Part one of what will hopefully become the aspirant sequence.

Content note: Possibly a difficult read for some people. You are encouraged to just stop reading the post if you are the kind of person who isn’t going to find it useful. Somewhat intended to be read alongside various more-reassuring posts, some of which it links to, as a counterpoint in dialogue with them. Pushes in a direction along a spectrum, and whether this is good for you will depend on where you currently are on that spectrum. Many thanks to Keller and Ozy for insightful and helpful feedback; all remaining errors are my own. 

Alice is a rationalist and Effective Altruist who is extremely motivated to work hard and devote her life to positive impact. She switched away from her dream game-dev career to do higher-impact work instead, she spends her weekends volunteering (editing papers), she only eats the most ethical foods, she never tells lies and she gives 50% of her income away. She even works on AI because she abstractly believes it’s the most important cause, even though it doesn’t really emotionally connect with her the way that global health does. (Or maybe she works on animal rights for principled reasons even though she emotionally dislikes animals, or she works on global health even though she finds AI more fascinating; you can pick whichever version feels more challenging to you.) 

Bob is interested in Effective Altruism, but Alice honestly makes him a little nervous. He feels he has some sort of moral obligation to make the world better, but he likes to hope that he’s fulfilled that obligation by giving 10% of his income as a well-paid software dev, because he doesn’t really want to have to give up his Netflix-watching weekends. Thinking about AI makes him feel scared and overwhelmed, so he mostly donates to AMF even though he’s vaguely aware that AI might be more important to him. (Or maybe he donates to AI because he feels it’s fascinating, even though he thinks rationally global health might have more positive impact or more evidence behind it - or he gives to animal rights because animals are cute. Up to you.) 

Alice: You know, Bob, you claim to really care about improving the world, but you don’t seem to donate as much as you could or to use your time very effectively. Maybe you should donate that money rather than getting takeout tonight? 

Bob: Wow, Alice. It’s none of your business what I do with my own money; that’s rude. 

Alice: I think the negative impact of my rudeness is probably smaller than the potential positive impact of getting you to act in line with the values you claim to have. 

Bob: That doesn’t even seem true. If everyone is rude like you, then the Effective Altruism movement will get a bad reputation, and fewer people will be willing to join. What if I get so upset by your rudeness that I decide not to donate at all?

Alice: That kind of seems like a you problem, not a me problem. 

Bob: You’re the one who is being rude.

Alice: I mean, you claim to actually seriously agree with the whole Drowning Child thing. If you would avoid doing any good at all, purely because someone was rude to you, then I think you were probably lying about being convinced of Effective Altruism in the first place, and if you’re lying then it’s my business. 

Bob: I’m not lying; I’m just arguing why you shouldn’t say those things in the abstract, to arbitrary people, who could respond badly. Sure, maybe they shouldn’t respond badly, but you can’t force everyone to be rational.

Alice: But I’m not going out and saying this to some abstract arbitrary person. Why shouldn’t you, personally, work harder and donate more? 

Bob: I’m protecting my mental health by ensuring that I only commit an amount of money and time which is sustainable for me. 

Alice: So you believe that good will actually be maximised by donating exactly the amount of money that will give you warm fuzzies, and no more, and volunteering exactly the amount of time that makes you happy, and no more? 

Bob: Absolutely. If I tried to donate more time or money, I’d burn out. Then I’d do even less good. Under this view, I’m actually obligated not to donate any more than I do!

Alice: You’re morally obligated to take the actions that happen to make you maximally happy?  Wow, that seems like a really convenient coincidence for you, and that seems like a great reason to really challenge that belief. Isn’t it possible that you could be slightly inconvenienced without significantly increasing your risk of burning out, or that you could do a significant amount more good while only increasing your burn-out risk by an acceptably small amount? 

Bob: Who says I’m maximally happy? I’d probably be happier if I gave 0% to charity and bought a faster car, but I’m giving 10%! Nobody is perfect, and 10% is good enough. Surely you should go and criticise some of the people who are giving 0%? 

