Confessions of Max: My Experience Joining Effective Altruism
This post was initially formatted for WordPress. Read the original here.
I hate endings. I hate goodbyes. Perhaps this is why this essay is over ten thousand words long.
There is so much I want to say.
This is a long and unwieldy piece of writing, where thoughts and feelings repeat themselves over and over again. This is an essay I filled with contradictions. This is an essay about my life, presented in the stupidest way possible, all so I can barely answer the question of how I joined Effective Altruism.
This will get fairly personal, because I am unable to not overshare on the internet, so if you’d rather not spend far too much time reading about my experiences in middle school, or prefer a concise and possibly higher transfer of information, just go read my response to Frances Lorenz asking a similar question on Twitter.
I wrote and reread and edited this essay dozens of times. When I started I wanted to cry because I hated myself so much. I still do. But I have also wanted to cry while writing this because of how hopeful, how excited, how full of love and life I feel. I can’t properly convey any of the emotions I felt while creating this, but I still wanted to try anyway.
I wrote this because I want to be seen. I wrote this because I want to be accepted. For years I have viewed these two desires as fundamentally incompatible. To see me would mean seeing the monster that lurks beneath my stick figure veneer. This is an essay about how deeply, truly, fundamentally, I hate myself. This is an essay about my journey to EA. This is an essay about feeling powerless. This is an essay about feeling immense hope in spite of that.
This is an essay about me.
We have to start somewhere, so why not here?
I have not talked about any of this, ever. I truly and fundamentally fear that if I told anyone these things they'd see me for who I am. I deeply, deeply, hate myself, and I'm terrified, abjectly, of the day everything comes crumbling down and everyone sees me for what and for who I am.
So I’m going to publish it all on the internet. Wait-
I’ve already written about my anxiety around change and personal identity, but I’m still going to spend thousands of words explaining who I was. Part of the reason is that, in spite of no longer being the past versions of me, I am what rose from what was. And, despite all my fear around dying, especially when dying means waking up a new person, I am still remarkably similar to who I was. There is a throughline of traits across my life that let me hold my continuity of self, even if I think it may be philosophically dubious.
So, consistent trait number one, I am closed off. I’ve always been a private person, or at least impressively incapable of communication (especially for someone who seems to be quite charismatic in other ways). When my dad would pick me up from daycare, I remember him asking me, “How was your day? What did you do?”
I would always respond with, “nothing.”
“You’re telling me you sat in a closet all day and stared at the wall?” my dad would ask.
This is largely how I am still. Someone asks me about my day, what happened, the things I did or felt, and my entire body tenses up. I become totally incapable of sharing. Maybe you don’t believe me, you’re in the middle of reading a ten thousand word essay filled with super personal details. I don’t know why I can talk so cavalierly about this stuff, but I can’t just share what I spent the last 8 hours doing. I don’t know why I can talk about my first love breaking up with me, or how much I hate myself, but I can’t share if I was stressed or excited during class. I just can’t find the strength to push through this wall that stops me back from sharing such things.
Trait number two, I have an active imagination. I can almost instantaneously meld into the stories I create. I once described it as ‘seeing past’ whatever was in front of me. I might be staring out a car window but above me in the clouds an armada of ships fight. I might be walking home from school, but beneath my feet automatons used metal claws to carve into the earth, harvesting rock and ore to build more of themselves. I could be somewhere else at any time.
I’ve loved legos for this reason, and my parents were kind and tried to treat me as best they could, so I had a lot of legos. I got to make my stories real, manifest them through plastic. Up until I left for college, and very recently again, I would play with legos. I could build out the reality of my mind.
But it also makes me feel like I’m trapped in my own mind. I don’t know how to reach out, I don’t know how to ask for help, I’m stuck in the world of my own making. I want to escape, I want to breach the surface and finally gasp for air, but I just feel like I’m drowning in my own sense of self, this false reality dragging me down to the depths below.
Trait number three …I, uh, ran out of traits. Though I do still have my first stuffed animal with me and I need a third thing, so I guess that’s another trait now. He’s a dog, in a faded red jumper with black buttons, and is bipedal for some reason, with floppy ears. You can shake him, he has a rattle inside his stomach. He isn’t very large, unless perhaps you are an infant, in which case he’s just the right size. When I was six or seven (I’d guess), my grandmother gave me two sweaters for him to wear. The one he’s currently wearing is a muted green with fall leaves outlined in gold thread. It’s a little too big for him, so his arms don’t poke out of the sleeves. His name is Doggy McDog.
The most vulnerable I have ever felt in my life is when I would when I would press my head against his; when I would kiss the top of his head.
When I look at him I can see my past, before I was some kind of monster, and even when I was. I can see my Grandmother, before age made her forgetful. I can see my parent’s bedroom and their old TV. I can see the day I tore the molding off our kitchen while my grandparents watched me, the day of a winter storm, the day my brother was born. I can see the summer and walking to a camp for kids who needed more help reading, held in the building that would one day be my middle school, while my other brother came into the world with the heat of July.
At every moment across time I am me and that me is a different person, distinct and alien from all the rest. I am exploding. I feel like I can’t control who I am or what I am or what is happening to me or my thoughts or any of this. I feel as if I’m so many things all at once, and as if I’m vibrating so fast they all mold into one being. If I were to stop, even for a second, the stand still would tear me apart. And yet I have perfect control over myself. I know who and what I am, and I have forever. This is me. Gold energy swirls around my insides, and I am holding this shell together even as the cracks melt and it all caves in on itself. I am in complete control. And I am exploding.
I suppose this is my third trait, I feel like an oscillation between two states, moving so quickly I am neither. Balanced and imploding, all at once. Held together by will and scotch tape.
