Hello all, just joined

Boris Yakubchik here: born in Russia, came to the U.S. at 11 y/o, lived in New Jersey ever since. Went to Rutgers University, got a BA in Math, MA in Education, wanted to work as a math teacher but ended up auditing 20+ classes in philosophy instead. Then started a Ph.D. program in Educational Psychology at Rutgers; during the time got more interested in charitable giving and soon after after meeting Nick Beckstead joined Giveng What We Can.

I'm currently considering following Mark Lee's lead, becoming a "professional donor" - earning enough to meet needs and donate the rest to most effective organization. At this time I give 10% (as per GWWC promise) to VillageReach (as per GiveWell's recommendation) but aim to increase that once I start earning more. Unfortunately my skills won't lend me a job that I will be paid very highly; I think I'll be a math teacher (unless something more lucrative comes along that I will enjoy enough). Perhaps as a teacher I may influence some students to adopt a more reasonable moral stance In my spare time I hope to work on various projects that do good in the world.

I'm deeply interested in (Positive) Psychology and have read a lot in the genre (I aim to share some of what I learned: http://happinessbooks.net/). I love philosophy, though I'm more interested in ethics. I'm a big fan of Peter Singer and now Toby Ord. I titled my post "lucky me" because I am pretty certain that if my parents didn't come to the U.S. and I hadn't run into some of the amazing people at Rutgers, I wouldn't have been as aware of the numerous important issues in the world today.

If anyone is around the New Brunswick (Rutgers) area, I'd love to meet up. I also visit NYC once every few months.

Hey YBoris!
Welcome. I too want to become a professional donor. I should be able to begin in 1.5 years, when I become a medical intern. Toby Ord and Peter Singer are tremendous, as we all know.

I do wonder about the possibility of spreading morality through teaching. Maybe it'd be more possible for a philosophy teacher though, I don't know.

Positive psychology is great, although, like in any field, there's boring material among the good stuff. I'm about to listen to the audiobook of Paul Bloom's How Pleasure Works, actually. He seems like a decent speaker, and I look forward to hearing his fairly sophisticated concept of pleasure. Sorry I'm too far away from you too meet (on the entirely opposite side of the world, in Australia!)

I'd love to see you share some of what you've learned by writing a page about happiness, fulfilment, or whatever, on our Wiki at wiki.

I'm also planning on being a professional donor.

Great to have you here, Boris!

I share your interest in positive psychology. The techniques in Martin Segilman's Learned Optimism have helped me keep perspective on life—it's required reading for pessimists. I'll be interested in what he says in his new book, Flousish—it sounds as though his approach now diverges from classical utilitarianism more than in the past. Belief in a highly demanding ethical theory, such as act utilitarianism, can give meaning to life. But awareness of the world's problems and your own shortcomings can be discouraging. (Regardless of whether this awareness has made me happier, I, like you, am grateful for it.) Positive psychology can help you keep your chin up.

RyanCarey: I agree that Paul Bloom is a decent speaker. If you haven't taken a course in psychology, I recommend watching his entertaining and informative lectures, available here.

Some Oxford people are planning to set up HighImpactCareers.org to launch in October,off the back of this lecture. I think it will basically be an organisation aimed at helping people have utlitarian careers (without using the word 'utilitarian'), including, perhaps even focussed on, professional donorship.

PM Will Crouch to find out more.

LadyMorgana wrote:Some Oxford people are planning to set up HighImpactCareers.org to launch in October

Wow, that's a great website! The FAQ is delightful. If this gets off the ground as successfully as, say, GiveWell and GWWC have, the impact could be profound.

(My main cavil is the absence of animal charities from the examples of where one might donate. )

My favorite part is the blog:

Wow! The guys that wrote this website for the fantastic new organisation 'High Impact Careers - Doing Good Well' must be the best computer geeks ever! They must be really handsome, intelligent and good banter too!

By the way, nice job on your new site, yboris!

Oh wow, I didn't realise that the website actually existed yet! Yeah it looks good I'll push for some animal charities, but first we probably need to do some more thorough thinking/research on which are the best animal welfare charities and how to justify our recommendations to a wide audience (my hunch is that we'll be recommending Vegan Outreach...possibly CiWF for non-Us folk, or Animal Equality, as suggested by Daniel Dorado).

Would be worth looking at New Harvest, too.

Arepo wrote:Would be worth looking at New Harvest, too.

I mentioned in a reply to brightmidnight on this old thread why I prefer Vegan Outreach to New Harvest from a wild-animal perspective. But if the metric is purely factory farmed life years, then New Harvest is a strong contender.

Just to let you know, High-Impact Careers is not going to be global poverty focussed and will include x-risk, animal welfare, transhumanist stuff etc. - whatever is plausibly very high-impact basically. The website is, as you can tell, very much in its draft stages and I guess they just wrote about global poverty in the "Who should I give to?" section because they had a lot of info about it to hand, as this organisation has developed as kind of an offshoot from GWWC.

LadyMorgana wrote:Just to let you know, High-Impact Careers is not going to be global poverty focussed and will include x-risk, animal welfare, transhumanist stuff etc. - whatever is plausibly very high-impact basically.

That's great! It makes sense for it to cover several ideological branches. Of course, we wouldn't want it to be too broad, lest religious fundamentalists, conservative speciesists, or deep ecologists start taking the advice as well.

Of course, we wouldn't want it to be too broad, lest religious fundamentalists, conservative speciesists, or deep ecologists start taking the advice as well.

Hadn't thought of that! :S We don't just want people making any old high impact... I think I'll mention this to Will actually.

Hey All,

Will Crouch is writing a great essay about High-Impact Careers, which is attempting to redefine the concept of ethical careers by appealing to common sense (though obviously it's very utilitarian, just not explicitly). PM me your email address if you'd like me to send you the nearly-final draft!

Can you add me to the list?

Arepo wrote:Can you add me to the list?

Arepo, and anyone else, you can go here: http://highimpactcareers.org/ and sign up

Good spot, Boris! That mailing list and getting the draft of Will's essay are separate things though; Arepo, I'll email you now.

Not to self-promote here, but I thought I should post an update.

In 2012 I decided to start giving 50% of my pre-tax income to the most cost-effective charities I could find (thanks http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ in getting me to start with 10%). Most of it has gone to Against Malaria Foundation (http://www.againstmalaria.com/GivingWhatWeCanRutgers). It's been great - I'm astounded how easy it is to do on a $50,000/year teacher's salary; I fail to understand how college graduates in the US with a similar salary have difficulty living a beautiful life.

http://yboris.com/

Congrats, Boris! Self-promotion is great when you have something to share.

Oh wow it's been a while. Might as well post an update.

As of December 2014, I am about to celebrate 3 years with my partner; we'll be getting married next year. Few months ago we bought a trailer home in Morganville, NJ (close to the students that I tutor). Because it's a trailer home, it cost only $50,000 (920 square feet, built in 1984), I didn't have to pay taxes when purchasing (it's a trailer home, you don't pay taxes), and you don't pay taxes on land (though you do have to rent the land, it's an odd arrangement). The upside is that my monthly expenses for housing went down from $975 (somewhat average for an apartment in NJ) to about $550 (includes water, sewer, garbage collection). I share all this information because I want to make sure others know that it's possible to live this cheap (saving money = more money to charity )

In 2013 I gave a TEDx talk at Rutgers about effective charity. You can view it here:

I'm always amazed by how far you go Boris Do you ever worry that cutting back so far might impact your productivity? I know I like my creature comforts (though actually, the lifestyle you lead doesn't sound bad - I just don't think we have an equivalent over here)

Congrats, Boris!