Respectfully, I have to disagree that most of these examples are any reason to distrust communications from EA. Someone has already addressed Ben Todd’s answer on whether EA is utilitarian (saying it’s utilitarian-ish is the most accurate answer, it’s not deceptive), so I’ll comment on the career advice you saw:
Philosophy, but also not Philosophy?
I took a look at global priorities research. It was one of five top-recommended career paths on 80K’s website and required researchers in philosophy. 80K website at time of writing:
> In general, for foundational global priorities research the best graduate subject is an economics PhD. The next most useful subject is philosophy
This article contrasts sharply with the 80K page on philosophy:
> the academic job market for philosophy is extremely challenging. Moreover, the career capital you acquire working toward a career in philosophy isn’t particularly transferable. For these reasons we currently believe that, for the large majority of people who are considering it, pursuing philosophy professionally is unlikely to be the best choice.
It seems like there are significant risks to pursuing further study in philosophy that 80K are well aware of, and it does not look great that they mention them in the context of general philosophical research (that they presumably don’t care about their readers pursuing) but omit them when discussing a career path they are eager for their readers to pursue. Spending 7 years getting a philosophy PhD because you want to research global priorities and then failing to find a position (the overwhelmingly likely outcome) does not sound like much fun.
This is a particularly clear example of a more general experience I’ve had with 80K material, namely being encouraged to make major life choices without an adequate treatment of the risks involved. I think readers deserve this information upfront.
They aren’t being dishonest here, they’re answering two different questions. The first page says that the best background for global priorities research, one of their most-recommended career options, is economics followed by philosophy. The second page, on philosophy as a career path, correctly points out that the job market for philosophy is very challenging. They’re not telling lots of people they should go into philosophy in the hopes that some of them will then do global priorities research. They’re saying you should not do philosophy, but if you did, then global priorities research is a highly valuable thing your background would be suitable for, which I’d say are good recommendations all around.
I think you’re correct that they aren’t being dishonest, but I disagree that the discrepancy is because ‘they’re answering two different questions’.
If 80K’s opinion is that a Philosophy PhD is probably a bad idea for most people, I would still expect that to show up in the Global Priorities information. For example, I don’t see any reason they couldn’t write something like this:
In general, for foundational global priorities research the best graduate subject is an economics PhD. The next most useful subject is philosophy … but the academic job market for philosophy is extremely challenging, and the career capital you acquire working toward a career in philosophy isn’t particularly transferable. For these reasons, we strongly recommend approaching GPR via economics instead of philosophy unless you are a particularly gifted philosopher and comfortable with a high risk of failure...
Maybe I’m nitpicking, as you say it is mentioned on the ‘philosophy academia’ page. I was trying to draw attention to a general discomfort I have with the site that it seems to underemphasise risk of failure, but perhaps I need to find a better example!
Respectfully, I have to disagree that most of these examples are any reason to distrust communications from EA. Someone has already addressed Ben Todd’s answer on whether EA is utilitarian (saying it’s utilitarian-ish is the most accurate answer, it’s not deceptive), so I’ll comment on the career advice you saw:
They aren’t being dishonest here, they’re answering two different questions. The first page says that the best background for global priorities research, one of their most-recommended career options, is economics followed by philosophy. The second page, on philosophy as a career path, correctly points out that the job market for philosophy is very challenging. They’re not telling lots of people they should go into philosophy in the hopes that some of them will then do global priorities research. They’re saying you should not do philosophy, but if you did, then global priorities research is a highly valuable thing your background would be suitable for, which I’d say are good recommendations all around.
I think you’re correct that they aren’t being dishonest, but I disagree that the discrepancy is because ‘they’re answering two different questions’.
If 80K’s opinion is that a Philosophy PhD is probably a bad idea for most people, I would still expect that to show up in the Global Priorities information. For example, I don’t see any reason they couldn’t write something like this:
Maybe I’m nitpicking, as you say it is mentioned on the ‘philosophy academia’ page. I was trying to draw attention to a general discomfort I have with the site that it seems to underemphasise risk of failure, but perhaps I need to find a better example!