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Well, in the end, do you want to avoid feeling weird, or to help people? Both of those are valid desires, but they don't always go together. Sometimes you can find something that does both and that's great, but not everyone can.

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Describing non-alienation as “feeling good” (as another commenter did) or “not feeling weird” is a great way to pathologize my observation of how weird it is to work a six-figure, ad/surveillance-optimizing job at Google in order for there to be more malaria nets in Africa. Trust me: I don’t believe that EA is sound in any way (or “effective”, if you like), but in this thread I chose to focus on just one aspect of it, indeed its most bizarre feature, which apparently isn’t bizarre at all to all of the Soylent-drinking life-optimizers out there, so my point has been like, as they say, seeds on barren ground.

Sorry, I was using your own terms from the post I replied to. I didn't mean to sound patronizing (well, only a little bit :)). My point stands though: "non-alienation" and "actually helping" are orthogonal. But not usually treated as such.

You have a point about working in a net-negative occupations. You might be doing more harm over all.

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