All of AndrewPearson's Comments + Replies

"238 EAs in our sample donated 1% of their income or more, and 84 EAs in our sample give 10% of their income."

I was surprised by this. In particular, 22% (127/588) of people identifying as EAs do not donate. (Of course they may have good reasons for not donating, e.g. if they are employed by an EA charity or if they are currently investing in order to give more in the future). Do we know why so many people identify as EAs but do not presently donate?

0
jayd
9y
What evidence could we get now or in the future that'd speak to the different hypotheses being offered in response to this?
0
Evan_Gaensbauer
9y
I haven't looked at correlations between various data-sets yet, so I'm not confident. I'll update on this later. Anyway, many who took the survey are likely university students, including perhaps a disproportionate number of graduate students as effective altruism is skewed towards the academic world. This may delay who's in a good position to donate by a few years.
3
David_Moss
9y
The raw data seems to show that a lot of people who have donated zero have nevertheless pledged to donate a significant amount (e.g. everything above living expenses etc.).
3
Bernadette_Young
9y
The survey question only asked if people though they could be described 'however loosely' as an effective altruist. I suspect this question did not perform as intended - we know it included people who said they not heard of the term.
6
Joey
9y
Because self-identifying as EA is a lot easier than being self-sacrificing and donating. I saw the numbers with students removed and they did not improve as much as you would think.
7
Bitton
9y
Probably because the average age is so low (~25) - lots of students and people just starting out their careers.

I would observe that certain positions are going to be rather more or less weird depending upon the social context. An example from my personal experience would be that students are in general very pro-immigration, so talking about open borders doesn't cost me all that many weird points. On the other hand, many/most of the people I talk to on a regular basis are Christians, which means that talk of cryonics is right out and vegetarianism is often seen as contrary to certain (particularly New Testament) teachings. What this all means is that you can probabl... (read more)

Hello, I'm Andrew. I'm currently a third year PPE student at the University of Manchester in the UK. I was introduced to EA through Less Wrong, and became actively involved a bit less than a year ago when a friend in Manchester started up a local chapter. I have taken the GWWC pledge and am currently torn between going into academic philosophy (which I would probably enjoy a lot, but may not be terribly effective due to the number of EAs already involved in academia), learning to program and getting a job in software, or getting involved in a think tank in order to advocate for open borders.

In my spare time I enjoy playing the piano, reading, and running while listening to podcasts.