Yeah tbh I feel Reddit is an echochamber so its effectively useless.
Tbh, Im mainly afraid of talking about it publicly on say social media because I feel like it would have bigger ramifications in my personal life. First, I don’t want to make it my whole personality (kind of like I see people that make veganism or some sort of partisan politics their whole channel and personality) but second I feel it can be kind of uncomfortable in terms of consequences. In particular, I genuinely feel like EA would have more traction if it distanced itself from the concept of pledging 10% because most people I feel like donate between $30-50$ per month not like thousands of dollars in a year.
I haven’t donated in a while though since Im starting and building my career but I feel like once Ive saved up, I might start donating more (though I don’t think 10% will ever be a good idea), and once I do that I might start talking about it if and only if I feel enthusiastic about it and not feel like I am obligated to do so.
Thank you for telling me its not a moral obligation.
I guess I will continue to not really feel obligated to talk about either topic (regarding EA or veganism).
I guess I may talk about it later on among my immediate circle if and only if I ever feel enthusiastic about it and never feel obligated to do it.
However, I especially won’t be talking about EA because I feel hypocritical because I haven’t donated in a while (last donation was months ago, I donated like 10% of three biweekly paychecks before stopping). I won’t donate for a while since Im just starting my career and think it is a rather bad idea to already start donating large sums of money I should be saving.
Somewhat unrelated, but I feel the main blocker for attracting more EAs is not really just outreach (I mean sure its advertising is sparse) but I kind of feel it should feel more welcoming (like its ads on Instagram talk about 10% pledge and I feel like 99% of people will be turned off by the idea of donating 10%. Tbh, I don’t even think most Christians donate 10% even though the whole 10% pledge is inspired by the concept of tithing).
Yeah but I guess even though its a contradictory concept I guess theres a distinction between paid advertisements vs retweeting things because I feel advertisements may actually have some influence while retweeting or discussing about EA can feel like tiring slacktivism that brings 0 results other than wasting time and energy.
First of all, I fully agree with your third point that it feels incredibly draining to talk about (3).
Second, I totally get your point on number 2 that there are enough people conducting research and that there is plenty of supply and there isn't a necessity for others to conduct research (although a sufficient amount should research to prevent it from being heavily swayed by a few people).
Third, I can't help but feel like there must be some sort of big difference between a charity publicly advertising things vs. a person publicly advertising for free. I feel like for a charity advertising, there are proven metrics that must prove that it generates more money from the charity than it consumes for advertising. To be honest, I do dislike the fact that charities have to use money on non-directly related matters to aid, but it makes sense that sometimes you have to burn money to make more to get aid (at the end of the day, a charity that uses all money for direct aid but has no publicity is effectively useless. Similarly, a charity that hardly directs money to direct aid for like but instead uses 70% of its funding it on stupid bureaucratic stuff is also pretty useless). However, in the scope of a person spreading it on social media, I feel like there is a very your mileage may vary type of scenario. From my personal experience, I don't think anybody in my social media would care about either veganism or effective altruism. Like to be honest, without giving too much personal information, I am still relatively new to my career and so are most of my friends. I do see on Facebook posts etc to donate to this charity for my birthday which I think is a Facebook feature but I can see that literally nobody donates to those posts. I have been recently liking posts regarding Giving What We Can on Instagram and initially I did it thinking that it could lead to more awareness to my Instagram friends especially if I decided to only like those posts and no other posts, but I can't help but feel like I'm ruining my own feed for an ultimately futile effort. In particular, one thing I notice about EA posts on Instagram and I am guessing other social media is it seems to have a low like rate. I can't help but feel like the whole 10% pledge (especially the way some advertisements talk about it as if its some sort of easy thing to do for everyone) especially turns off people from EA making it feel like some sort of cult or something. To be honest, I have been recently seeing more Giving What We Can sponsored ads on Instagram and I can't help but wonder if its money well spent or of its being wasted (I get the importance of advertisements but can't help but feel most people won't care). Truthfully, I think most people are usually distrustful towards things like EA and veganism because it definitely in some ways doesn't really feel natural for a person to care so much about things that don't directly impact them to the point that people find it suspicious. In general, I used to donate like 10% of my income to EA charities but my parents found out and completely disapproved and since I am just starting my career I decided to pause for now but like I definitely don't want to advertise something I am not even doing and I really don't think reposting and retweeting something within my local community regarding EA would really make a difference. Same, regarding vegans, at best I think most people don't care if some one is a vegan or not and wouldn't care about changing their eating habits. At worst, people will be more so turned off from associating with those people. Admittedly, I live in the Bay Area where I feel compared to the other places in the United States people would be much more tolerant towards concepts like EA and especially veganism. But I can't help but feel that dedicating time and energy to spread awareness on social media regarding EA will feel like a waste of time kind of like I am talking to a brick wall. I honestly feel like I would have more success being a Jehova's Witness instead (this is said as kind of a joke, but I am being kind of serious that neither would be particularly popular among the people I associate with).
