On Becoming World-Class
In September, Bob Mueller posed an interesting question on Facebook:
How does âbecoming (one of) the best in the worldâ in some not-in-any-way effective field or niche compare to traditional EA careers?
Bob, who practices a niche, unspecified form of digital art, described himself as âquite motivated about a lot of thingsâ. He didnât seem perturbed by the prospect of switching to some more âtraditionalâ career.
This made me wonder: If a person really does have equal access to both of these optionsâpossibly world-class at an unusual profession, or moderately talented at an EA-aligned professionâand would be equally happy and satisfied in both places, how should they make the choice?
There are many skilled people in the community, so I suspect that Bob isnât the only person who will end up thinking about this. I hope that my thoughtsâand those of the commenters! -- might come in handy.
Existing thoughts on this topic:
80,000 Hoursâ latest career article notes that one high-impact career path involves âapplying an unusual strength to a needed nicheâ.
Anthropologists, for example, helped the global health community contain Ebola by delivering critical information on local burial practices. And there are plenty of more common examples along these lines: Every organization needs someone who understands accounting, and someone who knows how to design a website.
That said, the EA community may be able to hire professionals in these fields as contractors, without needing to find accountants or designers who know anything about our particular beliefs. And while we need solid and competent people for these tasks, we can probably get by without anyone âworld-classâ.
Anyway, in Bobâs case, his work seems even less likely than anthropology to hold direct relevance for EA organizations. (As far as I can tellâBob, if youâre reading this, youâre welcome to provide more details in the comments!) So the 80,000 Hours advice isnât too applicable for his situation, and the situation of other EAs with ânot-in-any-way effectiveâ talents.
Given all of this, what value could someone like Bob bring to EA if he pursued a career in digital art, and rose to the top of his field?
Some Facebook commentators seemed a bit skeptical of the idea, with good reason:
The top people in most fields, if those fields arenât naturally practical or lucrative, probably wonât become wealthy or famous.
Even in fields where being at the top does mean fame or fortune, becoming a âtop personâ is a risky proposition. If Bob overestimates his skill, he may flounder somewhere below the peak of a winner-take-all market.
Artistic skills in particular may not be very transferable. Someone who tries to become a top programmer in an obscure language could have more success falling back to a ânormalâ career in software than someone whose art goes out of style would have becoming a ânormalâ graphic designer. (Designers make a lot less money than programmers, and there arenât nearly as many of them.)
Every case is different, but these arguments do form a reasonable case that people like Bob should stick with a more standard EA-aligned career path.
However, I suspect that there are serious potential upsides to becoming world-class even in an âirrelevantâ fieldâbut that theyâre harder to see or imagine than the downsides. Making art is risky, but when itâs done by someone with strong EA values, a lot of good possibilities open up.
For the rest of this piece, Iâll play Devilâs Advocate against the standard view, and consider what an EA who becomes a world-class artistâor world-class in some other professionâcould do for the community.
1. Being world-class creates connections. Bobâs art has already been used by a âclassicâ music festival. That didnât create any direct opportunity to advocate for EA, but letâs say his animations catch onâand Daft Punk asks him to help out with their next tour. Suddenly, every EA who knows Bob is two degrees of separation from Daft Punk, and three degrees from much of the music industry.
âBut itâs not like Daft Punk is going to have an extended philosophical discussion with Bob, right? Why does this help?â
This is true. But a personal connection, however brief, is a powerful thing, and can create opportunities well into the future.
If Thomas Bangalter decides to donate his electro-funk fortune to charity in a few years, and hits up his address book or reaches out on Twitter to ask for adviceâcan we call this âpulling a Bezosâ? -- heâll be likely to notice a suggestion from his old friend Bob, who helped him out on his last tour.
And wow! Who knew that Bob was so into charity, or that he was personally acquainted with so many Oxford professors? Looks like Thomas was in luck; time to send a few emails...
In a more general sense, Iâve seen a lot of Facebook posts over the year from EAs whose wealthy friends wanted their advice on charitable donations. Any profession (choreographer, personal chef, stunt double) which exposes you to people with a lot of wealth and statusâeven if you arenât rich or famous yourselfâseems like it could have the same effect.
