So last year sometime I agreed to do an interview with a couple of quite young women in effective altruism, and that was my first encounter with EA as an organized force. I was a little wary, but they were obviously curious people who wanted to make the world better.

We spent most of our time talking about the Covid Tracking Project, which, sure, a large-scale altruistic thing. When I mentioned that also I spend time volunteering in our local foster care system, that seemed a bit puzzling.

I think at the time, what I tried to get across is that there are honestly near-infinite ways to make the world better, safer, and more whole for more people, and you just need to mess around and find one you're good at.

But in hindsight and given Recent Events, I wish I'd been clearer about the other piece of it, which is that what you do changes who you are. It can't not.

In simplistic terms, selling your soul so you can help more people via soul/money arbitrage just isn't a frictionless thing, it has real, long-term costs.

Professionalizing yourself into norms that treat ethical behavior as naive and short-sighted fucks you up and makes you bad at being a person. But we don't cop to that, culturally, in the US at least. Higher ed and professionalization pushes a lot of smart kids into terrible norms.

Those are the things I wish I'd said instead.

Erin Kissane