This essay’s examples and choice of emphasis made me uneasy, despite my wholehearted agreement with the title as stated and with most of the object-level advice (“be hungry, shake complacency, don’t get caught up in short-term work incentives” etc). Some scattered reactions:
It feels a bit rude to link to an 80K essay given you work there, but I think of this piece as (maybe unintentionally) encouraging single-player thinking by valorizing individual heroism via choice of examples over the multiplayer mindset that doing good better together requires. Individual intensity doesn’t seem to be the binding constraint to solving the world’s biggest problems as much as trust / coordination / institutional quality are (alongside good judgment, more below). It’s unfortunate that we have plenty of memetic galvanising anecdotes for the former over the latter, maybe “create more content to make multiplayer altruism sexy” should be a cause X, cf. your remark that there are too few stories of the Fred Hollows and Viktor Zhdanovs and they’re much less famous than the Jensens and LBJs. It’s also unfortunate that the traits mentioned in the anecdotes (Jensen being an asshole, LBJ being a lying manipulator) are memetically more fit than integrity / good character etc, as they’re corrosive to the trust foundational to multiplayer altruism
If you buy that effectiveness = judgment x ambition x risk appetite and that the essay’s motivating example is a central example, then good judgment arguably beats ambition, even more so on the margin given how undersupplied it is relative to ambition in EA, and doubly so for longtermist work (cf. Holden singling it out as an aptitude, OP struggling with sign uncertainty back then etc). You do mention this cf. misplaced ambition but I think it’s a lot harder than “don’t do a Jiro” suggests and should be more central to the thesis
Messaging-wise I worry that impressionable younger folks, like me a few years ago, might take away a simplistic maximising vibe from your examples despite all the nuance, which is perilous in a way that’s not easy to deeply appreciate unless they’ve developed good judgment as to why it’s perilous. I think this is especially the case with talented driven folks
Ultimately I don’t think we disagree on much. Just a bummer that “cooperation-first character-shaped judgment-steered ambition” has no chance of catching on vs “be more ambitious”…
Thanks for the comment! I appreciate the pushback, particularly on how younger impressionable folks might misread the importance of other traits in combined with ambition.
I think I basically just agree with your first two bullets, but would want people to fold these more holistic characteristics into their “work extremely hard and aim high” ambitions. Jensen and LBJ have a bunch of qualities that are not worth emulating, and I’m sad that 1) this seems to so often be the case for top performers, and 2) I agree they’re more memetically fit. I think if I had written a piece just about Fred Hollows and Viktor Zhdanovs it would have gotten far less interest outside of EA circles.
Part of what I hope to do in my public writing is get more people excited about EA who haven’t encountered it before (“create more content to make multiplayer altruism sexy,” as you say). So maybe I should do a future post on developing good judgment and cooperative skills as well.
Thank you for this comment Mo! I am a college student exploring different career options, and your comment really voiced my thoughts (and feelings) about this post. I was trying to be more targeted in how I plan my career, and I found myself nodding along to most of the bullet points, but something about that intensity just felt off and your comment really voiced that for me.
To add a small side note to this, in particular the point around the effectiveness essay:
I suspect the EA community and in particular 80k hours tend to underestimate how hard it is to do better by being more ambitious (for the typical engaged EA, at least). Eg counterfactually increasing your income from 150k to 600k by “being more ambitious” and working longer hours or negotiating your salary more aggressiely is not a very high probability outcome. Achieving this increase by having better judgement around what area to specialise in is perhaps more likely. Likewise, taking more risk by being an entrepreneur does not 10x your career donations in expectation if you have a decent job. I would discount the multipliers in 6 & 8 a lot (or at least their component attributable to ambition and risk taking), while I believe they are > 1.
This essay’s examples and choice of emphasis made me uneasy, despite my wholehearted agreement with the title as stated and with most of the object-level advice (“be hungry, shake complacency, don’t get caught up in short-term work incentives” etc). Some scattered reactions:
It feels a bit rude to link to an 80K essay given you work there, but I think of this piece as (maybe unintentionally) encouraging single-player thinking by valorizing individual heroism via choice of examples over the multiplayer mindset that doing good better together requires. Individual intensity doesn’t seem to be the binding constraint to solving the world’s biggest problems as much as trust / coordination / institutional quality are (alongside good judgment, more below). It’s unfortunate that we have plenty of memetic galvanising anecdotes for the former over the latter, maybe “create more content to make multiplayer altruism sexy” should be a cause X, cf. your remark that there are too few stories of the Fred Hollows and Viktor Zhdanovs and they’re much less famous than the Jensens and LBJs. It’s also unfortunate that the traits mentioned in the anecdotes (Jensen being an asshole, LBJ being a lying manipulator) are memetically more fit than integrity / good character etc, as they’re corrosive to the trust foundational to multiplayer altruism
If you buy that effectiveness = judgment x ambition x risk appetite and that the essay’s motivating example is a central example, then good judgment arguably beats ambition, even more so on the margin given how undersupplied it is relative to ambition in EA, and doubly so for longtermist work (cf. Holden singling it out as an aptitude, OP struggling with sign uncertainty back then etc). You do mention this cf. misplaced ambition but I think it’s a lot harder than “don’t do a Jiro” suggests and should be more central to the thesis
Messaging-wise I worry that impressionable younger folks, like me a few years ago, might take away a simplistic maximising vibe from your examples despite all the nuance, which is perilous in a way that’s not easy to deeply appreciate unless they’ve developed good judgment as to why it’s perilous. I think this is especially the case with talented driven folks
Ultimately I don’t think we disagree on much. Just a bummer that “cooperation-first character-shaped judgment-steered ambition” has no chance of catching on vs “be more ambitious”…
Thanks for the comment! I appreciate the pushback, particularly on how younger impressionable folks might misread the importance of other traits in combined with ambition.
I think I basically just agree with your first two bullets, but would want people to fold these more holistic characteristics into their “work extremely hard and aim high” ambitions. Jensen and LBJ have a bunch of qualities that are not worth emulating, and I’m sad that 1) this seems to so often be the case for top performers, and 2) I agree they’re more memetically fit. I think if I had written a piece just about Fred Hollows and Viktor Zhdanovs it would have gotten far less interest outside of EA circles.
Part of what I hope to do in my public writing is get more people excited about EA who haven’t encountered it before (“create more content to make multiplayer altruism sexy,” as you say). So maybe I should do a future post on developing good judgment and cooperative skills as well.
Thank you for this comment Mo! I am a college student exploring different career options, and your comment really voiced my thoughts (and feelings) about this post. I was trying to be more targeted in how I plan my career, and I found myself nodding along to most of the bullet points, but something about that intensity just felt off and your comment really voiced that for me.
To add a small side note to this, in particular the point around the effectiveness essay:
I suspect the EA community and in particular 80k hours tend to underestimate how hard it is to do better by being more ambitious (for the typical engaged EA, at least). Eg counterfactually increasing your income from 150k to 600k by “being more ambitious” and working longer hours or negotiating your salary more aggressiely is not a very high probability outcome. Achieving this increase by having better judgement around what area to specialise in is perhaps more likely. Likewise, taking more risk by being an entrepreneur does not 10x your career donations in expectation if you have a decent job.
I would discount the multipliers in 6 & 8 a lot (or at least their component attributable to ambition and risk taking), while I believe they are > 1.
Did you mean “underestimate how hard it is” rather than “overestimate”? Or are you saying it is easier than people think?
Yes thanks