I say all this because I am not the same person as the infant screaming on an early spring morning in 2001. I am not the charismatic kid who drew others to himself in pre-k. I am not the reserved child reading on the side of the basketball court, getting hit by stray balls. I am not living the stories I thought up when I was 12, or the fantasies I imagined when I was 16. But I see who these people were and I relate. They passed the torch to one another, and I now hold that flame. So I hold all their triumph, and their sins.
I opened this by talking about how I hate myself, and yet I haven’t said anything worthy of hate. I said all that I have so far for context, because I can still remember entering middle school and suddenly becoming Conscious. Memory fades with time, but I can still sense this transition period of my life.
One day in middle school I woke up and suddenly my body was flooded with hormones. I was angry and rash and confused. My brain became impulsive, and while I very much still am, I can literally feel how much it’s dulled with time. I have any amount of self control now. I suppose this could have been my third trait, though I don’t remember being super impulsive as a child, but these things don’t magically appear for no reason when you become a 7th grader.
While of course my memory is lying to me, I do think I have the general truth down of my experiences, and much of what occurred in middle school would haunt me for almost a decade. I remember showing up on the first day of 8th grade and one of my friends making fun of my weight. Ah the introspective child was dead, and now I got to be a teenager and hate my body. Hate it forever, regardless of how much I weighed.
If I was ever depressed it was during this time. I can recall at least one instance where I thought about throwing myself off a bridge, though sometimes I still think about that and I’m fairly confident I’m not depressed (or suicidal), so perhaps I just have a thing for bridges.
But there was one time that I grabbed a big kitchen knife, and was probably crying, and thought about stabbing myself. The impetuous was truly so stupid, I don’t think I can share it, and that’s saying something given this essay. My youngest brother was there for this, and will sometimes bring up this event, likely because I scared him quite a bit. Not the most fun memory to have brought up every 8 months though.
It’s hard to remember how much I hit my brothers, and when I started. Sadly I didn’t email myself records of this, but I certainly did do it. One day I woke up and became averse to physicality, but that day was not in middle school. I get that this is the sort of thing brothers do to each other. They’re mean and fight, but I don’t think that’s a particularly good excuse. I was a cruel kid, with no regard for the people who loved me.
At a swim team picnic I once cut my brother's thumb open because I kept pressing it into the part of a seltzer can where the tab is punched in. I wasn’t trying to cut him, I think I was just doing it for fun. I don’t really remember what I felt, but I think I was embarrassed because others could see who I was. I suppose, in my defense, this may have been before I went through puberty, so perhaps I was cruel even before hormones flooded my brain.
My brothers idolized me. This is how I returned their admiration.
If you recall I mentioned being impulsive, well, you know those memes about kids getting their parent’s credit cards? All jokes have truth in them. Perhaps I was too smart for my own good, or perhaps my dad should have not used his own name in his paypal password. It’s funny how cavalier this paragraph is, but I guess I lack the language to express how deeply ashamed of this I am, and have been since basically I did it.
How can I possibly use words to express what this makes me feel? I have literally never told another human this. Ever. Still, I doubt you truly get what I’m trying to communicate. Only a few paragraphs in this sea of text dedicated to what I think is the start of my burning desire to rip out my own spinal cord.
I don’t remember how much I spent, but I would guess between $800-$2,000. Only now do I realize I could have saved someone’s life instead of impulsively hitting a dopamine button like a coked up rat. I didn’t know how to stop myself. I would stay up so late playing games on a laptop under my covers I would fall asleep in class. I don’t drink coffee, even as a college student. Falling asleep isn’t really an issue for me; unless I’m only sleeping 3 hours a night, every night.
I do not play any of the games I bought anymore. What a waste of money and neurons. I gave myself mild brain damage for nothing.
I would take money from my parent’s wallet or my brother's piggy banks so I could buy candy. I guess I just valued myself more than everyone else. I didn’t take things because of the thrill, I took them for instrumental reasons. If you don’t think of others, or view them as having needs, it’s easy to see why their money is better spent by you. I’d rather this minuscule gain in dopamine than respect the people in my life.
Perhaps this is why I could hit my brothers. I cared about the feeling it gave me, satisfaction, some sort of outlet, something. I don’t even remember how much I did it, but certainly I did. Some sort of bully who only strikes his family.
I think both my brothers struggle now. I can see anger in my youngest brother, who is entering high school. I can see the struggles of my other sibling, who is entering college, and perhaps doesn’t realize how obvious he is sometimes. I don’t think either of them know how to reach out, and perhaps they are struggling with many of the same things I did in their own unique way. I know our middle sibling fears that most people tolerate him at best, and at worst wish he would leave them alone. I can understand that. Who would want to give their time to me?
There is a very real, and very likely chance, that I have caused serious permanent harm to my brothers. If I have messed them up it is only now that I am even trying to be the sibling I should have been, and I have no idea where to even start. If I sent a cycle of destruction out into the universe, it was for the banal reason of my own greed and disregard for others. Isn’t the oldest supposed to be the model?
No one should be like me.
I remember a spring in middle school where we went to the local University’s open house day, as we did every year. It’s a huge event across many campuses. Activities and food and prizes. I remember walking outside one of the student dining halls, talking to my mom about how I don’t understand why parents and children stick together. Probability and conception events join us, there’s no guarantee that you’ll like each other. Can you imagine your first child saying that to you? I don’t remember if I was mad or if I was just curious about the world. I was suddenly this angry child, and I would fight with my parents. No one seemed to be enjoying this, and it isn’t even rare for families. Why do they stick together? It makes no sense.
I can’t imagine this was a good experience for my Mom. This angry person who had suddenly appeared in the place of the kid who liked to build with blocks. This person who was wreaking havoc everywhere they went, on everything they touched. They ask you why you should care about each other.