(Worth noting: Many professions with no obvious connection to wealth or status could become connected if you get good enough. Dr. Peter Attia specializes in nutrition science, a rather neglected corner of medicine, but his work has led to his appearing on one of the worldâs most popular podcasts and serving as a personal health consultant for successful tech entrepreneurs.)
2. Being world-class creates validity. I once worked for a recruiting agency that helped tech startups find programmers. But good programmers are inundated with recruiting messages, and even our most elite, experienced agents had low response rates when they reached out.
Once, we were in a desperate spot, and asked the CEO of a company we worked with to write the message themselves. His message, though it was dashed-off and totally un-optimized, performed at least twice as well as ours.
Being a CEO clearly helps you get attention, but I think it helped that this particular CEO, who was a programmer with a stacked LinkedIn page, had validity. He used technical jargon that we recruiters couldnât use without sounding fake. He clearly had something in common with the people he wrote to, and could, by implication, understand their concerns in a way we couldnât match.
Most professional communities contain a lot of people who would become interested in EA if they heard the right messageâwhich could mean hearing from the right person. If we want to convince digital artists to think about EA (say, if we want to see more art with EA themes), it will help to have digital artists in our community, even if theyâre only âwell-knownâ to other artists.
Same goes for advertisers and authors; lawyers and landlords; podcasters and pro gamers. My impression from working in a few different fields is that professional networks between âeliteâ members are very tight; even one or two people with EA leanings could have a surprising amount of direct influence.
(On âconnectionsâ vs. âvalidityâ: The first relates to a world-class person meeting people in other fields, the second to meeting people in the same field.)
3. Being world-class creates diversity. Alice, a banker who read some articles about effective altruism and wanted to learn more, signs up for EA Global 2020.
The timeline splits, and two versions of Alice attend two different conferences:
a. At EA Global A, Alice talks on the first night to ten different people. Four of them are software developers. Two are philosophers. One is an economics PhD student. One studies some sort of esoteric computer science field that she doesnât really understand. Two are undergraduates, who are respectively studying software development and biology, because something called âpandemic riskâ is apparently a major concern. Itâs all a bit overwhelming, and very abstract, and it sets the tone for the rest of her conference.
b. At EA Global B, Alice talks on the first night to ten different people. Most of them work on computer science or philosophy, but one is a professional poker player, which is very cool and not at all what she was expecting. And then thereâs Bob, the digital artist, who helped out with Daft Punkâs last tour and shows her some epic animations on his phone. Alice goes back to her hotel feeling like the community is vibrant and diverse, has a few more interesting encounters over the course of the conference, and winds up reaching out to her local group when she gets home.
A community where almost everyone does the same few things might still thrive; there are many more ways to be diverse than just âcareerâ. But having a wider range of professions has some advantages:
We have a wider presence throughout our communities, such that more people are likely to run into an EA at some point in their lives.
We present a more balanced picture to a world that likes to stereotype us as a haven for tech nerds, weird philosophers, and no one else.
Within EA, we learn more from each other, and develop an internal understanding of more fields. An accountant hired from a random firm can keep the books for an EA organization, but they wonât write a post on the EA Forum about basic accounting principles that even small altruistic projects can use to save money and time.
This post doesnât actually exist, as far as I know, but if we had a few more EAs with backgrounds in accounting, perhaps it would!
(The âcareer diversityâ consideration doesnât just apply to people at the top of their fields. If you do something that isnât common within the community, at even a reasonably skilled level, we may have a lot to learn from you!)
None of these considerations apply universally. It may be the case that, between the risk of overestimating oneâs skill and the difficulty of getting to the top of any profession, almost all EAs would be better off pursuing career paths with clear direct impact.
But it still seems important for our community to recognize and support someone who has a realistic chance of becoming, say, a famous EA composer. Or an EA bronze medalist in curling. Or the first EA in the U.S. House of Representatives...
...or even something really weird like âthe EA-aligned person who wrote the most popular piece of Harry Potter fanfiction everâ. We canât ignore the risk, but we also shouldnât ignore the opportunity.
