Oh, just one other thing that I found interesting about your post: the article you linked (on the words ‘unsure sign’) takes some pretty pessimistic metaphilosophical positions. EG: ‘experimental philosophers have the right idea, because at least they’re not relying on intuitions’ (or words to that effect). On a related note, despite loving some of the content that comes out of LessWrong folks, I think I am more optimistic about traditional philosophy than they are. The impression I got from studying metaethics is that intuitions are indispensable when considering moral claims, for instance. I don’t think that evolutionary debunking arguments undermine (at least all of) those intuitions either. However, I will keep an open mind!
Anyway, the point of the above is: I wonder how much these questions regarding career advice depend on certain metaphilosophical views, like how optimistic one is about mainstream research in ethics?
(Though funnily enough, the authors of the 80K article aren’t such pessimists— EG: MacAskill has plenty of ethics papers which feature the method of reflective equilibrium).
(Note: the above is not an argument against working in the US, which is probably correctly rated in EA.)
Oh, just one other thing that I found interesting about your post: the article you linked (on the words ‘unsure sign’) takes some pretty pessimistic metaphilosophical positions. EG: ‘experimental philosophers have the right idea, because at least they’re not relying on intuitions’ (or words to that effect). On a related note, despite loving some of the content that comes out of LessWrong folks, I think I am more optimistic about traditional philosophy than they are. The impression I got from studying metaethics is that intuitions are indispensable when considering moral claims, for instance. I don’t think that evolutionary debunking arguments undermine (at least all of) those intuitions either. However, I will keep an open mind!
Anyway, the point of the above is: I wonder how much these questions regarding career advice depend on certain metaphilosophical views, like how optimistic one is about mainstream research in ethics?
(Though funnily enough, the authors of the 80K article aren’t such pessimists— EG: MacAskill has plenty of ethics papers which feature the method of reflective equilibrium).
Most philosophers will automatically be metaphilosophical optimists. I’d love to know what fraction of the dropouts are pessimists.