My parents are getting older.
I don’t know how to talk to the people I love. Maybe my Mom will die thinking she raised a monster. Raised someone who doesn’t love her. How do I tell her? Maybe everyone I love will die before I figure out how to properly tell them what I feel.
My heart feels like it’s breaking.
It all seems so… trivial now. How could someone hate, so, so, deeply for such stupid reasons? This? This is what fills you with rage? My first girlfriend, who I dated for almost three years. Who was many of my firsts. Who broke my heart. Who cheated on me. I feel no anger towards her. She told me she cheated, and that was the reason she broke up with me, two weeks after she had done it, after she had left me alone and miserable and confused and lost. Left me with no sense of why the person who said they’d one day might marry me had turned cold. No sense of why she acted like a stranger. And I feel no anger towards her, not even in the moment she told me. I worried that something was broken inside me, because I felt so calm and unbothered. All I can feel is this churning firestorm of self loathing.
The only thing I hate is me.
High School
Things did get better, for me that is. Not for anyone else, unless the fact that I eventually stopped hitting people counts.
I believe towards the end of middle school my parents brought me to a therapist. I don’t think it did very much, but perhaps it kept me from getting worse. Really all we ever did was talk about interesting things I’d heard during the week, or my opinions on something like a political event. I enjoy talking to people, and am incredibly extraverted (though perhaps also shy). I would enjoy talking to someone for an hour, but I also had friends. We didn’t talk about me stealing, or me being angry, or feeling unlovable. At least I don’t remember doing so. Eventually I just got too busy with clubs so I stopped going.
In time my hormones evened out and I became controlled enough not to rack up credit card debt. Though I would still take loose money in high school.
I wasn’t angry and possibly depressed or suicidal anymore, so that was good. But it wasn’t like I had reached transcendence either.
Puberty had made me aware of the existence of girls. If you recall, I mentioned hating my body, so I wasn’t particularly confident in my dating prospects. I had become disconnected from my parents, at least more so than I was when I was a kid, so I felt alone and detached from others.
I don’t think my parents quite got the way my brain worked, which is perhaps true for most people (as we’ll get to). My parents didn’t know how to help, and were adults working jobs, so it’s not like they had infinite energy to figure out their exploding child. So as my hormones dimmed, I closed myself off. I didn’t know how to ask for help, or how to express what had or was happening to me, and my parents didn’t know how to help.
So I felt alone and sad. I wanted love and sex, whatever those are, and I thought it impossible for me to get any of these things. I was ugly and fat and gross and even my parents couldn’t understand me and I stole money and-
Everything sounds negative, but I really was in a much much better place. While I might have spent too much time on the internet, scrolling through Facebook or watching video essays, I was, I think, often happy. At least content. In 9th and 10th grade I had lots of friends. In middle school it’s unthinkable to make friends with older kids, but in high school it was easy for me to make new, and sometimes more senior, friends.
I might have felt longing for love or sex, things I didn’t even have a proper conception of, but mostly I just watched youtube and played video games. I liked school and I liked my friends.
At the end of tenth grade I, rather unexpectedly, got a girlfriend. In fact it was a girl I had had a crush on… 3 years earlier. Already painfully got over that one, oh I’m sorry, you’re asking me out? In many ways my love life is a cruel cosmic joke. The last girl I asked out said “uh… maybe?” and then a global pandemic started a week later. Anyways, I dated my ex for nearly 3 years.
I liked her quite a bit, in fact I loved her. But I was also a reserved person, who didn’t know how to talk about their internal states. She was raised by a single mother, and had a lot of trauma in her life, and needed a lot. She was seriously depressed.
I did the best I could, but a 16 year old boy can’t possibly know what to do in these situations. Still, this was a time in my life where I was happy as my default. My self confidence had blossomed. I was intelligent and I had sex, which basically made me a god. I was good at school and didn’t have to work particularly hard. I enjoyed discussing interesting things, and I went to lots of Model UN and DECA conferences and my teachers respected me. I had leadership roles in multiple clubs (though to this day I am still conceptually annoyed that I didn’t get one in our Model UN club, but that story isn’t important here).
Though, again, it is worth pointing out that many of my friends were quite depressed, again, including my partner, and I didn’t know how to help. Imagine a depressed teenage girl, who is very much a theater kid, with a lot of trauma, dating someone with a lot of ‘rationalist’ qualities who doesn’t know how to express internal states. Not… uh, yeah. So I’d wake up with texts from someone miserable, who needed constant attention, and little things could set her into tears. Every day I’d wake up and be the reason someone was suffering. If I didn’t perfectly manage my own emotions, or at least set them to the side, my partner would suffer.
Someone can tell you that they want to hear more about you, your feelings, your worries. But there isn’t a lot of space when little things can make them breakdown. This was true of a lot of the people who were my emotional support system in high school. I was very limited in how I felt I could vent, and often if I wasn’t there for someone no one would be.
I have this sense that I have to be strong for others. You can tell me it isn’t true. You can tell me that we all deserve to be heard and seen. This is true, probably. But for years of my life if I wasn’t capable of crushing my feelings someone would get hurt. No one deserves to cry for hours just because I’m also upset. No one deserves to cut their arms alone at night, just because they hurt me too.
It’s very easy for me to get over something. I can forgive a transgression almost instantly. It’s actually staggering, and a little worrying, how easy it is for me to get over something. I worry I might get trapped in a toxic or abusive relationship if I’m not careful; I think this is a real concern.
But this also means that when I need help I need it now. It doesn’t help me if you’re ready to talk about something 2 weeks from now. I’ve moved on, I’m not bothered anymore. So by necessity and my personality I had to put aside my needs for others.
