[paganel]

> Rationalists seem extremely common amongst the $300k+/year software engineers I know

I'm a programmer who lives on the other side of the world (so no chance for me to make $300k+/year) and I must say that all this "rationalism" discussion makes me a little confused: do people really believe in this sort of stuff? Do they actually equate "success" with (mostly owning) "money"? Do they really think a "rational"(-ist) person would mainly think about how to earn (supposedly more) money? Why on Earth would he/she do that? Money is just a tool. Holding an important position in society (CEO, founder, whatever) is just a hindrance, it keeps one away from actually thinking about the stuff that really matters.

I'm pretty sure all this stuff was explained a lot better a long time ago by people a lot more smarter than me (right now I'm thinking at one of Plato's works, maybe "Symposium"? I'm not sure, I've last read many of them ~20 years ago), point is this specific "view of the world" seems very US-specific to me.

[zmj]

Earning lots of money sets you up to donate lots of money to effective charities. Many rationalists believe that's the best thing you can be doing for global quality-of-life.

[lanstin]

If one understands that the value of your work is almost certainly higher than your salary, then you'd conclude to benefit the world the most, you'd be better allocating your work directly to the cause of global quality-of-life.

[mrmonkeyman]

This. Money is no hindrance. It can be set in motion for good. It's the only thing capable of producing real change.

[CydeWeys]

> Holding an important position in society (CEO, founder, whatever) is just a hindrance, it keeps one away from actually thinking about the stuff that really matters.

You may believe stuff like this, but many others don't, so it should be phrased as your opinion rather than as a fact.

Elon Musk, for example, has very strong beliefs about humanity's future on other planets. His position as founder/CEO of SpaceX lets him actually work towards making that dream a reality. You or I can dream all we want but we can't make them reality. If this is something you care about, then he's clearly successful in ways that we aren't, that are directly attributable solely to his role as wealthy person/founder.

[mpoteat]

I definitely recommend reading the sequences. More than anything, it's about recognizing cognitive biases. Altruism is where money comes in, but I would classify that as the Effective Altruism movement.