legally-mandated 5% payout amount. All the while, their complex financial machinery is generating, on average, returns in excess, or close to, 5%. So 95% of their money is actually working to make more money through the whole expansive and environmentally destructive capitalism thing[1].

Working at a soup kitchen full-time when you posses important skills does seem silly, though[2]. Like everything, I think there's a balance here. For instance, if you're highly skilled, donating a percentage of your time to volunteer or work at a lower-than-market-or-just-market salary at a nonprofit you believe in can have a tremendously important impact.

1. Not all foundations do this. A notable exception is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which I believe has a long-term goal of giving away all of their assets in some finite time period. A mixture of private investment in areas of interest can also help, e.g. what Omidyar Network does a lot of (http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/tech-philanthropy/2014/3/2...)

How is turning boreal peat forests into palm oil plantations equal to capital extraction? Isn't it the exact opposite in that land of less value has been turned into land of more value? I think I'm missing something here.

Sorry, I meant to say peat swamps, not boreal forests.

Regarding peat swamps, they are less valuable in that the land isn't being farmed. Transformation of "unvaluable and useless" peat swamps to productive oil palm plantations often, but not always, involves altering the water table of the forest, which causes a massive increase in CO2 (peat is an incredible carbon sink) as well as widespread fires.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/peat-and-repeat-re...

http://www.dw.de/peat-forests-pose-major-climate-threat/a-52...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_haze

Seems like the easiest solution is to make the land valuable in its current form. In the US there's a federal program to control the amount of wheat produced by paying farmers to let their wheat fields lie fallow. I assume though that a palm oil plantation is quite a bit more valuable than a wheat field.....

Yes. You're missing the chapter in your economics textbook titled "externalities".

> This resonates with me. I remember reading of a Stanford graduate who was delivering meals to indigents in San Francisco and the Bay Area. I immediately thought: how selfish. To give up a possibly lucrative employment in finance, so she could personally experience charitable work, was a net loss to that organization. Why not work on Wall Street and donate 90% of her income instead?

I wouldn't go as far as "selfish"; it's suboptimal, but sometimes there's value in the experience for the person doing it. It depends on what you're seeking to get. I've seen it suggested to do some small fraction of direct charitable work for the experience, but then to do the most good, work and donate.

For my part, for instance, I donate a moderate amount to causes I find personally interesting (amateur space travel, Free Software projects, etc), but a much larger amount to projects with much larger potential impact to people's lives, such as SENS or (in the future) MIRI. The former I do because I find it fun and motivating; the latter I do because it's efficient and does more good.

While you are correct, speaking negatively towards direct service probably isn't the best choice either. If everybody just donated cash instead of doing the work directly, there would be nobody to do the work. And if we start categorizing people by who is should make money vs. who should do the work, we are heading down a path of strengthening an unfair class system.

There are enough people who do nothing at all that when people want to offer service to others of any kind, I'd just say thank you for their service, no matter what it is or whether it is truly efficient.

There are plenty of unskilled volunteers. The waste was a Stanford education, an enormous investment by our culture and by her family, to get her to the point where she ... drove a truck and handed out meals. That was arguably wasteful, self-indulgent and small-minded.

This depends on your skill set. What job is a civil engineer going to take where she could earn enough surplus income to be more effectively altruistic than the direct impact or their work?

On a different scale, could Toyota have done more good in a neighborhood by donating the money equivalent of its staff's pay here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/nyregion/in-lieu-of-money-...

I'm a cynic on this subject, but my first thought when I see a young or youngish person do something like joining the Peace Corps is that they're resume-padding. A lot of that is because pretty much everyone I know who's done some kind of long-term charity work clearly was doing that (went off to the third world because they didn't get the internship/job they were applying for, or are angling to get into DC/politics or somesuch).

As long as I'm making controversial statements, you can probably extend that to people who join the military in a role that isn't likely to see combat and who don't intend to make a career of it. That's a lot less common than the Peace Corps, Teach for America etc. amongst my very non-representative social milieu (urban, East Coast, liberal), however.

I agree that there are more and less efficient ways to do good, but not everyone can make it finance, and nobody should feel bad about not putting in 80-hour weeks in soul-crushing work. Many people would feel miserable in that type of environment.

Here's a good essay by someone that stopped earning to give, on a site that broadly encourages it as a strategy: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-i-stopped-earning-to-give...

There are a few problems with this:

First, not everyone who goes to an elite university can get a job on Wall Street. Though these jobs are largely populated by graduates of elite universities, they are still very hard to get.

Second, people are more efficacious at things they want to be doing. Many people don't want to be in a high pressure job with long work hours and are more satisfied doing work that they find personally meaningful, rather than meaningful because of all the nice ways they can spend money on others.

Third, implicit in your response is the idea that there is some moral imperative to act as selflessly as possible. Why? No one chose to be born, so why does the accident of their birth impel them to act a certain way? Further, it is not even clear to me that improving human life is that important. Humans are petty. We are mean to each other, we harm the environment, etc. Different people value different things. You seem to value improving others lives materially. Others have different values and priorities, and that is fine as well.

Fourth, peoples lives have higher order consequences than just their immediate actions. Someone can touch a lot of lives through the money they spend but they may not have as much impact as a nurse who sits down with her patients and their families and comforts them when they're scared. Or the barber that I go to who always makes my entire day better (and thus my interactions with others better) by how cheerful he is.

I have found this slightly related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_work

If everybody would work at their profession to donate who would do the rebuilding?

The hope is that it would be done by the local workforce.

The worry is that depending on foreign volunteers to do the manual labor is a short-term fix that creates a culture of dependency. By contrast, training skilled workers (might be) a long-term structural fix. But this essentially limits the useful on-the-ground volunteers to those able to teach skills, rather than those willing to do unskilled labor.

I think this piece (plus the excellent comments) is a good summary of both sides of the argument: http://mitpsc.mit.edu/globalchallenge/?p=335

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