EA - Why I love effective altruism by Michelle Hutchinson

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why I love effective altruism, published by Michelle Hutchinson on March 1, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I’ve found it a bit tough to feel as excited as I usually am about effective altruism and our community recently. I think some others have too.So I wanted to remind myself why I love EA so dearly. I thought hearing my take might also help any others in the community feeling similarly.There’s a lot I want to say about why I love EA. But really, it all comes down to the people. Figuring out how I can best help others can be a difficult, messy, and emotionally draining endeavour. But it’s far easier to do alongside like-minded folk who care about the same goal. Thankfully, I found these people in the EA community.Helping me live up to my valuesBefore I came across effective altruism, I wasn’t really enacting my values.I studied ethics at university and realised I was a utilitarian. I used to do bits and pieces of charity work, such as volunteering at Oxfam. But I donated very little of my money. I wasn’t thinking about how to find a career that would significantly help others.I didn’t have any good reason for my ethical omissions; it just didn’t seem like other people did them, so I didn’t either.Now I’m a Giving What We Can member and have been fulfilling my pledge every year for a decade. I’m still not as good as I’d like to be about thinking broadly and proactively about how to find the most impactful career. But prioritising impact is now a significant factor in how I figure out what to do with my 80,000 hours.I made these major shifts in my life, I think, because I met other people who were really living out their values. When I was surrounded by people who typically give something like 10% of their income to charity rather than 3%, my sense of how much was reasonable to give started to change. When I was directly asked about my own life choices, I stopped and thought seriously about what I could and should do differently.In addition to these significant life changes, members of the EA community help me live up to my values in small and large ways every day. Sometimes, they give me constructive feedback so I can be more effective. Sometimes, I get a clear-sighted debugging of a challenge I’m facing — whether that’s a concrete work question or a messy motivational issue.Sometimes the people around me just set a positive example. For instance, it’s much easier for me to work a few extra hours on a Saturday in the service of helping others when I’m alongside someone else doing the same.Getting supportGiven what I said above, I think I’d have expected that the EA community would feel pretty pressureful. And it’s not always easy. But the overwhelming majority of the time, I don’t feel pressured by the people around me; I feel they share my understanding that the world is hard, and that it’s hard in very different ways for different people.I honestly never cease to be impressed by the extent to which the people around me work hard to reach high standards, without demanding others do exactly the same. For example:One of my friends works around 12 hours a day, mostly 6 days a week. But he’s never anything but appreciative of how much I work, even though it’s significantly less.I’ve often expected to be judged for being an omnivore, given that my office is almost entirely vegn. But far from that, people go out of their way to ensure I have food I’m happy to eat.When I first thought I might be pregnant, I felt a bit sheepish telling my friends about it, given that my confident prediction was that having a child would reduce my lifetime impact. But every single person showed genuine happiness for me.This feels like a community where we can each be striving — but also be comfortable setting our limits, knowing that others will be genuinely, gladly ...