This probably wasn't optimal for my mental health. It makes me feel angry too, mostly at myself actually. I've given so much of myself away, and still I can't be seen or supported.
What I needed was someone to tell me it was okay, that I was okay. I might have been happy now, and I could have sex, but I still remembered what I was like a few years ago. I felt like a monster. Not often, but sometimes. The biggest thing I needed was someone to tell me I wasn’t the person I actually was, but all people did was reinforce what I already knew. I was the reason people were suffering, I wasn’t fixing it.
When I started dating my ex, her best friend gave me a grave warning, “You don’t want to see what I’ll do to you if you hurt her.” I guess people just viewed me as that sort of person. Someone who breaks others.
I think I resent people for this, in part because I think they’re right, but for the wrong reasons. If you’re going to judge me, at least do it accurately.
Technically this wasn’t high school, but towards the end of 8th grade my school tried a program in English classes called Touchstones. We would read a text, typically philosophy, and then get into a circle to talk. The idea was to encourage kids to learn how to discuss. This is actually where I first read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I don’t remember the specific reading, but at one point we ended up discussing ‘might makes right’. You can’t expect 8th graders to be good at decoupling, but people walked away from this with a particular negative opinion of me. Oh it’s the guy who defended the Nazis.
My dad’s family is Jewish. My grandfather was in the holocaust, almost killed by the Nazis. Of all the reasons to think poorly of me, this is what you picked?
Throughout high school I had this sense that only a few people understood the way my brain worked. Of course we should follow this philosophical rabbit hole. Let's be consistent. Let’s dig deep and approach this as the interesting problem it is. I had friends like this too, but it’s worth mentioning that one of them is now so interested in math they are trying to teach themselves how to do it at social gatherings, because otherwise they would just never hangout with us. My closest friends were teenage boys who were not going to be able to help me feel seen, or okay with the fact my brain worked this way.
Multiple people have described their relationship with me to their friends, and their friends have always doubted whether I should be in anyone’s life. Are you sure he’s your friend? Are you sure he should be your partner?
How dare you. You random people. Do you know who I am? You don’t get to judge me.
How dare you tell my girlfriend she should dump me. How dare you tell her I wasn’t a good boyfriend. Did you sit with a depressed person every. day. for years? Did you talk her out of suicide, even after she broke your heart and told you she had cheated?
You don’t get to hate me. You don’t get to judge me.
Only I do.
And don’t worry, I’m hating me enough for all of us.
Interlude
One of my favorite EA works is “Small and Vulnerable”. We’ll get to why later. I bring this up because there was a line that really resonated with me.
“When I was small and vulnerable I needed help. For the most part, no help came. I was forced to stew in boredom and misery until I grew bigger, stronger, and accorded more respect.”
I feel immense guilt for relating to this line. The author had to deal with a lot. My parents loved me. The problem in my life was me. At every stage of my life people showed me kindness when I didn’t deserve any.
But it is true that when I needed help, I didn’t get any. I had to painfully drag myself into the person I am now. My girlfriend and my friends beat me with negative reinforcement until I became better capable of dealing with them. If I’m kind and compassionate now, it’s only because I talked with clinically depressed and suicidal people every day for 8 years. While I am mad, or jealous, that I felt like I always had to be the person to change, like I was always the problem, I suppose it worked out in the end.
The self love I feel today was hard earned. My partner, my parents, no one knew how to help me, I didn’t know how to ask, and most of them didn’t have the energy to help anyways. I don’t blame my partner for being depressed, and I’m not mad, but it doesn’t change the fact that they weren’t capable of giving me the things I needed.
When she broke up with me (this was technically in college) I think it was the closest I came to being depressed again. She didn’t help me get through it. I spent years helping her, and when I needed her most she wasn’t there. I cried alone.
I've tried so desperately to help the people struggling in my life. Every time I've needed help in turn, consistently, they weren't there for me. I needed you and you weren't there! This too makes me hate myself.
My school was very liberal, in a very 2014 liberal way. I think this too in a way failed me. It’s easy to see a white male in the middle class and see everything that’s wrong with the world. I wanted to see the world as it really was. I was sad and lonely and angry. I was holding back multiple people from self harm. And I was what was wrong with this country?
When I gave, what I still take to be very compelling, reasons not to call myself a feminist I was chastised by my teacher. My classmates could be casually sexist against men, but I was the problem? I would call myself a feminist now, and my beliefs have not changed since high school, so I guess what the fuck. In an important sense I think the feminist program (at least at my school) failed me.
In the same way I hadn’t been cognizant of the needs of others when I stole or hit my brothers, people were completely ignoring me. It wasn’t even a consideration that I might have been suicidal, or insecure, or depressed. AND I WAS THE MONSTER. I was so full of self hatred, and people reinforced it and told me I was worthy of it. And these were the people who were good?
Judge me right for god’s sake! This too makes me angry, and you guessed it, the hate is directed inwards.
I still fear being myself around others. I fear that they’ll see who I am. They’ll see my sins. They’ll see a Nazi. The person who would save five people at the cost of one. Calculating and cruel, with no human emotion. So full of evil and such disregard for the needs of others.
High School Continued
Maybe it doesn’t seem like I was actually happier in high school, but I was. 11th and 12th grade were the start of the transition that made me an EA. I just didn’t know it.
Like I do get that this whole thing has been very down in the dumps, ‘I hate myself deeply yada yada’, but generally, I think, I've lived a pretty fulfilling life. I know earlier I asked “Who would want to give their time to me?” but genuinely I think the answer to this is “a lot of people.” I’m really cool.
It’s hard to tell how much cognitive bias is affecting my views throughout this whole piece, and whether it biases me negatively or positively, but I know for a fact I was happy and have been happy since middle school. As I edit and revise this piece I feel excited, despite feeling horrible when writing the draft. As I’ve said already, I rapidly oscillate between states.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled depressing stuff.
