This post was originally the debut of my Selfish Effective Altruist series, published on the 6th July 2019. I thought that this topic was a good way to start the series, since I've been in this scenario before and made the act of giving money to beggars on the street.

The bigger idea of this post however, is to shed light on Effective Altruism to people who don't really know much or anything about the movement. I myself wrote this when I was starting to take the movement more seriously, with my opinion on the movement graduating from a weird existential crisis in the back of my head to a more fleshed out philosophy with some greater meaning. Looking back, the tone of this post was more humorous than the later posts in this series, where the humour was far more subtle. It makes me realize that maybe I should put a more humorous tone to my posts, let me know what you think.

Mistakes and clarifications

• I should have made this post more about a speculative question than an explicit answer. The evidence is a bit scattered around this topic, and I am a bit conflicted about what I would do - some EAs give to beggars on the street, some don't.
• I should have mentioned that sometimes beggars target younger people - who are under 18 and probably don't have jobs (at best, probably a part-time supermarket job), rather than people who have decent earning full-time jobs, which may raise suspicion a bit.
• I shouldn't have put giving money/food to beggars on the streets in a completely bad light, buying/giving a homeless person a snack you wouldn't miss is still a good deed - although it's still more efficient to give money to a charity that may help with these issues.
• In general, don't take any of this to heart - but please do criticize this post, I'm happy to hear disagreeing opinions.

Okay, enough clarification - on to the post!

Hello there!

Preface

Most may have gone into a situation where you see a sad person on the street who is seemingly poor. They may have a sleeping bag, some food from the local 'Sainsburys' or 'Tesco' and a hat, flipped over with some coins inside. Some may feel some pity for them and give them enough to buy a freddo... or two. Others tend to just pass by as if that stranger did not exist at all. Whether or not this is a good idea is quite a debatable matter. Schools tend to encourage people to give to poor people in assemblies and tutor times. My high school/sixth form was a church of England school so clearly they would share the story of the 'good Samaritan'. If you don't know the story of it, watch this video.
I have always been a bit skeptical about the story, since I usually just walk past beggars (as the title suggests). This isn't because of the story itself, I think the story presents a very charitable deed, but rather the application of the story. Not all beggars are like the one in the 'good Samaritan'.

Shady strangers

I remember a few years ago, on my way to one of the sessions in the art class I was in, I stumbled across a sad-looking woman. She seemed to have been pregnant and she begged me for money because she seemed poor. I had a £20 on me. When I lied to her that I didn't have money she asked me to use the cash machine, I told her that I didn't have a bank card and then she asked me to check my wallet, when I lied about that, she asked me about the cash machine again. I ended up in a catch-22 for what felt like an eternity, which eventually annoyed me. I eventually decided to give her the £20 note because I felt bad for her and she thanked me with incredible happiness. If you thought this conundrum ended here, she had a sister who also begged me for money.

She was far more suspicious because she didn't seem like she was pregnant and she begged me for money even though I gave the £20 I had to her sister (which looking back, is a complete mystery why she didn't share that £20). She annoyed me even more than the last one and I even shouted at her that I didn't have any money, but she just kept on begging. She eventually stopped begging and went off. I was in a bad mood and had slightly more to fear when coming to the outside world, I didn't attend the class on that day. In retrospect, the latter action was a bit of an immature move on my part.

This wasn't the last time I would see such people. I encountered another one months later. Over time I've just learned to lie and ignore them, I wouldn't recommend lying in most other scenarios, but just to protect yourself from potential thieves, lying may be the most sensible course of action.

With that being said, I have several reasons why I wouldn't really help these kinds of people.

Firstly, I have no idea who they are or what they work as. This makes me very weary of who I give my money to, even though the pregnant woman in question was pregnant - nowadays I wouldn't give £20 let alone £50 to these kinds of people. They might spend it on drugs or even if they were going to spend it on something good, it's most likely not going to help them long-term. £50 probably won't pay the rent for one month, even if you live in a studio apartment. Though, it might help you pay for a months worth of basic food, if you are lucky. Sometimes I give a poor person a chocolate bar or a water bottle I won't miss, in fact that would be a better option than giving them any money.

