I’ve become convinced that an important attribute to cultivate for those who want to do good in the world is a certain type of ruthlessness. By this I don’t mean a willingness to engage in means justify the ends reasoning. I mean just actually doing the right thing and fuck everything else.
There’s something very valuable about a willingness to decide very explicitly on your goals and then structure your life in pursuit of them. When you make substantial decisions, that decision is based on what your goals are in life.
One way in which I was guilty of not being ruthless was differentially trying to find flaws in the arguments for existential risk and particularly AI safety being the most important thing. It’s personally uncomfortable for me to think that AI safety is the most important thing because it would mean my skill set is less valuable compared to if something else like global health was the most important thing. It would also mean potentially having to change my plans and do something weird like AI safety community building. This is a failure of ruthlessness - the goal is to help as many people as much as possible and damn the consequences.
I’m currently in the process of applying for positions as a predoc researcher. I worry this is also a failure of ruthlessness. Doing an econ predoc would be fun and high status and put me on a path to top 20 econ phd. But I haven’t opened up a google doc and actually gone through what I think the theory of change for doing an econ predoc is and this makes me suspect that I’m not ruthlessly pursuing my core goal.
I think another personal failure of ruthlessness is wanting my reasoning and actions to be justifiable to someone who doesn’t share my beliefs, particularly when they come from the left wing communities that I’m a part of. I think this leads me to make worse decisions with my donations where I’m not prioritising just doing the most important thing. I think potentially this also means that I should donate less money. Currently I’m planning on donating everything above some threshold in the low to mid 20k (pounds) but it’s plausible that it would have a higher impact for me to donate less. This is an uncomfortable thing to do because it implies that I think that I’m somehow special - that I can have more money than I think is morally acceptable for most people in rich countries because it means I have a higher impact. It feels like the antithesis of morality. This is also a failure of ruthlessness. If I think it will help more people if I have more money I should do it because I don’t care about how moral my actions feel to me. What I care about is actually helping people.
I think the examples I’ve given are common failure modes: not actually investigating an idea because if it were true it would have unpleasant implications; going after some job which is plausible good but also happens to be a default path; taking actions that don’t conform to the aesthetic or moral action that you’ve delivered. Fuck that. Do the right thing and be ruthless about it.
I assume you read this https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T975ydo3mx8onH3iS/ea-is-about-maximization-and-maximization-is-perilous which is an interesting partial counterpoint, I agree with Arden's top comment though that being more radical/ruthless/maximising is directionally good for most people.
Seems right