Unless education differs starkly from other disciplines, note that you will apply to all top programs, not one top program. Applying to one program would be foolish as the chance of getting accepted, even if you are a top candidate, is rather on the low end.
Yes, if you intend to become an Ivy League professor, you need to get a degree from a top 5 institution of your field. Note that "becoming an Ivy League professor in my field" is somewhat akin to "becoming a top athlete in my sport", and similarly competitive - just like most folks wont break into the NFL or NBA, most academics (even super smart or diligent ones) will not make it into an Ivy League professorship. That is not meant to discourage you from trying, but you should realize that chances are slim even if you are really good.
Anyways, if that were your career path, you should try to 1. Excel in each course (4.0 GPA)
2. Make regular contact with your teachers (go to office hours to discuss material and questions etc). Try to find mentors, and try to heed their advice often.
3. Scour the web for resources on how grad applications in your chosen discipline work, and maximize what they'll require.
A challenge is to do all this while not losing the passion for your subject - which you should explore, love and enjoy while studying. So I would strongly recommend against this career path unless you feel very distinctly passionate about the subject.
I cannot speak to the career of influencers, but if you were to opt for taking a shot at becoming a professor, the #1 priority should be to excel academically and take active steps towards getting into an as high-ranked program as you can for your grad studies.
It is hard to advise on this without knowing your current situation. Both becoming a professor and becoming an influencer are career paths that are not easy to tread, and recommending one over the other will hinge on where you are in life currently - what is your age, educational background, subject interest (important re: professor), marketable hobbies or content niches (important re: influencer) etc.
I remain unconvinced by the suggestion that the benefits of the proposal would outweigh its costs.
Some thoughts, in no particular order
1. "So the 10% figure is not exactly arbitrary. It is chosen for a specific set of practical reasons - having brand recognition, being a nice round number, and being used by religious groups."
In the comment you refer to, I was arguing that you misunderstood criticisms that target the % of donation EA requires. Specifically, any % is arbitrary on normative grounds: if you have a duty of beneficence towards the global poor, it is unclear why it would discharge at 10%, 12%, 18%, 90% and so on. There are indeed practical reasons to choose 10% over others, but they do not solve the normative problem. Normatively, EA chooses an arbitrary number. Scott Alexander has a decent discussion of this point here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/
2. If the 10% community standard is all that's preventing a subset of current pledgers from redirecting 20% of their annual giving to the opera instead of GiveWell, are we really pleased that the 10% community standard is having that effect?"
I do not currently believe the amount of donors that you would sway by offering them the opportunity to donate X% to Givewell and Y% to other charities is large. Notably, this is already possible with the current pledge: you offer some sort of official badge of approval for the Y%.
3. And our critics most often criticize our donation standards as preventing them from donating to secular causes, such as alma maters, political movements, the arts, and so on. Showing them that there is a way to include these interests in their giving, while still saving lives in a way that can be demonstrated with cost-benefit analysis in the manner of Effective Altruism seems to be a promising strategy to me.
Somewhat more meta: I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of most criticism levied at the EA. I think most individuals are not criticizing that they won't be allowed to donate to anything else. Rather, they criticize that EA focuses on specific charities/careers/volunteering over others. For example, they disagree that a banker doing earning to give does more good than a social worker (an example that was central in your last post). Or they disagree that EA says Malaria is more efficient than e.g. the local political fundraiser because the latter provides benefits that are hard to quantify, yet huge. I take it to not be typical that someone thinks "EA is correct in their appraisal, yet I want to have their approval to donate 2% to something that is not effective". Your proposal is orthogonal to the concerns of critics of EA: you offer them approval to donate to a cause that is explicitly second-rate in the ranking of donations of the pledge. You also don't offer a reason for EA to believe these donations will do most good outside of EA being able to trick more people into doing a pledge, or the public looking more favorably upon us. This strikes me as a transparent move that will likely backfire significantly.