Alice: I criticise them plenty, and that doesn’t mean that I can’t also criticise you; that seems like a deflection. Nobody’s perfect, but some people are coming closer than others. I can’t really define whether you’re maximally happy, but I assume you would feel some guilt about donating 0%, or you’d miss out on some warm fuzzies, or you’d miss out on the various social benefits of being part of the community. 

Bob: No, I donate 10% because I want to help others and I genuinely care about positive impact, and ethical obligations, and utilitarian considerations. I just set a lower standard. 

Alice: Regardless, I don’t think any of this really addresses my criticism. Donating 10% is perfectly consistent with being a total egoist who just happens to enjoy the warm fuzzies of donating some money to charity. But humans aren’t reflectively consistent, and I think if you were an actual utilitarian, you would probably believe that the ethical amount to give is higher than the amount you inherently personally want to give. 

Bob: Sure, if there was a button which magically made me more ethical, and caused me to want to donate 30%, then I’d probably press it because I believe that’s the right thing to do. But the magical button doesn’t exist. I currently want to donate 10%, and I can’t make myself want to donate 30% any more than I can change my natural talents.

Alice: So your claim is that it’s okay to be lazy, or selfish, or hypocritical, because you can’t make yourself be any less of those things?

Bob: No, you’re just being rude again. I’m not lazy about doing my fair share of the dishes. I just think that, when it comes to allocating resources to altruism, you’ll burn out if you push yourself to do more good than you’re naturally inclined to. 

Alice: I think if this was your true objection - your crux - then you would have probably put a lot of work in to understand burnout. Some of the hardest-working people have done that work - and never burned out. Instead, you seem to treat it like a magical worst possible outcome, which provides a universal excuse to never do anything that you don’t want to do. How good a model do you have of what causes burnout? (I notice that many people think vacations treat burnout, which is probably a sign they haven’t looked at the research.) Surely there’s not a black-and-white system where working slightly too hard will instantly disable you forever; maybe there’s a third option where you do more but you also take some anti-burnout precaution.. If I really believed I couldn’t do more without risking burnout, and that was the most important factor preventing me from fulfilling my deeply held ethical beliefs, I think I would have a complex model of what sorts of risk factors create what sort of probability of burnout, and whether there’s different kinds of burnout or different severity levels, and what I could do to guard against it. 

Bob: Well, maybe that’s true. I definitely don’t want to work any harder than I currently do, so I guess I’d be motivated to believe that I’ll burn out if I do, and that could bias my thinking. But it’s still dangerous and rude to go around spouting this kind of rhetoric, because some people might have a lot of scrupulosity, and they could be really harmed by being told they’re bad people unless they work harder. 

Alice: Seems like a fake justification. I’m sure some people should reverse any advice they hear, but I’m currently talking to you and I don’t think you have scrupulosity issues.

Bob: Even assuming I don’t have scrupulosity issues, if I overworked myself, I’d be setting a bad example to people who do have scrupulosity issues. I’d be contributing to bad social norms. 

Alice: Weird, you don’t seem to think that I’m contributing to bad social norms by existing. Actually I think I’m a good role model for everyone else. 

Bob: You’re really arrogant.

Alice: This conversation isn’t about my flaws, and also, I don’t think humility is always a virtue. For instance, you’re humble about how much you can realistically achieve, but since you haven’t really tested the question, I think it’s a vice. I actually think my mental health is pretty good, and the work that I do contributes to my positive mental health; I have a sense of purpose, a sense of camaraderie with other people in the community, I don’t really deal with any guilt because I genuinely think I’m doing the most I can do, and I like it when people look up to me.

Bob: Okay, but I can’t become you. I can only act in accordance with whatever values I really have. I wouldn’t feel really good all the time if I worked hard like you. I’d just be miserable and burn out. I can’t change fundamental facts about my motivational system. 

