After reading 80K hours, it seems like careers in public policy, governance (etc) are highly recommended. For example, the article titled Philosophy Academia says:
‘A high degree of personal fit for philosophy may suggest a good fit for other less professionally risky and potentially higher impact paths as well, such as a PhD in economics or a career shaping public policy.‘
Articles related to law school emphasize the value of policy careers as well. EG: the 80k hours page on becoming a congressional staffer say this is an excellent path for US lawyers to pursue, the article on corporate law recommends policy careers, and there was recently an excellent recent post on the forum detailing the pros and cons of law school in the USA (one of the greatest pros was law’s relevance for policy.)
However, two things worry me about this view of policy careers, both in my own case and for other people like me. First, similar to Scott Alexander, I’m not good at (and find it difficult to be interested in) maths, and the gap between my verbal and quantitative scores on aptitude tests is really wide. So when I read about how promising policy careers are in terms of impact, I begin thinking something like: hold on, don’t many of the people in policy end up predicting the behavior of individuals and states, including in economic contexts? If so, wouldn’t one’s aptitude for those areas be heavily correlated with mathematical ability? It seems difficult even in principle to imagine social science being any other way— indeed, 80k expresses their dissatisfaction with mainstream historical work as generally lacking quantitative rigor.
One may object that certain areas of policy, such as law, are more verbally focused. EG: the actual practice of law involves a lot of reading, interpretation, and (maybe?) philosophical acumen. But if I understand 80k correctly, those are precisely the positions they expect to be less impactful. One could also object that a normative (as opposed to descriptive) analysis of policies is going to be verbally focused. Which is true, but that is the kind of thing that people study in philosophy departments (and 80k are less optimistic about).
My second concern is as follows:
Suppose one lives in a place like Australia, New Zealand, or any country with a smaller and less impactful government. Even if one was to become a senior public servant in these countries, could you really have much of an influence on say, US AI policy? I also wonder if the same is true of elected officials. Even if say, the Australian prime minister wrote to the US president about AI safety, isn’t the US president likely to (politely) tell him or her to sit down?
So for people who live in smaller countries and have IQ scores heavily skewed towards verbal reasoning, should the 80K advice be reversed? Is philosophy likely to be more promising than these careers in expectation?
(More detail on my reasoning for those who are interested: I am defining ‘philosophy’ very broadly here. This could include theoretical work in fields like psychology, or whatever. Any sort of research that someone could do without performing arithmetic. I also realize that it is very unlikely that any one philosophy postgrad will produce groundbreaking research, and I assume that as with many fields, most of one’s expected impact is contained in the counterfactual scenarios where one is spectacularly successful. I am also assuming that a philosophy postgrad has more time than a policy professional to do things like community building, become familiar with core EA/LessWrong ideas [which seems valuable for all sorts of reasons, including community building ones]. Apologies for this post not being meticulously thought out— I am in a crucial academic period for the next few months, but after that I would really like to consider the above points more thoroughly).
Thank you very much for your feedback. I will edit this post to try and incorporate it.
How important are quantitative abilities and your country of citizenship for policy careers?
Dear EA forum,
After reading 80K hours, it seems like careers in public policy, governance (etc) are highly recommended. For example, the article titled Philosophy Academia says:
‘A high degree of personal fit for philosophy may suggest a good fit for other less professionally risky and potentially higher impact paths as well, such as a PhD in economics or a career shaping public policy.‘
Articles related to law school emphasize the value of policy careers as well. EG: the 80k hours page on becoming a congressional staffer say this is an excellent path for US lawyers to pursue, the article on corporate law recommends policy careers, and there was recently an excellent recent post on the forum detailing the pros and cons of law school in the USA (one of the greatest pros was law’s relevance for policy.)
However, two things worry me about this view of policy careers, both in my own case and for other people like me. First, similar to Scott Alexander, I’m not good at (and find it difficult to be interested in) maths, and the gap between my verbal and quantitative scores on aptitude tests is really wide. So when I read about how promising policy careers are in terms of impact, I begin thinking something like: hold on, don’t many of the people in policy end up predicting the behavior of individuals and states, including in economic contexts? If so, wouldn’t one’s aptitude for those areas be heavily correlated with mathematical ability? It seems difficult even in principle to imagine social science being any other way— indeed, 80k expresses their dissatisfaction with mainstream historical work as generally lacking quantitative rigor.
One may object that certain areas of policy, such as law, are more verbally focused. EG: the actual practice of law involves a lot of reading, interpretation, and (maybe?) philosophical acumen. But if I understand 80k correctly, those are precisely the positions they expect to be less impactful. One could also object that a normative (as opposed to descriptive) analysis of policies is going to be verbally focused. Which is true, but that is the kind of thing that people study in philosophy departments (and 80k are less optimistic about).
My second concern is as follows:
Suppose one lives in a place like Australia, New Zealand, or any country with a smaller and less impactful government. Even if one was to become a senior public servant in these countries, could you really have much of an influence on say, US AI policy? I also wonder if the same is true of elected officials. Even if say, the Australian prime minister wrote to the US president about AI safety, isn’t the US president likely to (politely) tell him or her to sit down?
So for people who live in smaller countries and have IQ scores heavily skewed towards verbal reasoning, should the 80K advice be reversed? Is philosophy likely to be more promising than these careers in expectation?
(More detail on my reasoning for those who are interested: I am defining ‘philosophy’ very broadly here. This could include theoretical work in fields like psychology, or whatever. Any sort of research that someone could do without performing arithmetic. I also realize that it is very unlikely that any one philosophy postgrad will produce groundbreaking research, and I assume that as with many fields, most of one’s expected impact is contained in the counterfactual scenarios where one is spectacularly successful. I am also assuming that a philosophy postgrad has more time than a policy professional to do things like community building, become familiar with core EA/LessWrong ideas [which seems valuable for all sorts of reasons, including community building ones]. Apologies for this post not being meticulously thought out— I am in a crucial academic period for the next few months, but after that I would really like to consider the above points more thoroughly).
Thank you very much for your feedback. I will edit this post to try and incorporate it.