One of the reasons I am asking this question is because I feel like there is a gigantic move to be very public regarding donations (not because humbleness is a vice but because some people believe it can influence others to donate as well). I heard some people even put the orange diamond emoji in their social media bios or what not (which I feel kind of stupid because 99% of normal people will have no idea its EA related and think its just another unnecessary emoji in a bio). I don't know but spending time and energy talking about EA in social media almost feels as futile as say talking about BLM : https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/
Its like just like some people don't like talking about politics or religion, I don't feel like talking about said topics in fear of making it seem like I'm asking others to convert to my philosophy or something like that.
I can't help but wonder if one can argue its ethically sufficient to just donate and participate in EA type activities like veganism without being really open and public about those topics. I don't want to turn my entire social media feed into being an advertising center for those two topics.
Also, looking at so many ads regarding Giving What We Can, I can't help but wonder if its generating more money than its spending.
But at the same time, I can't help but feel curious that I am neglecting a serious moral obligation or something. In an ideal world where the conversation rate was large, I could make a much larger impact converting others to EA than being a single donor. However, I don't think I live in such an ideal world or at least among those I associate with.
The boycott of Nestlé isn’t solely an individual action; there are others who also avoid Nestlé, Amazon, and similar companies. That said, these efforts remain relatively small in scale and don’t constitute a large, coordinated movement.
I skimmed through the website, and I’m not entirely sure how they’re calculating the dollar amounts. The comparisons also seem somewhat subjective, and some of the proposed impacts (e.g., creating more plant-based meat options) don’t obviously translate into measurable reductions in meat consumption.
I’m also not sure what they mean by this statement:
“We don’t actually think you should donate less to something because it’s more effective.”
Hi, thanks again for the detailed reply — I really appreciate the clarity. I’m finding it genuinely eye-opening that many issues I assumed were morally significant turn out to matter far less in practice once scale and impact are properly quantified. I think I was heavily influenced by various online movements that are very loud and visible, so it confused me that EA rarely foregrounded topics like slave labor in chocolate or Coca-Cola’s water practices, despite covering other global issues such as malaria.
One thing I do want to clarify is that there are ethical chocolate companies using fair-trade, non–child-labor supply chains, so it’s not that “all chocolate must be boycotted,” but rather that many major brands have problematic sourcing. Still, your calculations make it clear that a solo boycott makes essentially no difference to the working hours or conditions of any child laborer, and similarly an individual boycott won’t meaningfully affect things like water extraction by Coca-Cola in Africa or India.
I am also not sure what you mean regarding your calculations about buying a child's freedom for $9 per hour and also the whole valuing your own hour by $20-30. I mean to be honest from a consequentialist perspective there isn't a difference between personally doing harm or letting harm to continue but in this case you aren't I guess buying a child's freedom you are just not forcing them to work an additional hour if that reframing makes sense. Kinda like veganism doesn't save lives its just not about killing additional lives. To put it quite simply, by refusing to by slave labor chocolate you are not really helping people you are just not hurting them (and buying the chocolate leads to harm).