Alice: What if we lived in the least convenient possible world? What if the techniques I use to avoid burnout - like meditating, surrounding myself with people who work similarly hard so that my brain feels it’s normal, eating a really healthy diet, coworking or getting support on tasks that I’m aversive about, practising lots of instrumental rationality techniques, frequently reminding myself that I’m living consistently with my values, avoiding guilt-based motivation, exercising regularly, seeing a therapist proactively to work on my emotional resilience, and all that - would actually completely work for you, and you’d be able to work super hard without burning out at all, and you’d be perfectly capable of changing yourself if you tried? 

Bob: Just because they’d work for me, doesn’t mean they’d work for others. This is a potentially harmful sort of thing to talk about, because some fraction of people will hear this advice and overwork themselves and end up with mental health crises, and some people will think you’re a jerk and leave the movement, and some people will be unable to change themselves and will feel really guilty. 

Alice: How sure are you that this isn’t also true about the opposite advice? Maybe some people work on a forks model rather than a spoons model, so they actually need to do tasks in order to improve their mental health, but they hear advice telling them to take breaks to avoid burnout - so they sit around being miserable, gaming and scrolling social media, wondering when resting is going to start improving their burnout problems, not realising that they aren’t burned out at all and they’d actually feel better if they worked harder and did rejuvenating tasks and got into a success spiral. Maybe some people are put off from the movement because they don’t think we’re hardcore enough, so they go off to do totally ineffective things like being a monk and taking a vow of silence because that feels more hardcore or real. Maybe the belief that you can’t change fundamental facts about yourself is harmful to some people with mental illnesses who feel like they’ll never be able to become happy or productive. In the least convenient possible world, where the advice to rest more is equally harmful to the advice to work harder, and most people should totally view themselves as less fundamentally unchangeable, and the movement would have better PR if we were sterner… would you work harder then? 

Bob: I just kind of don’t really want to work harder. 

Alice: I think we’ve arrived at the core of the problem, yes.

Bob: I don’t know what the point of this conversation was. You haven’t persuaded me to do anything differently, I don’t think you can persuade me to do anything that I don’t want to do, and you’ve kind of just made me feel bad.

Alice: Maybe I’d like you to stop claiming to be a utilitarian, when you’re totally not - you’re just an egoist who happens to have certain tuistic preferences. I might respect you more if you had the integrity to be honest about it. Maybe I think you’re wrong, and there’s some way to persuade you to be better, and I just haven’t found it yet. (Growth mindset!) Maybe I want an epistemic community that helps me with my reasoning, and calls me out when I’m engaging in bias or motivated stopping, which means I want the kinds of things I’m saying here to be normal and okay to say - otherwise people won’t say them to me. Maybe I just notice that when people make type-1 errors in the working-too-hard-and-burning-out direction they usually get the reassurance they need from the community, and when people make errors in the type-2 not-working-hard-enough direction they don’t really get the callouts they need because it’s considered rude, and I’m just pushing in the direction of editing that social norm. Maybe I’d like you to be honest about this because I’d like to surround myself with a community of people who share my values, so I’d like to be able to filter out people like you - no offence, we can still be friends, it’s just that I feel like I’d find it easier to be motivated and consistent if my brain wasn’t constantly looking at you and reminding me that I totally could have a cushy life like yours if I just stopped living my values.  

Bob: Wait, are you claiming that I’m harming you, just by existing in your vague vicinity and not doing the maximum amount of good? 

Alice: No, not really, maybe I’m just claiming that we have competing access needs. I mean, I don’t really know what the correct solution is. Maybe the Effective Altruist movement should accept people like you because they’re a big tent and they’re friendly and welcoming, but the rationalist community should be elitist and only accept people who say tsuyoku naritai - there’s a reason this is on LessWrong and not the EA forum. Maybe I’m in the minority and my needs aren’t realistically going to be met, in which case I will shrug and carry on trying to do the best that I can. Or maybe thinking about the potential positive impact on me is just the push you need to be better yourself. Maybe I don’t think you’re harming me, exactly, I just think you’re being rude - and maybe that makes it okay for me to be a little rude, too. 

Bob: I want to tap out of this conversation now.