
“Critique: There are not enough “realistic” topics in EA” by jackchang110
From EA Forum Podcast (All audio) by EA Forum Team
June 10, 2026 · 4 min
About this episode
The episode critiques the lack of realistic topics in effective altruism discussions, focusing on career strategies and the comparison between earning to give and direct work.
Statement: I'm far from an EA or AI expert, these are all opinions from an 19 years old EA laypeople (which may be biased or owefully wrong). Welcome to give me any critique in the comments(rather than just downvoting me). I think compared to the abstract philosophical problems(which of course are useful), there are far not enough discussions on the EA Forum of some relaistic topics, for example: 1.Compare earn to give vs direct work This is one of the most important topic(war) in EA, but very few try to calculate it. And a lot of people can't explain the reason well why they hold the opinion"Even for an avergae people, doing direct work is better than earn to give 50 thousand dollars-100 thousand dollars a year". Some people thinks that there are some PR 90+ talented people that are unfunded. In this case, unless you're better than these people, you should do earn to give 50 thousand dollars-100 thousand dollars, I'm not saying this claim is right, but if this holds true, this would dramtically change people strategy on career planning. Yet, very few posts compare EtG vs direct work. 2.The limitations of nationality and the importance of [...] --- First published: June 10th…
People in this episode
Guest: jackchang110
Topics covered
- effective altruism
- career planning
- earn to give
- direct work
- realistic topics
- philosophical problems
Keywords
- effective altruism
- EA Forum
- earn to give
- direct work
- career planning
- realistic topics
- philosophical problems
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: EA Forum
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