I think the closest there is to a mainstream EA view on this is https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/ , which argues that "it's a mistake to pursue a career in which the direct effects of the work are seriously harmful, even if the overall benefits of that work seem greater than the harms".

But this is basically what I tried first: https://www.jefftk.com/p/clipboard-normalization

The idea of waiting until later is typically called "patient philanthropy". The argument is something like:

1. People matter equally regardless of when they exist.

2. Money you invest could be far more money in the future.

3. Giving opportunities will be about as good in the future as they are today.

4. Therefore if you save to donate later you can do a lot more good.

This often looks like putting money in a Donor Advised Fund to lock in the "this has to go to charity" while still letting it grow, and then later deciding where to donate it.

It's not a common position within EA, and isn't one I hold (so I may not be fully fair to it). The main objection is to point 3: there are actually a bunch of reasons to expect that money donated today will go further than money donated later. The big one, from my perspective, is that we are increasingly creating more powerful AI systems, and we're close to making ones that are smarter than almost everyone. This is very different from anything people have done before, and could have extremely long term consequences (extinction, loss of human control over the future, locking in values that on reflection aren't great, etc).

This is a very uncommon idea within EA. There are some people who support it ("patient philanthropy") but almost everyone within EA either thinks you should be working / donating to help people/animals (most "neartermists") or you should be working / donating to help reduce extinction risk (most "longtermists").

(I donate 50%, and quit a high-paying tech job to work at a biosecurity nonprofit)

(I have a generally EA view of the world and I don't think the AHA is an especially valuable donation opportunity.)

For example, here's Zvi in 2025: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/drHsruvnkCYweMJp7/the-mask-c...

My 5yo asked partway through "will it be ok?" which is perhaps a deeper question than they thought.

It also helps that this is not commercial and doesn't have negative impact on the originals.

    Year Fraction answering yes
    ---- ----------------------
    2016 56.89%
    2017 50.78%
    2018 51.21%
    2019 39.59%
    2020 37.32%
    2021 48.48%
    2022 42.58%
    2023 43.93%
    2024 42.11%
    2025 38.57%
    2026 28.84%

(Claims that a company is breaking the law are also very much not unlawful.)