Lots of things for verbal types to do! Just one: it turns out that precise writing is in very short supply; I know great researchers who are way more productive with writing support.
I also encourage you not to take the tests too seriously. Nor your current dislikes. I’m a philosophy type, but I made myself technical enough for an AI PhD, slowly overcoming a heavy bias against maths. It is unlikely that you couldn’t do the same if you wanted.
I suppose the trouble with tests in the context of the public service is that getting a good score on them is necessary to be hired. Further, I am skeptical that training can improve one’s skills on tasks like spatial rotation (as evidence for this, IQ scores are pretty stable across a person’s lifespan). I’m leaning towards agreeing with what Scott Alexander says in the article I linked here— he does a good job of humorously laying out what seems to be a common response to people claiming that they’re not as good at or interested in maths (and why he thinks this response misses the mark in his own case).
But even if I could scrape by, I have the following worry. To what extent is general policy work actually improved by areas which are to my comparative advantage? Yes, the point about precise writing is a good one. But to the extent that my understanding of ethics is better than the average person’s (which I would say is at least plausible of EAs in general), I’m not sure public service jobs present many opportunities to make use of that understanding. My general impression of the public service is that either you’re given quite specific tasks to perform (I doubt I would be exceptional at said tasks relative to other ambitious young public servants), or perhaps at higher levels you’re given some quite general end and then propose efficient means of achieving that end. In the second case, it seems like being good at economics and so on (which I am not) would be great.
I am more optimistic about some sort of political role, because intuitively, political parties spend more time putting forward ethical arguments than the public service. But I have another worry about politics— suppose you end up in one of the (perhaps uncommon) possible worlds where you gain some measure of political influence. Isn’t a large part of contemporary politics just improving the efficiency of basic services? If so, if you end up taking the place of someone who knew a lot about economics (suppose you got there by being charismatic, a good public speaker and so on), couldn’t this result in things being less efficient? Or is it your impression that politicians can pretty safely pass economic policy on to the experts, and spend most of their time putting forward ethical arguments and so on?
Lots of things for verbal types to do! Just one: it turns out that precise writing is in very short supply; I know great researchers who are way more productive with writing support.
I also encourage you not to take the tests too seriously. Nor your current dislikes. I’m a philosophy type, but I made myself technical enough for an AI PhD, slowly overcoming a heavy bias against maths. It is unlikely that you couldn’t do the same if you wanted.
I suppose the trouble with tests in the context of the public service is that getting a good score on them is necessary to be hired. Further, I am skeptical that training can improve one’s skills on tasks like spatial rotation (as evidence for this, IQ scores are pretty stable across a person’s lifespan). I’m leaning towards agreeing with what Scott Alexander says in the article I linked here— he does a good job of humorously laying out what seems to be a common response to people claiming that they’re not as good at or interested in maths (and why he thinks this response misses the mark in his own case).
But even if I could scrape by, I have the following worry. To what extent is general policy work actually improved by areas which are to my comparative advantage? Yes, the point about precise writing is a good one. But to the extent that my understanding of ethics is better than the average person’s (which I would say is at least plausible of EAs in general), I’m not sure public service jobs present many opportunities to make use of that understanding. My general impression of the public service is that either you’re given quite specific tasks to perform (I doubt I would be exceptional at said tasks relative to other ambitious young public servants), or perhaps at higher levels you’re given some quite general end and then propose efficient means of achieving that end. In the second case, it seems like being good at economics and so on (which I am not) would be great.
I am more optimistic about some sort of political role, because intuitively, political parties spend more time putting forward ethical arguments than the public service. But I have another worry about politics— suppose you end up in one of the (perhaps uncommon) possible worlds where you gain some measure of political influence. Isn’t a large part of contemporary politics just improving the efficiency of basic services? If so, if you end up taking the place of someone who knew a lot about economics (suppose you got there by being charismatic, a good public speaker and so on), couldn’t this result in things being less efficient? Or is it your impression that politicians can pretty safely pass economic policy on to the experts, and spend most of their time putting forward ethical arguments and so on?
Thanks again for your responses!