As a (now ex-) UChicago organizer and current Organizer Support Program mentor (though this is all in my personal capacity), I share Noah’s concerns here.
I see how reasonable actors in 80k’s shoes could come to the conclusions they came to, but I think this is a net loss for university groups, which disappoints me — I think university groups are some of the best grounds we have to motivate talented young people to devote their careers to improving the world, and I think the best way to do this is by staying principles-first and building a community around the core ideas of scope sensitivity, scout mindset, impartiality, and recognition of tradeoffs.
I know 80k isn’t disavowing these principles, but the pivot does mean 80k is de-emphasizing them.
All this makes me think that 80k will be much less useful to university groups, because it
a) makes it much tougher for us to recommend 80k to interested intro fellows (personalized advising, even if it’s infrequently granted, is a powerful carrot, and the exercises you have to complete to finish the advising are also very useful), and
b) means that university groups will have to find a new advising source for their fresh members who haven’t picked a cause-area yet.
As a (now ex-) UChicago organizer and current Organizer Support Program mentor (though this is all in my personal capacity), I share Noah’s concerns here.
I see how reasonable actors in 80k’s shoes could come to the conclusions they came to, but I think this is a net loss for university groups, which disappoints me — I think university groups are some of the best grounds we have to motivate talented young people to devote their careers to improving the world, and I think the best way to do this is by staying principles-first and building a community around the core ideas of scope sensitivity, scout mindset, impartiality, and recognition of tradeoffs.
I know 80k isn’t disavowing these principles, but the pivot does mean 80k is de-emphasizing them.
All this makes me think that 80k will be much less useful to university groups, because it
a) makes it much tougher for us to recommend 80k to interested intro fellows (personalized advising, even if it’s infrequently granted, is a powerful carrot, and the exercises you have to complete to finish the advising are also very useful), and b) means that university groups will have to find a new advising source for their fresh members who haven’t picked a cause-area yet.