show me your role models who have directly improved the world

This somewhat related to mainanence and operations and how credit/respect is apportioned, but often the people doing the work are lower level employees who aren't famous or well-known. They aren't necessarily acknowledged at an annual organizational celebration, or in the local media. As an example, we might think that Rob Mather is great for founding/running the Against Malaria Foundation, but we don't know the names of the people who manufactured or delivered those anti-malaria bednets.

But here are some examples of people that I sort of, vaguely ^[1] consider moral role models:

• There is a guy in Oakland, California who goes by PengWeather online, and he cleans up trash in his free time. From an EA perspective we could certainly criticize his actions by claiming that they aren't effective, and that it might be better for the world if he instead donated $20 a week for a high-impact cause area. But I take inspiration from his initiative: he saw a problem, nobody was doing anything about it, so he decided to take action and make things better. People in EA talk about agency a lot, but it is rare that I see somebody doing things on their own.
• Esther Duflo. She is somewhat of a celebrity among people who care about development economics, but she is also a doer. She (and the teams of people she worked with) discovered what was an wasn't effective in a variety of situations, improving the popularity and visibility of using randomized control trials for economic field research.
• Jeff Kaufman. I've never met him, but he chose to earn to give, and boy did he give! He has a blog, and he posts on the EA forum as well.

1. ^{^}

   Generally I don't really have role models. I've seen enough people express good traits and bad traits that I try to focus on specific behaviors/actions rather than on people as a whole. Think of all the people who work in virtuous fields/vocations who are also real assholes.

   For example, Jeff Kaufman seems like a great guy from what I've read. But imagine that he has really bad emotional regulation, or he is really rude to strangers, or he isn't considerate to others, or he is a compulsive liar. If any of those things were true, that wouldn't change the fact that his earning to give is admirable. I try to not boil people down to a simple god/bad judgement, and instead look at people as a collection of their actions.

the suggested role models are all thinkers rather than doers

At least some of the people listed are either doers, or are a sort of combination of thinkers and doers. I'm do view these people mostly as thinkers, but I also have a sort of bias in that I didn't know about Hans Rosling in the 80s or about Paul Farmers work in the 90s. These people have done much more than simply give talks and write blog posts; they have also done things to directly improve the world.

Some of the people on the list

• Changed their careers in order to generate more donations for the global poor (Holden Karnofsky)
• Founded/created/ran organizations (William MacAskill)
• Volunteered at a hospital in Haiti (Paul Farmer)
• Counselled and provided guidance/advice to many, many people (Julia Wise)
• Studied the outbreak of disease across multiple African countries and worked for Sweden's International Development Agency (Hans Rosling)

The suggested role models was to start the discussion and sharing of role models. Yes, role models can be doers, thinkers, or both and they all have influence to people especially on values. Since values are in words, thoughts and actions, it would be great to know also more EA doers.

"Thinker" vs "Doer" gets pretty fuzzy: "changing laws" certainly involves a lot of thinking, as do ~all of the highest-impact things you might be considering "directly improving the world". I especially have trouble seeing how you could classify Farmer's work in Haiti as something other than an attempt to directly improve the world.

But riffing on your "not just the people who have told others that they should", and emphasizing the "that", perhaps the line is whether someone's primary work has been persuading other people to be more altruistic and/or effective? In which case I'd probably put MacAskill, Ord and Singer, and Rosling as "Thinkers" and Karnofsky, Wise, and Farmer as "Doers". But several of the folks in the "Thinker" category still did substantial "Doer" work (Rosling's hands-on public health work in Africa, MacAskill's co-founding 80k, Ord's cause prioritization, Singer's political advocacy and donations).

I loved meeting Nick at EAG! I knew he worked on public health in Uganda, but we also chatted about choices he and his wife have made to better fit in with their local community, like spending at a level comparable to the better-off of their Ugandan neighbors rather than more typical expat levels. His energy and positivity wowed me.

Thanks for the mention, Nick! I appreciate your contributions, and pushback on some of my points too.

Agreed that idolatry is unhelpful. *And* I don't think having role models is inherently/always harmful, as long as we remember that everyone is fallible.

Both posts are great, especially in conversation with each other.

This is true, we also had some people who shared that attending EAGx helped them to see clearer other cause areas, especially what is being done by local organizations in the region. We just started with some known leaders, but it will be great to know the local leaders, and we believe they bring great value as big-name leaders.