I'm happy to continue this conversation, but I think a more direct conversation may be more productive than continuing via Forum-Post & Comments. If you want to schedule a zoom call, please reach out!
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on whether the 10% pledge is central to EA's public perception.
I do not agree with how you relate your positive proposal to the critiques of EA. Two points stuck out to me: the "earning to give" point and the "is 10% the correct amount" point. In both cases, I see no reason to believe "a 2%/8% or 2%/10% fuzzies/utilons standard for an earning to give pledge would be a concrete way to show we've taken onboard some of these critiques.".
Earning to give is weird. You improve the world by becoming a (checks notes) Banker or Lawyer? People that criticize earning to give do not criticize the notion of them donating their money, but typically criticize Banking/Lawyering as a profession where one can do good (e.g. because they believe these jobs are net-negative), or see the pledge as greenwashing one's otherwise rich life. I do not see how a banker donating 2% to his favorite Opera would change any of these critiques. The critic does not want you to donate to the Opera - they want you to stop saying being a banker may have more positive ethical payoffs than being a social worker.
EA argues for a duty of beneficence and asks members to donate 10%. 10% is an arbitrary shelling point. Why not 11%? Why not 12% (you are here)? But consider: why not 13%? (...) Why not 99%? These worries are a classic critique of duties of beneficence, at least since Singer released Famine, Affluence, and Morality. I am confident that such critiques will not be resolved by setting the donation percentage 2% higher. The critic does not want you to donate 12% - they want you to explain why X% is morally required, but X+1% is not morally required.
I agree with the point that a newcomer to EA may wrongly get the impression of not being allowed to donate to non-effective charities. This would be bad. But I think there are significantly easier ways to signal to them that they can do so than to reform the Giving What We Can Pledge (talking to them/leading by example/putting it in a FAQ).
I also still think your positive proposal would likely be harmful, partly for the same reasons I laid out in a previous post. First, why make fuzzy donations mandatory? Someone with very Utilitarian convictions may be put off by this, or someone who would otherwise donate 10% effectively and donate fuzzies separately may reduce their effective donations while keeping fuzzies constant (this is on the original 8%/2% proposal and does not affect the 10%/2% proposal). When I encountered EA, a pitch of "Donate X% to the most effective ways of improving lives, then spend an additional 2% on whatever you feel like" would have created more rather than less confusion in me. Most people, I reckon, do not need approval to spend the other 90% on things they want to spend them on, including charity that is not effective.
Much more importantly, I think this has a big potential for being a PR disaster, rather than a PR boon. I don't know how I would explain why my organization has a norm of donating to charities we don't consider to be effective. I think the reasons you provide are by and large "to improve our reputation". I am quite confident that EA explicitly foregoing its efficiency principles to mandate a 2% fuzzies tax to improve its reputation would not land well in the press, or with critics. Much of this sounds to me like an attempt at 4d-chessing the public perception of EA. Frankly, even if I were an EA-sympathetic journalist, I would find the idea quite insulting - it's pretty transparent.
I also agree with Isaac that the initial downvotes and overall vote tally strike me as disagreement with your proposal, rather than a rejection of your discussion.
I'm not really seeing a dire need for this proposal. 10% effective donations has brand recognition and is a nice round number, as you point out. It is used by other groups, such as religious groups, making it easy to re-funnel donations to e.g. religious communities to effective charities. This leaves 90% of your income at your disposal, part of which you may spend on fuzzy causes. It does not seem required to me to change the 10% to allow for fuzzy donations, nor do I think there's a motivation to make donations to fuzzy causes morally required.
Example 1: Someone wants to support a cause dear to their heart that is ineffective, but also recognizes the need for effective charity. Previously, they donated 10% to effective charities and 5% to fuzzy charities. On the new proposal, they donate 8% to effective charities, and 5% to fuzzy charities. This seems to be worse than the initial situation.