I was an absurdist, in the philosophical sense. If only I looked as cool as Camus. I was surrounded by depressed people who wanted to die. “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” The universe is cold and dark and there is no truth waiting for us. No god. No morality. Nothing.
We can choose to be kind. We can make our own meaning. We can assert ourselves onto reality. I don’t care if god exists. No one deserves to cry alone. I don’t care if morality is real. I will spend my time here with you. In the face of nothing I choose to create life and love and beauty. No one reached their hand out to me when I needed it. People judged me, and I judged myself.
I’m not going to let that stop me from helping the people I care about.
In 11th grade I found the manga My Hero Academia. It might make me a little basic, but it’s one of my favorite series. It’s a story about people struggling deeply to be good people, to be heroes. It’s about people who idolized superheroes, and desperately tried to be like them.
“My body just moved on its own… you looked like you were asking for help.”
It’s a series about people who don’t have any power and still want to help. It’s a series about people who can barely keep moving and still fight for others. It’s a series about bullies who lash out and still are trying to be heroes.
When I was a child, before I knew how to read, my parents would read me Spider-Man comics. I can still remember Curt Connors becoming the Lizard. The original appearance of the Vulture. In high school I rediscovered comics, and this desire to be a hero began to shape me.
I was surrounded by people who wanted to die, who were horribly depressed, who needed someone to reach out a hand, who needed saving. I was powerless to help. I could barely hold back this vile tide that threatened to end the people in my life. But in comics we can have power. In comics the heroes get to see the evil they face, and they get to win.
I wanted to be a hero for the people in my life.
One of my favorite fictional characters is the 12th Doctor. I would recite the “Where I Fall” speech in the shower sometimes, because it so encapsulated how I felt.
We’re all sad and broken and tired inside. We can still help others.
This was also a time of intellectual exploration. I got more confidence in my thoughts and my opinions. I spent half of 12th grade working on the question of Free Will with my friends, which we ultimately discovered does not exist. This is another important stone high school laid on my EA path. If no one is free to act, then we all deserve love. Even the worst, most evil people to ever live still deserve our compassion.
My expressing this belief hurt my ex quite a bit, and part of that is on my delivery. When you’ve been hurt I think it can be difficult for someone to say that those who hurt you are as equally worthy as you. Perhaps this gets back to others not quite understanding how my brain works. Not seeing why I was asking this seemingly unrelated question, or why I thought this specific thing was so important. It felt kind of suffocating, to be myself and have the people who were my emotional support demand for me to change.
But I like the way I am… why do you want me different?
College
One thing I didn’t anticipate about going to college is that I would be homesick at all. It’s taken me a while to realize I’m human, that I have feelings and needs. I still have anxiety for several days after my family leaves, and I can legally drink now.
I was self-conscious about going to college, partly because I applied to 11 schools and got into none of the ones I wanted to. But it wasn't all anxiousness, college was also a time of great change. In the first 6 months I think I rapidly altered how I presented myself as a person. My common mannerisms and what I’d reveal to others shifted.
I had been burned in high school, so I was trying much harder to not be viewed as a Nazi or some weird anti-feminst person. I was trying to reign in my ego as well. As I’ve said many times already, I am a creature of contradiction. Despite radical self-loathing and a sprinkle of insecurity, I also have (had?) a very healthy ego.
Lying greatly bothers me. When my parents asked me if I took money, I believe all I did was sit wordless, because I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t lie. Maybe I’m rewriting my past, but I believe I have always tried to embody the scout mindset, even before I knew that was a thing. I want the truth.
So I tried to become more in line with my ideals in college, and give myself any shot at making friends. That meant my ego had to be brought in line. That I needed to keep my controversial opinions inside.
Though, sometimes, the me from high school slips out. Loud and boisterous and overconfident and full of excitement.
I knew I wanted to major in Philosophy, which I had known since I was in 8th grade. Thankfully my college has a Philosophy department (it would have been a big oversight on my part if they didn’t).
We also have what are called ‘Philosophy Roundtables’ where staff and students present on their work. We have a college wide senior independent thesis program, so all students will produce original research. I knew I wanted to major in Philosophy, so I showed up to the roundtable the second week of class, even though it was just senior topic proposals. It was there that the founder of my College’s EA club would pass around a sign-up sheet. I was new at school, knew I wanted to do Philosophy, and needed to join some clubs. This was a Philosophy event, EA was described as having philosophy in it, why not go to a meeting?
This, this, is how I joined EA.
EAs often talk about this sense of moral weight and responsibility they felt as kids. Reading Peter Singer and realizing the power they had to help others. I spent my childhood taking money from the people who loved me so I could buy chocolate. I joined EA so I could make friends at college and maybe do more philosophy.
I’m not exactly the most noble of people.
I’m sorry if this is a disappointing answer. Hopefully the time you spent reading the last six thousand words doesn’t feel like too much of a waste.
The reason I kept engaging in EA is because I thought the philosophy and economics and AI was interesting. The arguments for ‘doing good better’ were compelling, and insofar as you think moral realism exists I thought EA was spot on. But if you recall, I stole my brother’s money to buy chocolate. I’m not exactly the sort of person who cares about others.
To me it felt like EA had got morality the most right of anyone. It felt like EA was really trying to view the world truthfully, and was concerned about the kinds of problems I found interesting. “I’d gladly spend the rest of my life researching EA problems” I thought to myself. “I bet I could get a job out of this”.
I did not think, “oh I bet I can help people”.
That's just not who I am.
At the same time, a lot of the people in EA were cool and nice. I felt like I had finally found a community that kind of got me. I’m not a rationalist, despite sharing a lot of traits and overlap with them I don’t really feel like a part of that community, but reading Slate Star Codex finally made me feel seen. These are the people who showed me SSC.