On the broader question of morally permissible actions, I’ve been strongly shaped by this Aeon article (“Why it is better not to aim at being morally perfect”). I agree that doing genuine moral good matters, but being a 10/10 moral saint is neither realistic nor psychologically healthy. That’s why I find Schelling points useful — for example, the 10% pledge. Without Schelling points, it feels like the only consistent utilitarian answer would be to live extremely frugally and donate almost everything. So my original question was really about which actions rise to the level of meaningful Schelling points. It seems that many things that online activists frame as huge moral imperatives (boycotting certain products, etc.) actually have very small expected impact and thus probably don’t qualify.
On veganism: I’ve been extremely strict (even avoiding foods with small amounts of egg or dairy, even while traveling), but seeing that roughly 75% of the EA Forum isn’t vegan does make me wonder whether relaxing a bit would still be morally acceptable. At the same time, I’m not fully comfortable with an attitude of “it’s fine to cause some harm as long as I donate to GiveWell later,” since that can be used to rationalize almost anything (e.g., “I’ll do X harmful thing like murder a man and offset it with $5k to AMF”). I understand the logic in small, low-impact cases, but taken broadly it seems like a slippery ethical framing.
A (slightly personal) question: do you think one could argue that you might actually have more impact as an aerospace engineer donating 10% of your income than by doing local EA organization work? I imagine it depends heavily on the quality of the contributions and the kinds of community-building work being done, but I’m curious how you think about that tradeoff.
Regarding longtermism: I’ll admit I’m somewhat biased. I’ve absorbed a lot of the “nothing ever happens” attitude, so doomsday scenarios often feel exaggerated to me. But setting that aside, I can acknowledge that global catastrophic risks like nuclear conflict, pandemics, and climate instability are real and non-zero. We literally just lived through a pandemic. My concern is that nearly all meaningful action in these areas ultimately seems to run through political institutions. Research can help, but if political leaders are uninformed or uninterested, the marginal value of EA research feels limited. That sense might also be influenced by my experience with college ethics classes — AI ethics, especially, often felt detached from real-world levers.
Realistically, it seems like the most impactful thing an individual can do for x-risk at the moment is vote for politicians who take these issues seriously, but politicians who are aware of (or influenced by) effective altruism seem rare.
Finally, several of the replies have made me think about the prisoner’s dilemma dynamic underlying many collective-action problems. With things like chocolate, it seems like individual action is (almost) negligible. Veganism is different because the per-unit harm is much larger. But I’m curious how EA generally thinks about prisoner’s dilemmas in areas like climate change, voting, or even the Donation Election. Why should I vote in the Donation Election if my individual vote is almost certainly not decisive? Or more broadly, when do extremely low-probability marginal contributions still matter?
Thanks again — the discussion has been really helpful in clarifying what actually matters versus what merely feels morally salient.
To clarify my position, I am fairly confident that the consumption of chocolate produced through slave labor follows a straightforward supply-and-demand pattern: increased consumer demand leads to increased production, which in turn requires additional exploited laborers. In the same way, it is commonly stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola sources this water from communities already facing scarcity, then purchasing a two-liter bottle could be understood as indirectly contributing to the extraction of four liters of water from a community that may urgently need it.
With that in mind, I am interested in whether there are other common, everyday behaviors—analogous to veganism or the examples above—where an individual’s consumption reliably results in a direct negative impact. If so, are these harms measurable in any meaningful way? And if they are not easily quantifiable, should we treat them as negligible or morally permissible in order to avoid the implication that one must adopt an ascetic lifestyle simply to remain ethically consistent?
When I referred to boycotting Nestlé and Coca-Cola, my primary focus was on the basic dynamics of supply and demand. If consumers continue to purchase chocolate produced with slave labor, increased demand will logically require more exploited laborers and more total labor to meet that demand. The underlying principle seems similar to the reasoning behind veganism: purchasing animal products contributes, at least marginally, to the continued production of those products. Please correct me if I am mistaken in drawing this parallel. Likewise, it is often stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola’s operations reduce water availability in communities that already struggle with access, it seems reasonable to ask whether consumers bear some indirect responsibility—e.g., if a person buys a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, does that effectively correspond to four liters of water extracted from a community that may have needed it for agriculture or drinking?