Example 2: Someone does not see a specific reason to privilege fuzzy charities. They donate 10% to effective charities. On the new proposal, they donate 8% to effective charities, and 2% to some other charity. This seems to be worse than the initial situation.
Example 3: Someone sometimes gives to inefficient causes for personal reasons. They read your proposal above, feeling happy to see their actions justified from an impartial standpoint for the reasons indicated above. A newspaper asks them why they give to charities they themselves consider inefficient. They say they do public donations to fuzzy causes to improve the reputation of EA/score "reputation points"/send them this post. The newspaper publishes an op-ed on how EA is greenwashing its charity. This seems to be worse than the initial situation.
In my personal life, I do not at all feel hindered to donate to fuzzy causes by the fact that I pledged 10% of my income to effective charities. If a friend starts a fundraiser, or I see a homeless person, or some speculative but cool idea comes up, I gladly shoot them some of my income. This feels good. There is no need to adjust the 10% amount in order to enable me to get my fuzzies from these alternative giving opportunities. At the same time, there are reasons to believe the proposal hurts brand recognition and can lead to worse situations, as indicated in the example.
I feel like this post introduces a helpful contrast.
I am personally partial to the member-first approach. A cause-first approach seems to place a lot of trust into the epistemics of leaders and decision-makers that identify the correct cause. I take this to be an unhealthy strategy generally - I believe a vibrant community of smart, empirically-minded individuals can be trusted to make their own calls, and I think this may often challenge the opinion of leadership or the community at large in a healthy way. Even if many individual calls end up leading to suboptimal individual behaviour, I'd expect the epistemic benefits of a diversity of opinions and thought to outweigh this downside in the long run, even for the centrally boosted causes, which benefit from having their opinions challenged and questioned from people that do not share their views, and having the likelihood of groupthink significantly reduced.
On a more abstract level, I think EA is pretty unique as a community because of its open epistemics, where a variety of views can be pitched and will receive a fair hearing, often leading to positive interventions and initiatives. I worry that a cause-first approach will endanger this and turn EA into "just another" cause-specific organization, even if the selection of the cause is well-motivated at the initial point of choice.
But it'll be intensified if the community mainly exists of people that like the same causes because the filter for membership is cause-centered rather than member-centered.
Unless education differs starkly from other disciplines, note that you will apply to all top programs, not one top program. Applying to one program would be foolish as the chance of getting accepted, even if you are a top candidate, is rather on the low end.
Yes, if you intend to become an Ivy League professor, you need to get a degree from a top 5 institution of your field. Note that "becoming an Ivy League professor in my field" is somewhat akin to "becoming a top athlete in my sport", and similarly competitive - just like most folks wont break into the NFL or NBA, most academics (even super smart or diligent ones) will not make it into an Ivy League professorship. That is not meant to discourage you from trying, but you should realize that chances are slim even if you are really good.
Anyways, if that were your career path, you should try to
1. Excel in each course (4.0 GPA)
2. Make regular contact with your teachers (go to office hours to discuss material and questions etc). Try to find mentors, and try to heed their advice often.
3. Scour the web for resources on how grad applications in your chosen discipline work, and maximize what they'll require.
A challenge is to do all this while not losing the passion for your subject - which you should explore, love and enjoy while studying. So I would strongly recommend against this career path unless you feel very distinctly passionate about the subject.
I cannot speak to the career of influencers, but if you were to opt for taking a shot at becoming a professor, the #1 priority should be to excel academically and take active steps towards getting into an as high-ranked program as you can for your grad studies.
It is hard to advise on this without knowing your current situation. Both becoming a professor and becoming an influencer are career paths that are not easy to tread, and recommending one over the other will hinge on where you are in life currently - what is your age, educational background, subject interest (important re: professor), marketable hobbies or content niches (important re: influencer) etc.
I remain unconvinced by the suggestion that the benefits of the proposal would outweigh its costs.