The people in my life told me to be different. The person I loved hated the way my mind worked. I wanted to exist as myself, and repeatedly I was told "excise these parts of yourself", of course I have self esteem issues! But the people I met through EA made me feel okay. They let me feel okay being myself. I’m very thankful for that.
My best friends from college were all in EA, so I was engaging a lot because I wanted to see these people more. One of the people I met I even feel comfortable sharing my feelings with. That’s insane. Like, you just read thousands of words of repressed emotions, do you know how crazy it is there is a human out there capable of making me feel comfortable sharing?
Through my new friends' guidance and encouragement I helped to lead an EA fellowship in 2020, a few months before the pandemic hit. I’ve gone on to facilitate more than 15 groups.
I spent a lot of the pandemic playing Dungeons and Dragons, something that finally let me use my imagination for others, and reading EA texts. I think in terms of engagement, I was probably the most EA person in my regular friend group at this point.
Ironically, this is where things get murky. I spent a lot of 2020 and 2021 vibing and healing. The amount of depressed people in my life had been reduced by 1, because my ex had stopped talking to me, so I had extra time and energy to heal. Surprisingly, I was quite happy during the pandemic, though I suspect only seeing 1 person for six months may have driven me a little (more) insane.
By this point I was familiar with most of the EA arguments, and I found them compelling, though I think I still mostly just cared about myself. I really wish I could remember when the inflection point was, and what caused it, but I don't. I guess the pandemic kind of stole my day to day memory.
If I had to speculate, it was probably some sort of constant exposure to people sympathetic to consequentialism that slowly made me feel EA. In high school I was an absurdist with consequentialist leanings, so maybe I became more morally minded by just reading lots of things in line with my intuitions. Perhaps it came from reading about how I should learn to adapt my care to the world as it is. I'm sure constantly reading about and interacting with people dedicated to doing good didn't hurt either, but I don't actually think this was the main cause.
What I do remember is reading “What gives me hope” by Michelle Hutchinson and crying. I remember reading “Small and Vulnerable” and crying. I had to read it a lot of times before that stopped happening. I don’t think people even know I’m capable of that. My ex once saw me cry and it scared her, “I didn’t know you could do that.”
I really wish I could remember why or when or how this transition happened, but something broke in me. On a deep and emotional level I (suddenly?) felt the desire to help others. I felt sadness and anger that people weren’t okay, and I wanted to do something. In high school I had discovered my desire to be a hero, to protect the people in my life and save the day, and inadvertently I had spent the following years nurturing this desire.
I guess I read philosophy so hard I gave myself empathy. I don’t think I’ve read anyone else describe becoming an EA like this. I spent 2 years reading forum posts and philosophy and then one day I shattered and I felt compassion.
I’m probably being unfair to myself. All across my life I’ve had empathy, not just when I turned 20. If I saw someone get a bad grade on a test I’d feel awful to my core, because I could tell they felt awful. I guess what broke wasn’t my sense of selfishness, it was my belief that my selfishness meant I didn’t care.
I had this sense that I was a monster. That I was evil. That I was unlovable. Doing good just isn’t the sort of thing I do, it’s not the sort of person I am. I’ll be an EA because it’s interesting, and all else being equal, helping people is probably good. If I can pick two equally interesting jobs, I might as well pick the one that also helps someone. But I’m not sure I really believed in the EA cause. And then suddenly, I was an EA.
Is this a bit anticlimactic? We spent like 4,000 words on all your middle school trauma, and then you just woke up one day and became an EA? You academic philosophy pilled yourself into having compassion? I mean… yes, well okay, no, I feel like you’re missing the point of why I shared all that stuf-
Why care?
This essay had many shapes and many forms. At one point I wrote my experiences in between the lines of a Doctor Who speech, but in the end I think a more direct approach worked best.
But that other essay was far, far, more concerned with this central question of doing good. ‘Why care?’ What you’ve read here has instead been concerned with my life, my struggles and journey. But in a way, my life is my answer to the question.
Why care? Just look at all that I’ve seen, all that I’ve done, all that I’ve felt.
Is this satisfying? That I don’t know. When I read back what I’ve written I don’t feel triumph. I feel angry and hollow.
Let's try my original approach.
I go to college in Ohio. I feel like this entire state is drab. Maybe I just don’t get out enough, but everything feels flat-er and greyer and the only thing within walking distance is a McDonalds.
In the winter sometimes it will rain. And, on rare occasions, the temperature will plummet immediately following the rain. It’s incredible. Everything becomes encased in ice. It’s difficult to express the complex beauty of mediocre Ohio becoming a diamond sculpture garden. You wake to the sound of crystalline wind chimes as the January breeze sways frozen branches.
I feel so thankful to be alive when I see things like that. In this uncaring universe that will one day be reduced to entropic sludge, even the random occurrences of systems too complex to understand can produce immense beauty.
“Hey, you know, maybe there's no point in any of this at all”
I work as a Resident Assistant at my college. Last year, only a few weeks into me starting, I was called at night to come help with a drunk student. I didn’t actually help very much, and probably didn’t have to be there. I didn’t even have to write up the report at the end. At one point I went outside to let medical services into the building, but mostly I just stood in a hallway.
The person in question was so drunk they couldn’t move. They had puked in the bathroom and were lying in the hallway crying. They could barely talk. When Campus Safety arrived they kneeled down next to this person and helped them drink water, while asking the normal slew of questions about the person’s evening.
They asked this person, whose name I can’t even remember, why they had been drinking so much. They said, in between hiccups and sobs, “friend doesn’t want to be friend anymore.”
