I talked to many of those people about value drift and their thoughts on long term altruism, and most of them, like most people I talk to now, had previously been very confident that they would stay altruistic in the long term. Value drift was high across both groups, with roughly 50% of the population drifting over 5 years. No one moved from the 10% category to the 50% category, and I only counted fairly noticeable changes (if someone changed their donations from 50% to 40%, I would not have the resolution to notice). changing from donating 10% to MIRI to AMF) - only different levels of overall altruistic involvement.ġ6 people were ~50% donors → 9/16 stayed around 50%Ģ2 people were ~10% donors → 8/22 stayed around 10% I did not count changing cause areas as value drift (e.g. The percentages are aimed at rough proxies of how important EA is in these people's lives, not strictly financial donations. Someone running an EA chapter who makes decisions with EA as a factor, but prioritizes other factors above it, would be put in the 10% group.
Someone who is working heavy hours for an EA organization and making most of their life decisions with EA as their number one priority would be considered in the 50% group. These broad groups are not just focused on people doing earning to give. I also broke the groups down into ~10% donors and ~50% donors, because many times I have heard people being more or less concerned about one of these groups vs the other. It is ultimately a convenience sample, but it was based on working for 4 current EA orgs and living in 4 different countries over that time, so it’s not focused on a single location or organization.
I also only included people who I knew and kept in touch with well enough to know what happened to them (even if they left the EA movement). I only included people who would have called themselves EAs for 6 months or longer (I would not include someone who was only into EA for a month and then disappeared), and who and took some sort of EA action (working for an EA org, taking the GWWC pledge, running an EA group). I decided to pool some data from contacts who I met in my first year of EA. I have been in the EA movement for ~5 years. One of the reasons it is so under-studied is that it would take a long time to get good data. However, it has impact right away, which matters more if the risk of value drift is high.ĭespite the importance of value drift to important questions, it's rarely been talked about or studied. This has the potential, though not always, to be slower at building your CV than getting a degree or working in a low-impact but high-prestige field. For example, you might get an entry-level position at a charity and build up capacity by getting work experience. The more common value drift is, the stronger near-term focused impact plans are relative to longer-term focused impact plans. In a career context, a plan such as building career capital for 8 years and then moving into an altruistic job would be considered a much better plan if value drift were rare than if it were common. However, if the risk of value drift is higher, a dollar in a savings account is more likely to later be used for non-altruistic reasons and thus not nearly as good as a dollar put into a donor advised fund, where it’s very hard not to donate it to a registered charity. Value drift seems very likely to be a concern for many EAs, and if it were a major concern, it would substantially affect career and donation plans.įor example, if value drift rarely happens, putting money into a savings account with the intent of donating it might be basically as good as putting it into a donor-advised fund. Value drift has a strong precedent of happening for other related concepts, both ethical things (such as being vegetarian) and things that generally take willpower (such as staying a healthy weight). This is not to be confused with changing cause areas or methods of doing good. The concept of value drift is that over time, people will become less motivated to do altruistic things. Why It’s Important to Know the Risk of Value Drift
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