Some thoughts, in no particular order
In the comment you refer to, I was arguing that you misunderstood criticisms that target the % of donation EA requires. Specifically, any % is arbitrary on normative grounds: if you have a duty of beneficence towards the global poor, it is unclear why it would discharge at 10%, 12%, 18%, 90% and so on. There are indeed practical reasons to choose 10% over others, but they do not solve the normative problem. Normatively, EA chooses an arbitrary number. Scott Alexander has a decent discussion of this point here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/
I do not currently believe the amount of donors that you would sway by offering them the opportunity to donate X% to Givewell and Y% to other charities is large. Notably, this is already possible with the current pledge: you offer some sort of official badge of approval for the Y%.
Somewhat more meta: I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of most criticism levied at the EA. I think most individuals are not criticizing that they won't be allowed to donate to anything else. Rather, they criticize that EA focuses on specific charities/careers/volunteering over others. For example, they disagree that a banker doing earning to give does more good than a social worker (an example that was central in your last post). Or they disagree that EA says Malaria is more efficient than e.g. the local political fundraiser because the latter provides benefits that are hard to quantify, yet huge. I take it to not be typical that someone thinks "EA is correct in their appraisal, yet I want to have their approval to donate 2% to something that is not effective". Your proposal is orthogonal to the concerns of critics of EA: you offer them approval to donate to a cause that is explicitly second-rate in the ranking of donations of the pledge. You also don't offer a reason for EA to believe these donations will do most good outside of EA being able to trick more people into doing a pledge, or the public looking more favorably upon us. This strikes me as a transparent move that will likely backfire significantly.
I'm happy to continue this conversation, but I think a more direct conversation may be more productive than continuing via Forum-Post & Comments. If you want to schedule a zoom call, please reach out!
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on whether the 10% pledge is central to EA's public perception.
I do not agree with how you relate your positive proposal to the critiques of EA. Two points stuck out to me: the "earning to give" point and the "is 10% the correct amount" point. In both cases, I see no reason to believe "a 2%/8% or 2%/10% fuzzies/utilons standard for an earning to give pledge would be a concrete way to show we've taken onboard some of these critiques.".
Earning to give is weird. You improve the world by becoming a (checks notes) Banker or Lawyer? People that criticize earning to give do not criticize the notion of them donating their money, but typically criticize Banking/Lawyering as a profession where one can do good (e.g. because they believe these jobs are net-negative), or see the pledge as greenwashing one's otherwise rich life. I do not see how a banker donating 2% to his favorite Opera would change any of these critiques. The critic does not want you to donate to the Opera - they want you to stop saying being a banker may have more positive ethical payoffs than being a social worker.
EA argues for a duty of beneficence and asks members to donate 10%. 10% is an arbitrary shelling point. Why not 11%? Why not 12% (you are here)? But consider: why not 13%? (...) Why not 99%? These worries are a classic critique of duties of beneficence, at least since Singer released Famine, Affluence, and Morality. I am confident that such critiques will not be resolved by setting the donation percentage 2% higher. The critic does not want you to donate 12% - they want you to explain why X% is morally required, but X+1% is not morally required.
I agree with the point that a newcomer to EA may wrongly get the impression of not being allowed to donate to non-effective charities. This would be bad. But I think there are significantly easier ways to signal to them that they can do so than to reform the Giving What We Can Pledge (talking to them/leading by example/putting it in a FAQ).
I also still think your positive proposal would likely be harmful, partly for the same reasons I laid out in a previous post. First, why make fuzzy donations mandatory? Someone with very Utilitarian convictions may be put off by this, or someone who would otherwise donate 10% effectively and donate fuzzies separately may reduce their effective donations while keeping fuzzies constant (this is on the original 8%/2% proposal and does not affect the 10%/2% proposal). When I encountered EA, a pitch of "Donate X% to the most effective ways of improving lives, then spend an additional 2% on whatever you feel like" would have created more rather than less confusion in me. Most people, I reckon, do not need approval to spend the other 90% on things they want to spend them on, including charity that is not effective.