However, I am interested in your view on which kinds of actions should be considered morally permissible and which should be regarded as morally obligatory. I do not believe we should, as some critiques phrase it, adopt “the life goals of dead people” and simply attempt to avoid all entanglement with harm, yet I also find it notable that issues such as widespread contempt for Nestlé or the extensive discussions about ethical and fair-trade chocolate seem largely overlooked in this forum. This is surprising given how readily veganism is embraced. I am not attempting to diminish the moral weight of animal suffering, but I do sometimes worry that it is invoked in a way that unintentionally marginalizes concerns about human suffering.
I also find it striking that, according to the statistics shared, a substantial portion of the EA community is neither vegetarian nor vegan. This raises questions about the criteria by which individuals consider themselves part of the effective altruism movement, although I recognize there are no strict requirements or definitive rules—ultimately, many of these norms function more like Schelling points, such as the commonly referenced 10% donation pledge.
I am unsure what to think, as I often encounter conflicting information online. Given the rapid pace of technological advancement, I am also concerned that the environmental impact of AI may increase over time. In particular, image and video generation appear to require significantly more computational resources than text generation. If these modalities become more widely used in the future, especially at large scale, AI systems may have a substantially greater environmental footprint.
Additionally, it is worth noting that Grok may differ from other AI models in this regard, as Elon Musk has made several decisions about its development and deployment that appear environmentally questionable in ways other companies have generally avoided.
When I mentioned Nestlé, my point was that the situation is somewhat analogous to veganism. For example, if someone buys chocolate produced with slave labor, that purchase contributes to supply and demand: the more such chocolate is bought, the more of it is produced. Veganism follows a similar logic—purchasing animal products signals demand, which leads to more animals being raised and slaughtered in their place. So individual consumption choices can, at least in theory, causally contribute to additional harm.
To be honest, I feel like you focused on the weaker examples I gave, such as Nestlé’s role in the California drought or Coca-Cola’s operations in Israel. There are stronger, more morally serious concerns, such as the documented use of child and slave labor in parts of the chocolate industry. Financially supporting that industry seems likely to increase its operations, total output, and ultimately the number of exploited laborers and total suffering. Similarly, Coca-Cola has faced major controversies over water extraction in Africa and previously in India, where communities experienced significant harm from overuse of local water resources. These situations suggest that reducing demand for specific products may indeed reduce the scale of the associated harm, even if boycotts alone are not enough to produce systemic change. I agree that boycotts rarely succeed in transforming entire industries unless large numbers of people participate, but even small reductions in demand might still correlate with smaller harms—just as veganism does not end factory farming but may marginally reduce the total number of animals killed. So while I understand concerns about “purity culture,” I think the issue is more complex: some personal choices do have real, non-negligible downstream consequences for suffering.
That said, I am genuinely curious about what you consider to fall within the realm of morally permissible personal actions. In my original post, I emphasized that I want to preserve as much personal freedom as possible without completely violating moral obligations. But I’m unsure where the line should be drawn. What counts as negligible harm, and what counts as morally relevant? With something like slave labor in the chocolate supply chain, the impact of an individual purchase is very hard to quantify. How does one even begin to calculate that impact with any precision?
Finally, I remain quite skeptical of the heavy emphasis on “longtermism.” I’m not denying that nuclear war, pandemics, or other existential risks are important, but these seem like issues far beyond the influence of any individual person. They are mainly the domain of governments, policymakers, and international institutions, and addressing them relies on trusting political systems rather than individual actions. By contrast, donating to save kids from malaria or starvation has clear, measurable, immediate effects on saving lives. If I donate money to Gaza, I know my money is being used to put food on the table for innocent kids. I don't exactly know what my money is being used on for AI academic "research". My concern is that focusing on very low-probability, extremely high-stakes scenarios resembles a classic problem in consequentialism: when potential outcomes are enormous enough, even a tiny probability can outweigh more certain but smaller benefits. It’s like the thought experiment of a cult leader claiming the world will end unless we sacrifice one person. Even if there is a 99.99% chance he is lying, the small remaining probability—if taken seriously—would mathematically “justify” the sacrifice, even though this conclusion feels deeply counterintuitive. Longtermism can sometimes seem to rely on similar logic, where speculative future catastrophes overshadow clearly identifiable present-day suffering.
Yeah tbh I feel Reddit is an echochamber so its effectively useless.