How do you describe that feeling? I don’t think transcription can convey the misery and the drunkenness and the awful situation that had led to this awful situation. Someone drank so much that they could barely move, was lying curled in a hallway where all the other residents could and were watching, and was only able to muster out “friend doesn’t want to be friend anymore” as they cried.
Should I only care because I happened to be standing in that hallway on a late September evening? Had I remained in my room, laughing with my friends, would this person’s struggle have been worth nothing?
How much injustice would you allow in the world before you decided it was too much? How much of it would you have to see before you decided to act?
I am showered with riches by virtue of my skin and my spatial location. People love me deeply, despite the constant suffering I cause for them.
We are in triage every second, when I walk away or pretend the problems of the world don’t exist I deny life saving help. It doesn’t matter if it’s in front of me or not. My best friend almost died because I didn’t think to look for a problem I should have been able to see. My ex may have died, if I hadn’t gone back to call the suicide hotline with her. How many people have and will die because I am crippled by ignorance or greed elsewhere in my life?
When I decide something isn’t my problem, the chances of it being solved go down. Maybe not by very much, after all, what am I going to do? But still, my inaction will not help anyone.
“But it's the best I can do, so I'm going to do it.”
There is a beautiful throughline of how Effective Altruists sometimes talk about the far future. They describe it as a time with music we lack the ears to hear.
Those people of the future might never get to live. There are people alive today who won’t get the chance to hear the music we've already created, see the art we've already produced.
There is all this beauty that people, future or otherwise, might never get to experience. Drab Ohio can be transformed into a jeweled sculpture garden overnight. I wish I could share that with everyone I’ve ever met. The only reasonable response to this crazy beautiful world is to do as much as physically possible to ensure that everyone gets to share in this universe of majesty.
I think I got something wrong all those years ago when I wondered why we love the people who randomly fell into our lives. I thought statistical chance perhaps meant we shouldn’t be too attached to our family, randomness doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll find the people who are best suited to be in your life.
I’m a frustrating son. Sometimes my parents just don’t understand how I think.
I probably wouldn’t get along that well with a random person. We probably wouldn’t even speak the same language. I probably wouldn’t even get along with a random college student in my home country.
I’m related to people this is also true for. I have cousins I probably wouldn’t ever want to say a word to if we didn’t have vague familial connections. I doubt I’d even be friends with my brothers, who I care deeply about. We don’t share that many interests. Yet I love talking to them.
I think the connection my family shares is remarkably strong. Despite all the hurt we can inflict on each other, I am often surprised at just how close we are. Every week we watch a movie together. Often we just sit in the living room and talk. These aren’t the behaviors of people barely interested in each other. I was privileged to meet the people who share their life with me, regardless of if we share the same blood or home town.
My mistake was thinking the arbitrary threads that connected us were meaningless. It was the arbitrary boundaries that separated us I needed to reject.
If I can feel such love for the people the universe slapped down in front of me, and social and genetic norms forced me to live with; If I can feel such love for the people geographic luck made my friends; Then I should understand that anyone in this grand universe could be a friend or family member I’ve yet to meet.
Just because I haven’t met them yet, or they haven’t been born yet, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care about them.
I would die for the people I love. But how could I look any other person in the eyes and assert that the people they love are simply worth less than those I care for?
I assert that the person crying on the floor that September evening deserved love and kindness, whether or not I happened to be there. I assert that everyone alive today should deeply care that the people I love almost died. In turn I assert that I should care about everyone else, those alive today, and those alive tomorrow. My care should be uncoupled from time and space.
I won’t earn that much over the course of my life, but if the GiveWell is right, I can save a few people’s lives. I’m not a therapist, but I hope my kindness has helped my friends make it another day. Perhaps my impact will be but embers drifting in a rainstorm, but I will do my best to grow what fire I have.
“Why not, just at the end, just be kind?”
Beyond my vision lies a world falling apart. What do we owe the people we’ll never see?
Kindness.
If all I can do is delay this horror another day, then I’ll do it until the end. One more day with the people I love will always be a treasure. I hope at the end I am rich beyond my wildest dreams. I hope that everyone I’ll meet, and everyone I won’t, will have the opportunities to amass mountains of gold. So I will keep fighting for one more day, every day.
At least I hope I will.
Perhaps I simply am talking a big game, and one day a mortgage will wash all this idealism away. Perhaps in the end I am nothing but a self aggrandizing hypocrite.
So be it I say.
“Stand with me.”
I’m not a good person. I’m barely a kind person. Certainly whoever is reading this is a kinder person than I.
But I’m not going to let that stop me from doing what’s right. And I hope nobody else does either.
The End
Hopeful
We are all products of our past, of our environments.
I believe I can be whoever I want to be.
Deep down, I do not think I am a person. I hate myself. I can’t accept that I'm worth anything. And I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. I look in the mirror and I love what I see. I’m going to try the best I can to help everyone I can.
Effective Altruism is a community of people desperately trying to help as much as possible. It’s people who want to do the best they can, and they take ‘best’ in the most true and extreme way. I went to high school in an overwhelmingly liberal town where it felt like people would pay lip service to problems, and the biggest issue to solve was whether or not you signaled care on Instagram.
I can only view my life through the eyes that experienced it, and I’m sure I’m being overly harsh on my classmates. But there is truth in what I’m saying, there is some reality. I’m happy to know that there are people out there who care about more than lip service. They care about doing good, they think through what that means, and then act even when the answer they find wasn’t what they expected. They’ll put aside the things they deeply care about because they want to do as much good as they can.
I want to live a life of truth seeking and honesty, and EA feels like a place where that is the norm.
Effective Altruists feel like real life superheroes. As cheesy as that is, I still think it’s true. Being a superhero isn’t about being right or buff, it’s about really trying.