Much more importantly, I think this has a big potential for being a PR disaster, rather than a PR boon. I don't know how I would explain why my organization has a norm of donating to charities we don't consider to be effective. I think the reasons you provide are by and large "to improve our reputation". I am quite confident that EA explicitly foregoing its efficiency principles to mandate a 2% fuzzies tax to improve its reputation would not land well in the press, or with critics. Much of this sounds to me like an attempt at 4d-chessing the public perception of EA. Frankly, even if I were an EA-sympathetic journalist, I would find the idea quite insulting - it's pretty transparent.
I also agree with Isaac that the initial downvotes and overall vote tally strike me as disagreement with your proposal, rather than a rejection of your discussion.
I appreciate the notification and will take a look!
I'm not really seeing a dire need for this proposal. 10% effective donations has brand recognition and is a nice round number, as you point out. It is used by other groups, such as religious groups, making it easy to re-funnel donations to e.g. religious communities to effective charities. This leaves 90% of your income at your disposal, part of which you may spend on fuzzy causes. It does not seem required to me to change the 10% to allow for fuzzy donations, nor do I think there's a motivation to make donations to fuzzy causes morally required.
Example 1: Someone wants to support a cause dear to their heart that is ineffective, but also recognizes the need for effective charity. Previously, they donated 10% to effective charities and 5% to fuzzy charities. On the new proposal, they donate 8% to effective charities, and 5% to fuzzy charities. This seems to be worse than the initial situation.
Example 2: Someone does not see a specific reason to privilege fuzzy charities. They donate 10% to effective charities. On the new proposal, they donate 8% to effective charities, and 2% to some other charity. This seems to be worse than the initial situation.
Example 3: Someone sometimes gives to inefficient causes for personal reasons. They read your proposal above, feeling happy to see their actions justified from an impartial standpoint for the reasons indicated above. A newspaper asks them why they give to charities they themselves consider inefficient. They say they do public donations to fuzzy causes to improve the reputation of EA/score "reputation points"/send them this post. The newspaper publishes an op-ed on how EA is greenwashing its charity. This seems to be worse than the initial situation.
In my personal life, I do not at all feel hindered to donate to fuzzy causes by the fact that I pledged 10% of my income to effective charities. If a friend starts a fundraiser, or I see a homeless person, or some speculative but cool idea comes up, I gladly shoot them some of my income. This feels good. There is no need to adjust the 10% amount in order to enable me to get my fuzzies from these alternative giving opportunities. At the same time, there are reasons to believe the proposal hurts brand recognition and can lead to worse situations, as indicated in the example.
I feel like this post introduces a helpful contrast.
I am personally partial to the member-first approach. A cause-first approach seems to place a lot of trust into the epistemics of leaders and decision-makers that identify the correct cause. I take this to be an unhealthy strategy generally - I believe a vibrant community of smart, empirically-minded individuals can be trusted to make their own calls, and I think this may often challenge the opinion of leadership or the community at large in a healthy way. Even if many individual calls end up leading to suboptimal individual behaviour, I'd expect the epistemic benefits of a diversity of opinions and thought to outweigh this downside in the long run, even for the centrally boosted causes, which benefit from having their opinions challenged and questioned from people that do not share their views, and having the likelihood of groupthink significantly reduced.
On a more abstract level, I think EA is pretty unique as a community because of its open epistemics, where a variety of views can be pitched and will receive a fair hearing, often leading to positive interventions and initiatives. I worry that a cause-first approach will endanger this and turn EA into "just another" cause-specific organization, even if the selection of the cause is well-motivated at the initial point of choice.
But it'll be intensified if the community mainly exists of people that like the same causes because the filter for membership is cause-centered rather than member-centered.