Tbh, Im mainly afraid of talking about it publicly on say social media because I feel like it would have bigger ramifications in my personal life. First, I don’t want to make it my whole personality (kind of like I see people that make veganism or some sort of partisan politics their whole channel and personality) but second I feel it can be kind of uncomfortable in terms of consequences. In particular, I genuinely feel like EA would have more traction if it distanced itself from the concept of pledging 10% because most people I feel like donate between $30-50$ per month not like thousands of dollars in a year.
I haven’t donated in a while though since Im starting and building my career but I feel like once Ive saved up, I might start donating more (though I don’t think 10% will ever be a good idea), and once I do that I might start talking about it if and only if I feel enthusiastic about it and not feel like I am obligated to do so.
Thank you for telling me its not a moral obligation.
Hi, thanks for the comment.
I guess I will continue to not really feel obligated to talk about either topic (regarding EA or veganism).
I guess I may talk about it later on among my immediate circle if and only if I ever feel enthusiastic about it and never feel obligated to do it.
However, I especially won’t be talking about EA because I feel hypocritical because I haven’t donated in a while (last donation was months ago, I donated like 10% of three biweekly paychecks before stopping). I won’t donate for a while since Im just starting my career and think it is a rather bad idea to already start donating large sums of money I should be saving.
Somewhat unrelated, but I feel the main blocker for attracting more EAs is not really just outreach (I mean sure its advertising is sparse) but I kind of feel it should feel more welcoming (like its ads on Instagram talk about 10% pledge and I feel like 99% of people will be turned off by the idea of donating 10%. Tbh, I don’t even think most Christians donate 10% even though the whole 10% pledge is inspired by the concept of tithing).
Yeah but I guess even though its a contradictory concept I guess theres a distinction between paid advertisements vs retweeting things because I feel advertisements may actually have some influence while retweeting or discussing about EA can feel like tiring slacktivism that brings 0 results other than wasting time and energy.
Thank you for the discussion.
Hi, thanks for the response.
First of all, I fully agree with your third point that it feels incredibly draining to talk about (3).
Second, I totally get your point on number 2 that there are enough people conducting research and that there is plenty of supply and there isn't a necessity for others to conduct research (although a sufficient amount should research to prevent it from being heavily swayed by a few people).
Third, I can't help but feel like there must be some sort of big difference between a charity publicly advertising things vs. a person publicly advertising for free. I feel like for a charity advertising, there are proven metrics that must prove that it generates more money from the charity than it consumes for advertising. To be honest, I do dislike the fact that charities have to use money on non-directly related matters to aid, but it makes sense that sometimes you have to burn money to make more to get aid (at the end of the day, a charity that uses all money for direct aid but has no publicity is effectively useless. Similarly, a charity that hardly directs money to direct aid for like but instead uses 70% of its funding it on stupid bureaucratic stuff is also pretty useless). However, in the scope of a person spreading it on social media, I feel like there is a very your mileage may vary type of scenario. From my personal experience, I don't think anybody in my social media would care about either veganism or effective altruism. Like to be honest, without giving too much personal information, I am still relatively new to my career and so are most of my friends. I do see on Facebook posts etc to donate to this charity for my birthday which I think is a Facebook feature but I can see that literally nobody donates to those posts. I have been recently liking posts regarding Giving What We Can on Instagram and initially I did it thinking that it could lead to more awareness to my Instagram friends especially if I decided to only like those posts and no other posts, but I can't help but feel like I'm ruining my own feed for an ultimately futile effort. In particular, one thing I notice about EA posts on Instagram and I am guessing other social media is it seems to have a low like rate. I can't help but feel like the whole 10% pledge (especially the way some advertisements talk about it as if its some sort of easy thing to do for everyone) especially turns off people from EA making it feel like some sort of cult or something. To be honest, I have been recently seeing more Giving What We Can sponsored ads on Instagram and I can't help but wonder if its money well spent or of its being wasted (I get the importance of advertisements but can't help but feel most people won't care). Truthfully, I think most people are usually distrustful towards things like EA and veganism because it definitely in some ways doesn't really feel natural for a person to care so much about things that don't directly impact them to the point that people find it suspicious. In general, I used to donate like 10% of my income to EA charities but my parents found out and completely disapproved and since I am just starting my career I decided to pause for now but like I definitely don't want to advertise something I am not even doing and I really don't think reposting and retweeting something within my local community regarding EA would really make a difference. Same, regarding vegans, at best I think most people don't care if some one is a vegan or not and wouldn't care about changing their eating habits. At worst, people will be more so turned off from associating with those people. Admittedly, I live in the Bay Area where I feel compared to the other places in the United States people would be much more tolerant towards concepts like EA and especially veganism. But I can't help but feel that dedicating time and energy to spread awareness on social media regarding EA will feel like a waste of time kind of like I am talking to a brick wall. I honestly feel like I would have more success being a Jehova's Witness instead (this is said as kind of a joke, but I am being kind of serious that neither would be particularly popular among the people I associate with).
