Paul Nung: Embracing EA

A huge part of EA is dedicated towards teaching people how to properly donate and what cause areas are best to donate to. Not only is it efficient but it’s also a lot more convenient for people to dedicate their money rather than time or careers towards pressing issues. While EAforChristians does a great job explaining how EA can act as the mechanism to carry out Christian ideals of serving others, one issue I personally struggled with was on how to donate as someone who is both a Christian and an effective altruist. This was because of a certain Christian belief called Tithing. Tithing is where christians donate 10% of our income to support the church in representation of prioritizing god and trusting in his abundance. Not only did this align with my religious beliefs but I also admired the missionary work and unique propensity of our Chin Church to help my Chin people (persecuted ethnic group in Myanmar that I belong to). Because of certain cultural factors I believed donating to church was the most effective way to donate, and something I also couldn’t give up for religious reasons. However, readings such as Peter Singer's “One World Now” taught me the error in caring only about my “own kind” and the importance of fighting against impartiality. Furthermore, when looking into other charities and their efficiency rates, I realized there were alternatives that from an EA standpoint would be more optimal to donate to. The solution I came up with was to donate to both the church and my favorite EA charities in a 50/50 manner while also applying my career field into one of the cause areas of Artificial Intelligence. I was already looking into a career in technology and was interested in Cybersecurity which would be revolutionized by advancements made in AI. After learning about the importance of AI policy to regulate the potential side effects of innovation on the working class people, I decided to incorporate EA in my life through my career. 

Everyone has their own unique biases and obstacles that prevent them from adopting what they know is morally correct. There may be certain cause areas you simply don’t resonate with enough and certain ones that you have a personal reason for supporting. As Nate Soares says in On Caring, “Courage isn't about being fearless; it's about being able to do the right thing even if you're afraid.” In other words, the important thing is not how passionate we are about certain causes but that we continue to make efforts to address the issues we don’t care as much about. Despite the scarcity of resources, this doesn’t always have to mean giving up local charities for EA charities. But utilizing compromises in order to not just “do good better” but to do what is sustainable and good for your mental health. Instead of constantly having moral dilemmas trying to deny human nature, taking small steps that are statistically proven to be an improvement is a much more realistic application of EA. An example of this in a different cause area would be to refrain from eating certain animals that are disproportionately harmed by animal cruelty if you struggle with complete veganism like I do. EA is not all about being emotionless and it doesn’t pretend that knowledge or awareness of our biases automatically translates to fixing them. Instead EA focuses on learning to deal with these biases rooted in factors like religion and community in order to help increase the amount of good we can do for the world in the most effective way possible. 

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Paul Nung is a sophomore at the University of Texas At Dallas. He is studying Information Technology Systems and is passionate about AI security and singing.