Secondly, I'm only helping one or two people which is nothing considered the fact that the world's population is over 7 billion, and this number will only go up as time goes on. Furthermore I think there would be negative consequences if I donated my money to just one person, they might rely on me to constantly give them money and become a leech. They should know that I'm not someone who makes £90,000 a year let alone is Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos (the latter of which being the richest man in the world). I wonder why some beggars pick on young people who probably don't have any jobs (like me at the time), rather than a rich-looking 45 year old with a suit. Maybe the 45 year old knows that these people are just leeches, whereas a young person are easy to sympathize with therefore can be fooled into giving money to them.

Quite suspicious, huh?

However, I have learned a way to have a much larger impact and not have to go through that terrible episode.

Effective altruism

Over a year ago, I started reading blogs from a non-profit organization called 80,000 hours. The name is based on how many working hours the average person has in their lifetime. Quite a name indeed. The blog's advice, although at first was a bit demoralizing, has some of the best career advice I've ever heard. If you want to know about the organization, here's a TED talk by Benjamin Todd, the founder of said organization. As well as very thoughtfully debunking the idea that "Follow your passion" is good advice for having a good career, it also emphasizes on how much impact you can make as an altruist.

80,000 hours got a lot of coverage in the news back in their early days due to the fact they encouraged "earning to give". Basically, you get into a high earning career and donate a certain fraction of your income to an effective organization that is low on funding - examples of achieving this could include finance, software engineering or consulting. I can see why they got a huge amount of coverage, when many think of making a difference in the world, they think that being a doctor is the way to do it. I too was enamored when I learned that an individual doctor has a very modest impact on society and earning to give was higher impact than an individual doctor's efforts.

Linking this with my example of the beggars, I'd be better off donating a consistent amount of money to effective charities that can help people like those 2 strangers I mentioned earlier (and much more than just 2) rather than random people I can't really help directly in the long run (although arguably some EAs' don't really mind giving money or a drink they wouldn't miss to people on the street). It's also a better use of that £20 and I can console myself that I would have helped more skilled people save more lives than if  I gave the same amount of money to each poor person on the street. Although giving food I could donate money to a soup kitchen to hire several cooks to feed a larger share of the population.

With that being said, 80,000 hours recommend that only a small number of people should earn to give in the long run, since the world's most pressing problems are far more talent constrained (as in specific skills needed to solve the problem) than funding constrained.

What do I mean by pressing problems? What I mean are problems that could have a devastating long-term impact on humanity, they're often not the first things you would hear, like improving education. Things like AI, biotechnology and developing nuclear weapons could have devastating long-term effects on humanity if they were to go haywire. AI could be negatively influenced and possibly exterminate us all, biotechnology could release horrible diseases which could kill billions. Therefore these are far more pressing problems which are far less funded or worked on compared to funding in something like global warming or cancer research (though they are quite pressing too).

Conclusion

The reason I wouldn't give money to people on the street is that I would make a rather modest impact and it would even be negative in some ways. Instead I think it would be far more wise to give money to organizations that can help a larger amount of people or better yet do more direct work for the organizations if you have the needed career capital/skills. Because being an effective altruist isn't about doing good, it is about doing good on a much larger scale than one might think.

If this blog piques your interest in reading about effective altruism or 80,000 hours, you can start to read their key ideas. Although I do think their career guide is also pretty good, it's quite outdated as their ideas have changed since then, so you should read it in conjunction with their key ideas.

I'm hoping to write more on the subject area of effective altruism, because it has really made me think about what to do with my own future.

I'm far more ardent about this kind of lifestyle than the conventional one of going through education, obtaining a fancy degree, getting a 'good' job, working hard, earning lots of money to buy a large house, two cars and support a family that will in turn most likely do the same thing. Actually I was never really into that average lifestyle to begin with. Being an effective altruist (or just an altruist in general)has also been shown throughout millennia to deeply satisfy people on a personal level - a life committed to helping others.
The next blog I write in this series will be on future generations, because I found out that they were more important than I thought. Until then...

That's all from me!