One of the reasons I am asking this question is because I feel like there is a gigantic move to be very public regarding donations (not because humbleness is a vice but because some people believe it can influence others to donate as well). I heard some people even put the orange diamond emoji in their social media bios or what not (which I feel kind of stupid because 99% of normal people will have no idea its EA related and think its just another unnecessary emoji in a bio). I don't know but spending time and energy talking about EA in social media almost feels as futile as say talking about BLM : https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/
Its like just like some people don't like talking about politics or religion, I don't feel like talking about said topics in fear of making it seem like I'm asking others to convert to my philosophy or something like that.
I can't help but wonder if one can argue its ethically sufficient to just donate and participate in EA type activities like veganism without being really open and public about those topics. I don't want to turn my entire social media feed into being an advertising center for those two topics.
Also, looking at so many ads regarding Giving What We Can, I can't help but wonder if its generating more money than its spending.
But at the same time, I can't help but feel curious that I am neglecting a serious moral obligation or something. In an ideal world where the conversation rate was large, I could make a much larger impact converting others to EA than being a single donor. However, I don't think I live in such an ideal world or at least among those I associate with.
Sorry for the long rant.
Thanks!
The boycott of Nestlé isn’t solely an individual action; there are others who also avoid Nestlé, Amazon, and similar companies. That said, these efforts remain relatively small in scale and don’t constitute a large, coordinated movement.
I skimmed through the website, and I’m not entirely sure how they’re calculating the dollar amounts. The comparisons also seem somewhat subjective, and some of the proposed impacts (e.g., creating more plant-based meat options) don’t obviously translate into measurable reductions in meat consumption.
I’m also not sure what they mean by this statement:
“We don’t actually think you should donate less to something because it’s more effective.”
Hi, thanks again for the detailed reply — I really appreciate the clarity. I’m finding it genuinely eye-opening that many issues I assumed were morally significant turn out to matter far less in practice once scale and impact are properly quantified. I think I was heavily influenced by various online movements that are very loud and visible, so it confused me that EA rarely foregrounded topics like slave labor in chocolate or Coca-Cola’s water practices, despite covering other global issues such as malaria.
One thing I do want to clarify is that there are ethical chocolate companies using fair-trade, non–child-labor supply chains, so it’s not that “all chocolate must be boycotted,” but rather that many major brands have problematic sourcing. Still, your calculations make it clear that a solo boycott makes essentially no difference to the working hours or conditions of any child laborer, and similarly an individual boycott won’t meaningfully affect things like water extraction by Coca-Cola in Africa or India.
I am also not sure what you mean regarding your calculations about buying a child's freedom for $9 per hour and also the whole valuing your own hour by $20-30. I mean to be honest from a consequentialist perspective there isn't a difference between personally doing harm or letting harm to continue but in this case you aren't I guess buying a child's freedom you are just not forcing them to work an additional hour if that reframing makes sense. Kinda like veganism doesn't save lives its just not about killing additional lives. To put it quite simply, by refusing to by slave labor chocolate you are not really helping people you are just not hurting them (and buying the chocolate leads to harm).
