EA - How my thinking about doing good changed over the years by Quadratic Reciprocity

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How my thinking about doing good changed over the years, published by Quadratic Reciprocity on December 18, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is a Draft Amnesty Day draft. That means it’s not polished, it’s probably not up to my standards, the ideas are not thought out, and I haven’t checked everything. I was explicitly encouraged to post something unfinished! Commenting and feedback guidelines: I’m going with the default — please be nice. But constructive feedback is appreciated; please let me know what you think is wrong. Feedback on the structure of the post is also appreciated.I first came across effective altruism as a teenager a few years ago, and the core idea instantly clicked for me after reading one post about it. In this post, I will talk about some ways in which my thinking around doing good has evolved over the years as a young person with a strong interest in making the world better.The emotions I feel when thinking about others’ suffering are less intense. I don’t know if teenage-me would have predicted this. As a child, I remember crying a lot when watching videos on animal suffering, when I first confronted the idea of infinite hell I was depressed for an entire summer, I wanted to give all the money I received on my birthday to people who were less fortunate because I knew they needed it more.I think the change is partly from just getting used to it. The first time you confront the horrors of factory farming it is awful but by the hundredth time, it’s hard for my brain to naturally feel the same powerful emotions of sadness and anger. Partly, the change is from starting to believe that it isn’t actually that virtuous to feel strong emotions at others’ suffering. Some of that is from having been in the effective altruism community, where it is easy to feel that what matters are the results of what you do and not the emotions behind what you do. I still feel strong emotions of empathy for those who are suffering some of the time when I am feeling particularly introspective and emotional.However, and this is because of being in the effective altruism community, I am much more aware of my own ranking of what the biggest problems are and it is harder for me to direct a lot of empathy towards causes that feel less “big” compared to factory farming, extreme poverty, and existential risk - even though, in absolute terms, the suffering of people living in terrible conditions in rich countries is still massive.At the same time, my ability to live according to my values has increased. I haven’t eaten meat in a couple of years whereas as a child and young teenager, this was really difficult for me to do even though I really wanted to be vegetarian. I have more tools now to do what I think is right, and the biggest of them all is having a social community where there are others who take their beliefs seriously and try to do good.I am much less willing to try to hack my brain in order to force myself to do and feel things I endorse. I used to be much more ashamed of some of my feelings and actions and felt a strong desire to figure out how to trick my brain into being more willing to sacrifice myself for others, into working all the time and being more ambitious. This involved doing things adjacent to self-deception. This was a really bad idea and caused me lots of pain and frustration.Instead, the thing that worked for me is acknowledging that I have “selfish” desires, that sometimes I take actions that actively hurt others, and that I have things that I deeply care about besides just maximising the good. Having a better picture of myself and what I actually value allowed me to work with the “altruist” and “selfish” sides of me to do things like be able to enjoy spending money and time on things that make me happy without feeling guilty and then ...