[0x3f]

> My goal in life is not to maximize financial return, it's to maximize my impact on things I care about.

In the vast majority of cases, financial returns help maximize your impact on the things you care about. Arguably in most cases it's more effective for you to provide the financing and direction but not be directly involved. That's why the EA guys are off beng quants.

The only real exceptions are things that specifically require you personally, like investing time with your family, or developing yourself in some way.

[anticorporate]

I knew this canned rebuttal was coming and almost addressed it in my previous comment.

I've not found this to be true at all, for a variety of reasons. One of my moral principles that extreme wealth accumulation by any individual is ultimately harmful to society, even for those who start with altruistic values. Money is power, and power corrupts.

Also, the further from my immediate circle I focus my impact on, the less certainty I have that my impact is achieving what I want it to. I've worked on global projects, and looking back at them those are the projects I'm least certain moved the needle in the direction I wanted them to. Not because they didn't achieve their goals, but because I'm not sure the goals at the outset actually had the long term impact I wanted them to. In fact, it's often due to precisely what we're talking about in this thread: sometimes new things come along and change everything.

The butterfly effect is just as real with altruism as it is with anything else.

[0x3f]

But you're not supposed to accumulate the wealth, you're supposed to forward it to your elected causes.

[anticorporate]

Being a quant is inherently accumulating and growing someone's wealth for them, even if it's not your own.

If there were a way to be a true Robin Hood and only extract wealth from the wealthy and redistribute that to poor, I'd call that a noble cause, although finance is not my field (nor is crime, for that matter) so it's not for me.

My chosen wealth multiplier is working at a community-owned cooperative, building the wealth for others directly.

[0x3f]

Not sure about this because many charities are designed to spend their income, rather than hoard it. A big part of choosing which charity to donate to is, or should be, how effective they are in spending what you give them.

[anticorporate]

I mean, I'm not arguing that if you can find a way to make a large amount of money in an ethical way without enriching yourself or the wealthy further and then find a way to accurately evaluate charities to maximize impact, that you shouldn't do that. But there are several very difficult problems embedded in that path, and I could easily sees just solving all of those problems becoming a full-time job by itself.

I also, candidly, haven't ever seen anyone successfully do that.

[Devasta]

I want to cure lung cancer, therefore as an Effective Altruist™ I maximize my income by selling cigarettes to children outside playgrounds. The money will go towards research in my will, and in the meantime the incidence of lung cancer in teenagers will incentivize the free market to find a cure!

People don't become quants because they are EAs, they become EAs to justify to themselves why they became quants.

[0x3f]

Being a quant is not that interesting and if you're not redirecting the money you're not really an EA, are you?

Your first paragraph is just a standard response to utilitarianism, although a poor one because it doesn't consider EV.

Nonetheless I'm not quite sure why merely mentioning EA draws out all these irrelevant replies about it. It was incidental, not an endorsement of EA.

[ashwinsundar]

I didn't realize maximizing money is the way to achieve moral excellence. It's interesting how Puritanical the EA folks are

[0x3f]

There is no moral excellence but which you invent for yourself. But given the first principle or goal of 'having the most impact', maximizing money is often quite useful.

[ashwinsundar]

Or, utilitarianism

[komali2]

> Arguably in most cases it's more effective for you to provide the financing and direction but not be directly involved. That's why the EA guys are off beng quants.

The EA guys aren't the final word on ethics or a fulfilling life.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that one might, rather than seeking to always better one's life, instead seek to share the burden others are holding.

Making a bunch of money to turn around and spend on mosquito nets might seem to be making the world better, but on the other hand it also normalizes and enshrines the systems of oppression and injustice that created a world where someone can make 300,000$ a year typing "that didn't work, try again" into claude while someone else watches another family member die of malaria because they couldn't afford meds.

[0x3f]

Nobody is asking about ethics or a fulfilling life. We are talking about maximum _impact_.

[komali2]

Impact only has meaning per a chosen framework to measure within. For example, if I apply my ethical system to measure the impact of an EA, they have essentially no impact, since all they do is perpetuate a system that is the root of the problems they're trying to solve.

[Nasrudith]

To be frank that anti-system logic sounds a lot like. "Why are you taking a shower when there are people dying of thirst in a desert logic? Plumbing is an inherently unjust system for giving more water to those who already have enough!".

Yes there are flaws in the system, but smugly opting out of it and declaring yourself morally superior isn't helpful. Instead you need to actually do the work of understanding the system, its virtues and flaws before you can propose changes that would actually improve things.

[komali2]

Plumbing doesn't harm the people in the desert. Plumbing isn't an inherent bad.

The system of imperialism that enables some to starve while others eat is inherently bad and is propped up and legitimized when you act within its framework.

Adding plumbing to your house isn't saying "it's normal that people are dying of thirst." Structuring your impact around donations is, meanwhile, saying "though this system results in people starving while others throw away half their food, we can only solve these problems by working really hard within the rules this system defines, and then lending aid within the rules this system defines." After all, there's only one way to make money enough to be "impactful..."

This is a slightly tangential example, I don't want to be mistaken that I'm saying they're equivalent: Buying and freeing slaves is not a good form of activism when trying to overthrow slavery. It's doing the exact opposite: upholding the institution of slavery with every purchase. Legitimizing it and even in fact funding it. You tell yourself you're at least slightly reducing harm but in reality you're motivating slave catchers to go find more people to slave - and meanwhile btw you're doing nothing to address the fact that slave catchers in your own country are just grabbing the slaves you freed.

The only truly ethical choice for activism against slavery is to break chains and use violence against anyone that prevents you from breaking chains.

Again, not exactly equivalent, just an example of how "helping" can actually prop up the thing you think you're trying to take down.

[danny_codes]

> The only real exceptions are things that specifically require you personally, like investing time with your family, or developing yourself in some way.

So, the things that matter the most for most people?

Studies pretty consistently show that happiness caps off at relatively modest wealth.

[0x3f]

That's not their stated goal. Their stated goal is to maximize impact, not their own happiness.

[danny_codes]

Impact is nebulous. For example, Zuckerberg has had impact but it’s been almost entirely negative. The world is a worse place for him having existed.

[0x3f]

It being signed doesn't make it nebulous.

[lawtalkinghuman]

> That's why the EA guys are off beng quants.

Or in prison for fraud.