On the broader question of morally permissible actions, I’ve been strongly shaped by this Aeon article (“Why it is better not to aim at being morally perfect”). I agree that doing genuine moral good matters, but being a 10/10 moral saint is neither realistic nor psychologically healthy. That’s why I find Schelling points useful — for example, the 10% pledge. Without Schelling points, it feels like the only consistent utilitarian answer would be to live extremely frugally and donate almost everything. So my original question was really about which actions rise to the level of meaningful Schelling points. It seems that many things that online activists frame as huge moral imperatives (boycotting certain products, etc.) actually have very small expected impact and thus probably don’t qualify.
On veganism: I’ve been extremely strict (even avoiding foods with small amounts of egg or dairy, even while traveling), but seeing that roughly 75% of the EA Forum isn’t vegan does make me wonder whether relaxing a bit would still be morally acceptable. At the same time, I’m not fully comfortable with an attitude of “it’s fine to cause some harm as long as I donate to GiveWell later,” since that can be used to rationalize almost anything (e.g., “I’ll do X harmful thing like murder a man and offset it with $5k to AMF”). I understand the logic in small, low-impact cases, but taken broadly it seems like a slippery ethical framing.
A (slightly personal) question: do you think one could argue that you might actually have more impact as an aerospace engineer donating 10% of your income than by doing local EA organization work? I imagine it depends heavily on the quality of the contributions and the kinds of community-building work being done, but I’m curious how you think about that tradeoff.
Regarding longtermism: I’ll admit I’m somewhat biased. I’ve absorbed a lot of the “nothing ever happens” attitude, so doomsday scenarios often feel exaggerated to me. But setting that aside, I can acknowledge that global catastrophic risks like nuclear conflict, pandemics, and climate instability are real and non-zero. We literally just lived through a pandemic. My concern is that nearly all meaningful action in these areas ultimately seems to run through political institutions. Research can help, but if political leaders are uninformed or uninterested, the marginal value of EA research feels limited. That sense might also be influenced by my experience with college ethics classes — AI ethics, especially, often felt detached from real-world levers.
Realistically, it seems like the most impactful thing an individual can do for x-risk at the moment is vote for politicians who take these issues seriously, but politicians who are aware of (or influenced by) effective altruism seem rare.
Finally, several of the replies have made me think about the prisoner’s dilemma dynamic underlying many collective-action problems. With things like chocolate, it seems like individual action is (almost) negligible. Veganism is different because the per-unit harm is much larger. But I’m curious how EA generally thinks about prisoner’s dilemmas in areas like climate change, voting, or even the Donation Election. Why should I vote in the Donation Election if my individual vote is almost certainly not decisive? Or more broadly, when do extremely low-probability marginal contributions still matter?
Thanks again — the discussion has been really helpful in clarifying what actually matters versus what merely feels morally salient.
To clarify my position, I am fairly confident that the consumption of chocolate produced through slave labor follows a straightforward supply-and-demand pattern: increased consumer demand leads to increased production, which in turn requires additional exploited laborers. In the same way, it is commonly stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola sources this water from communities already facing scarcity, then purchasing a two-liter bottle could be understood as indirectly contributing to the extraction of four liters of water from a community that may urgently need it.
With that in mind, I am interested in whether there are other common, everyday behaviors—analogous to veganism or the examples above—where an individual’s consumption reliably results in a direct negative impact. If so, are these harms measurable in any meaningful way? And if they are not easily quantifiable, should we treat them as negligible or morally permissible in order to avoid the implication that one must adopt an ascetic lifestyle simply to remain ethically consistent?
When I referred to boycotting Nestlé and Coca-Cola, my primary focus was on the basic dynamics of supply and demand. If consumers continue to purchase chocolate produced with slave labor, increased demand will logically require more exploited laborers and more total labor to meet that demand. The underlying principle seems similar to the reasoning behind veganism: purchasing animal products contributes, at least marginally, to the continued production of those products. Please correct me if I am mistaken in drawing this parallel. Likewise, it is often stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola’s operations reduce water availability in communities that already struggle with access, it seems reasonable to ask whether consumers bear some indirect responsibility—e.g., if a person buys a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, does that effectively correspond to four liters of water extracted from a community that may have needed it for agriculture or drinking?