Feeling sorry won’t fix the hurt I’ve caused. I can’t help my friends through depression with signaled care alone.
Sometimes I wish I never found EA. Maybe then I could be happy. Maybe then things wouldn't hurt so much. Once I closed myself off to the world, and I think EA opened me up again. But the world is harsh and cold. As long as I know about the horrors of the world, and that something can be done, I'll never be able to close myself off again. I don't deserve the life I've gotten, and I can't waste it in safety while people are suffering. Maybe I'll still do nothing, and I'll just feel shitty and this is all some mastrabtory act. I don’t know, I just know I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I didn't try to do something.
I’ve watched myself implode, and I’ve watched the people I love implode. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop any of this. Every day I'd wake up and be the reason someone was suffering. I felt powerless, across my life, because there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t help others.
I can do something. I’ve learned how to crawl my way to a place where I love myself, despite all this hate I feel. I’ve learned to help the people I care for. Perhaps not much, but still, I can help them. I’ve learned that even with a few thousand dollars I can radically help someone else. Effective Altruism has helped give me the tools to feel some sense of control.
Somedays I sit on my floor, back against the wall, and I want to cry. I don’t want to be myself. I don’t want to be. But, as intensely as I despise myself, I feel an equal magnitude of hopefulness. I’m so happy to be me. I think, with enough work, we can make everything alright. I’m not in EA because I hate myself. It’s not even part of my motivation. I want to help people because I’m hopeful. Because I love being alive. There’s so much beauty and I just want to share every moment of it with everyone I can.
As equally as I am incapable of expressing all this hate and sadness and pain that I’ve watched, and sometimes participated in, I am equally incapable of expressing how incredible the world is. I take such joy in such small interactions. Sometimes I walk outside and even in Ohio, OHIO, I can’t help awe while I stare at the sky. How do I express how wonderful life is? Express how poised we are to help others? Express how beautiful that is?
I’m hopeful.
Fearful
Perhaps you’ve gotten this sense already, and it isn't often, but sometimes I feel guilty for feeling bad. I know, I get it, privilege doesn't devalue sadness. But also like, doesn't it? People out there have it so much worse, I don’t deserve to feel unwell. At the very least I don’t deserve any help, I don’t deserve to speak about my pain.
I’m scared. I’m scared that now all people will think when they see my profile picture is somebody who wouldn’t be an EA if they didn’t hate themselves. I’m scared all you’ll feel is sadness when you think of me, “if only he wasn’t broken he wouldn’t have squandered his life on nothing.” What impact have I really had? I’m just miserable.
I still really value my own pleasure. It's very easy for me to spend money on video games or potato chips. I think I could donate a lot of that money and not seriously impact my quality of life at all. Even today, even after reading so much and feeling so much care, I'm still just a selfish person who ironically values themselves most of all. You'd think all this self hatred would make me want to donate my money. Ha.
Honestly sometimes I feel like kind of a fuckwit. My sadness and struggles won't fix anything. The harm I've done is permanent. The suffering I'm failing the fix happens no matter how much I "forgive" myself. It feels like I’m back at where I started, self absorbed, no care for others.
Alone in my room, desperately reaching out for connection.
I don't know why I am the way I am
I’m fearful.
Somewhere Between
What could I tell you to make you hate me? What other secrets of mine do I have left. I have not shared every evil little thing I’ve done, but at this point I don’t know what would convince you. Maybe you do hate me now, good. But if you don’t, could I ever say something that makes you think I deserve to feel this way?
I’ve watched as I, and the amorphis evil of depression, hurt the people I loved. My best friend almost died. Died! I didn’t even know. It’s not even an isolated event, for some god forsaken reason. Many of them have courted death; wished to blow their heads off with a shotgun or have a murky impact snap their necks. Text can't impart inflection. It can't render my face. You can't see how hard I'm gritting my teeth. Do you know what I'd do for the people I love? I'd tear the stars apart. I'd render this universe cold and desolate if it meant another day with them. My best friend almost died. My family members almost died. And I wasn't there to protect them. Instead I hurt these people, all across my life, I failed them.
Maybe Effective Altruism is all the bad things everyone says it is. Maybe I'm just rationalizing my own guilt and privilege. I guess I wouldn't know if I was. But I don't think that’s it. I think we have a rare opportunity to help others. I've lived a cruel and selfish and evil life. I've gorged myself while I left others, people literally in front of me, to suffer. I've constantly put my needs above others. And just like in high school, just like across my life, I'll be damned to fucking hell, however likely that is, if I'm going to let that stop me.
I know people who desperately want to die. There is nothing anyone could ever do to make me think someone deserves that.
I think every person who has ever lived, who is alive, and who will one day live, deserves our compassion. Everyone deserves to be happy, no matter what. I believe we have a duty to help every single person.
My failures have had real, tangible, costs; they've imparted irreversible suffering. Not for one second will I let this justify another person crying alone, cutting themselves, or dying of easily preventable disease.
I want to live in a world where I don't have to be there. Where even when people are struggling, no matter who they are, they will be shown kindness. I can't always be there for the people I love. But I hope someone can. I'm going to live my life trying to be there for everyone, no matter who they are. We all have people we love. We'd all render the stars inert for someone. If I can feel such powerful love for the people fate randomly thrust into my life, then I have to believe I could for everyone.
I’m scared.
I’m so full of hope. So full of joy.
I will try to be kind. I will try to do good, and I hope I can do it better than I have in the past.
The end.
Postscript
Thank you for reading this. I hope you’re okay. And if you’re not, I hope you can get the help you need. I hope I, or at least someone, is putting my ideals into practice.
May you find joy even in drabness, and may you never feel drab when you should feel joy.
And when you are able to, I hope you will help others who need it.