Questions for the comments: Have you ever tried to become world-class at something? Or had the chance to try, but opted to take another path? What were your results? Are you happy with the choice you made?
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My main takeaway from this post is that people who are on a clear path to becoming world-class (or already are) can be great advocates for EA or for effective giving among their (fringe/âprestigious) peer group, and that the EA community should be welcoming and encouraging them to be active members of the community. I do think that the concerns raised and the framing of the conclusion are apt.
Engaging with the prompt, I am considering an academic career. This may not lead to me being world class (say, win a Nobel Prize), but this is a likely path to becoming high status which has similar merits. I guess that in the technical or research oriented world, it is easier to have both high status and to do EA-aligned work, so I do not think of this as a major consideration.
I find it interesting that the three arguments given also apply somewhat to the value of high social skills:
1. Better social skills lead to stronger connections. People with exceptional social skills can also be more likely to connect with high status individuals.
2. Being more charismatic helps one be more persuasive (in a different manner than written above).
3. Having more people with high social skills in the community can help newcomers feel more at ease and engaged with EA.
Thanks for the post, really interesting read! I find your arguments quite intriguing.
Whether aiming at becoming world class is a valid strategy or not seems to vary quite a lot depending on which area weâre talking about. I guess for musicians itâs very difficult to make such an argumentâthere are just too many highly talented people out there, plus there seems to be a lot of luck/ârandomness involved in achieving fame/ârecognition there. So even if youâre an extremely capable singer/âguitar player/âdrummer/â..., the chances may just be too slim. Things may look different for more exotic instruments, or even sports that arenât very popular. If you have the right preconditions to be good at discus throwing, and you decide to give everything to become world class at it, the chances are probably much higher youâll succeed simply due to the much smaller base rate of people sharing that goal. And while the recognition that comes with it is certainly reduced when compared to actors/âmusicians/âNBA stars etc., Iâm pretty sure the âexpected recognitionâ when taking such a path is much, much higher overall.
Similarly, there surely are many artists, but itâs quite possible that certain niches with a lot of potential for motivated individuals exist.
Secondly, when stating that generally it seems like a good idea to have more world class in anything people in the movement, there are of course the two options of either developing those people from within the movement (which weâre mostly discussing here), or advocating among already world class at something people to join the movement. Iâm not sure if any organized attempt to achieve the latter already exists, but it might certainly be worthwhile as well, and for many of the more mainstream areas, Iâd argue the chances of this strategy to get more world class at something people into the movement are much higher than via the âhold my beer I can do thisâ approach.
Itâs not obvious to me how to get order of magnitude estimates on the expected value of these considerations. They seem likely to be true, but Iâm uncertain how to weigh against the value of a âtraditionalâ EA-aligned career. (Edited for clarity)
JP,
Iâm also quite unsure about this, largely because thereâs an enormous visibility bias; I can think of a few people within EA who did become world-class at something, but barely anyone who tried and failed. But this is something I hope to collect some anecdata on in the future (and through comments on the post).
One more important factor is the extent to which being a part of the EA community might help your chances of getting to a world-class level in something (through access to mentorship, access to lots of people who can help you stick to your goals and spread word about your work, etc.).
This may not be true often, if at allâhanging out with musicians seems like a much better idea than hanging out with EAs if your goal is to win fame as a musicianâbut I can see 80,000 Hours having some interesting general insights if they ever decided to research the general area of âbecoming famousâ. (This seems antithetical to most of their current thinking, and would probably not be a good use of their
Hey JP, I donât mean to sound condescending or policing, but I find this comment to be full of (unnecessary) jargon which would be very hard to read for newcomers. What would help:
Writing out abbreviations (âEVâ --> âexpected valueâ)
Writing out the reasoning instead of a concept (âthe value of the opportunity costâ --> âthe benefits of pursuing a âtraditionalâ EA-aligned career)
I think that itâs important for EA to have a space where we can communicate efficiently, rather than phrase everything for the benefit of newcomers who might be reading, so I think that this is bad advice.
No worries. Iâm a newcomer to posting Forum comments, so I expect to need to train my writing. I updated the comment, thanks!