This post is motivated by Joey’s post on ‘Empirical data on value drift’ and some of the comments.

Introduction

“And Harry remembered what Professor Quirrell had said beneath the starlight: Sometimes, when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder whether there might be some other place, far away, where I should have been…



And Harry couldn’t understand Professor Quirrell’s words, it might have been an alien that had spoken, (...) something built along such different lines from Harry that his brain couldn’t be forced to operate in that mode. You couldn’t leave your home planet while it still contained a place like Azkaban. You had to stay and fight.”



– Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality



I use the terms value drift and lifestyle drift in a broad sense to mean internal or external changes leading you to lose most of the expected altruistic value of your life.

Value drift is internal; it describes changes to your value system or motivation.

Lifestyle drift is external; the term captures changes in your life circumstances leading to difficulties implementing your values.

Internally, value drift could occur by ceasing to see helping others as one of your life’s priorities (losing the ‘A’ in EA), or loosing the motivation to work on the highest-priority cause areas or interventions (losing the ‘E’ in EA). Externally, lifestyle drift could occur (as described in Joey's post) by giving up a substantial fraction of your effectively altruistic resources for non-effectively altruistic purposes, thus reducing your capacity to do good. Concretely, this could involve deciding to spend a lot of money on buying a (larger) house, having a (fancier) wedding, traveling around the world (more frequently or expensively), etc.

Of course, changing your cause area or intervention to something that is equally or more effective within the EA framework does not count as value drift. Note that even if your future self were to decide to leave the EA community, as long as you still see ‘helping others effectively’ as one of your top-priorities in life it might not constitute value drift. You don’t need to call yourself an EA to have a large impact. But I am convinced that EA as a community helps many members uphold their motivation for doing the most good.

Why this is important for altruists

There is a difference between the potential altruistic value and the expected altruistic value you may achieve over the course of your lifetime. Risks of value or lifestyle drift may make you lose most of the expected altruistic value of your life, thus preventing you from realizing a large fraction of your potential altruistic value.

Most of the potential altruistic value of EAs lies in the medium- to long-term, when more and more people in the community take up highly effective career paths and build their professional expertise to reach their ‘peak productivity’ (likely in their 40s). However, if value and lifestyle drift are common, most of an EA's expected altruistic value lies in the short- to medium-term; the reason being, that many of the people currently active in the community will cease to be interested in doing the most good long before they reach their peak productivity.

This is why, speaking for myself, losing my altruistic motivation or giving up a large fraction of my altruistic resources in the future would equal a small moral tragedy to my present self. I think that as EAs we can reasonably have a preference for our future selves not to abandon our fundamental commitment to altruism or effectiveness.

What you can do to reduce risks of value drift and lifestyle drift:

Caveat: the following suggestions are all very tentative and largely based on my intuition of what I think will help me avoid value drift; please take them with a large grain of salt. I acknowledge that other people function differently in some respects, that some of the suggestions below will not have beneficial effects for many people and could even be harmful for some. Also keep in mind that some of the suggestions might involve trade-offs with other goals. A toy example to illustrate the point: it might turn out that getting an EA tattoo is a great commitment mechanism, however it could conflict with the goal (among others) to spend your limited weirdness points wisely and might have negative effects on how EA is perceived by people around you. Please reflect carefully on your personal situation before adopting any of the following.

What EA organisations can do to deal with value and lifestyle drift:

Encourage norms of considerateness, friendliness and welcomingness within the EA community, which is beneficial in its own right but also helps keep motivational levels of community members high.

of considerateness, friendliness and welcomingness within the EA community, which is beneficial in its own right but also helps keep motivational levels of community members high. Conduct further research on causes of value and lifestyle drift and how to avoid them. An obvious starting point is researching the EA ‘reference class’, i.e. looking at the value drift experiences of other social movements. I acknowledge that many EA organisations have already spent significant efforts on similar research projects (e.g. Open Philanthropy Project, Sentience Institute). In particular, there might be ways for Rethink Charity to expand the EA survey to gather more rigorous data on value drift (selection effects are obviously problematic – the people whose values drifted the most will likely not participate in the survey).

An obvious starting point is researching the EA ‘reference class’, i.e. looking at the value drift experiences of other social movements. I acknowledge that many EA organisations have already spent significant efforts on similar research projects (e.g. Open Philanthropy Project, Sentience Institute). In particular, there might be ways for Rethink Charity to expand the EA survey to gather more rigorous data on value drift (selection effects are obviously problematic – the people whose values drifted the most will likely not participate in the survey). Continue to support and expand opportunities for community members to surround themselves with other great people , e.g. by organising EAG(x) conferences and EA retreats, supporting local chapters and creating friendly and welcoming online communities (such as this forum or EA Facebook groups).

, e.g. by organising EAG(x) conferences and EA retreats, supporting local chapters and creating friendly and welcoming online communities (such as this forum or EA Facebook groups). Incorporate the findings of research on value drift into EA career advice, especially when recommending careers whose value will only be realized decades in the future. Rob Wiblin already indicated that 80,000 Hours considers incorporating this into their discussion of discount rates.

I would highly appreciate your suggestions for concrete ways to reduce risks of value drift in the comments.

I warmly thank the following people for providing me with their input, suggestions and comments to this post: Joey Savoie, Pascal Zimmer, Greg Lewis, Jasper Götting, Aidan Goth, James Aung, Ed Lawrence, Linh Chi Nguyen, Huw Thomas, Tillman Schenk, Alex Norman, Charlie Rogers-Smith.

[Edit, May 2019: Updated my definition of value and lifestyle drift above + added a section on why I believe this topic ought to be a priority for altruists]