However, I am interested in your view on which kinds of actions should be considered morally permissible and which should be regarded as morally obligatory. I do not believe we should, as some critiques phrase it, adopt “the life goals of dead people” and simply attempt to avoid all entanglement with harm, yet I also find it notable that issues such as widespread contempt for Nestlé or the extensive discussions about ethical and fair-trade chocolate seem largely overlooked in this forum. This is surprising given how readily veganism is embraced. I am not attempting to diminish the moral weight of animal suffering, but I do sometimes worry that it is invoked in a way that unintentionally marginalizes concerns about human suffering.
I also find it striking that, according to the statistics shared, a substantial portion of the EA community is neither vegetarian nor vegan. This raises questions about the criteria by which individuals consider themselves part of the effective altruism movement, although I recognize there are no strict requirements or definitive rules—ultimately, many of these norms function more like Schelling points, such as the commonly referenced 10% donation pledge.
I am unsure what to think, as I often encounter conflicting information online. Given the rapid pace of technological advancement, I am also concerned that the environmental impact of AI may increase over time. In particular, image and video generation appear to require significantly more computational resources than text generation. If these modalities become more widely used in the future, especially at large scale, AI systems may have a substantially greater environmental footprint.
Additionally, it is worth noting that Grok may differ from other AI models in this regard, as Elon Musk has made several decisions about its development and deployment that appear environmentally questionable in ways other companies have generally avoided.
When I mentioned Nestlé, my point was that the situation is somewhat analogous to veganism. For example, if someone buys chocolate produced with slave labor, that purchase contributes to supply and demand: the more such chocolate is bought, the more of it is produced. Veganism follows a similar logic—purchasing animal products signals demand, which leads to more animals being raised and slaughtered in their place. So individual consumption choices can, at least in theory, causally contribute to additional harm.
To be honest, I feel like you focused on the weaker examples I gave, such as Nestlé’s role in the California drought or Coca-Cola’s operations in Israel. There are stronger, more morally serious concerns, such as the documented use of child and slave labor in parts of the chocolate industry. Financially supporting that industry seems likely to increase its operations, total output, and ultimately the number of exploited laborers and total suffering. Similarly, Coca-Cola has faced major controversies over water extraction in Africa and previously in India, where communities experienced significant harm from overuse of local water resources. These situations suggest that reducing demand for specific products may indeed reduce the scale of the associated harm, even if boycotts alone are not enough to produce systemic change. I agree that boycotts rarely succeed in transforming entire industries unless large numbers of people participate, but even small reductions in demand might still correlate with smaller harms—just as veganism does not end factory farming but may marginally reduce the total number of animals killed. So while I understand concerns about “purity culture,” I think the issue is more complex: some personal choices do have real, non-negligible downstream consequences for suffering.
That said, I am genuinely curious about what you consider to fall within the realm of morally permissible personal actions. In my original post, I emphasized that I want to preserve as much personal freedom as possible without completely violating moral obligations. But I’m unsure where the line should be drawn. What counts as negligible harm, and what counts as morally relevant? With something like slave labor in the chocolate supply chain, the impact of an individual purchase is very hard to quantify. How does one even begin to calculate that impact with any precision?
Finally, I remain quite skeptical of the heavy emphasis on “longtermism.” I’m not denying that nuclear war, pandemics, or other existential risks are important, but these seem like issues far beyond the influence of any individual person. They are mainly the domain of governments, policymakers, and international institutions, and addressing them relies on trusting political systems rather than individual actions. By contrast, donating to save kids from malaria or starvation has clear, measurable, immediate effects on saving lives. If I donate money to Gaza, I know my money is being used to put food on the table for innocent kids. I don't exactly know what my money is being used on for AI academic "research". My concern is that focusing on very low-probability, extremely high-stakes scenarios resembles a classic problem in consequentialism: when potential outcomes are enormous enough, even a tiny probability can outweigh more certain but smaller benefits. It’s like the thought experiment of a cult leader claiming the world will end unless we sacrifice one person. Even if there is a 99.99% chance he is lying, the small remaining probability—if taken seriously—would mathematically “justify” the sacrifice, even though this conclusion feels deeply counterintuitive. Longtermism can sometimes seem to rely on similar logic, where speculative future catastrophes overshadow clearly identifiable present-day suffering.