Which careers give you the best public platform to spread important ideas like effective altruism, cosmopolitanism, antispeciesism, or accounting for the interests of future generations?
To put it another way, which individuals have the most influence over the ideas of society (accounting for difficulty in getting those positions)?
However, more broadly I think this is a very difficult question. You can narrow down to a plausible short-list, but after that it’s all about personal fit (i.e. choosing the area where you have the highest chances of outsized success).
It’s also worth bearing in mind that success in almost any field translates into some measure of influence, because success gives you some combination of credibility, money and connections. So again, personal fit could be the key thing to focus on in the medium-term.
The short-list would be things like:
Academia with an emphasis on being a public intellectual
Non-academic public intellectuals
Journalists and bloggers
The media generally
Politicians
Advocacy and campaigning groups
Maybe teaching too, though the scale seems somewhat less than those above.
Which careers give you the best public platform to spread important ideas like effective altruism, cosmopolitanism, antispeciesism, or accounting for the interests of future generations?
To put it another way, which individuals have the most influence over the ideas of society (accounting for difficulty in getting those positions)?
We do try to rate careers based on their ‘advocacy potential’ (basically how promising is this career as a way to spread important ideas), listing some of the most promising of those we’ve considered here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/strategy/strategies/advocacy/
However, more broadly I think this is a very difficult question. You can narrow down to a plausible short-list, but after that it’s all about personal fit (i.e. choosing the area where you have the highest chances of outsized success).
It’s also worth bearing in mind that success in almost any field translates into some measure of influence, because success gives you some combination of credibility, money and connections. So again, personal fit could be the key thing to focus on in the medium-term.
The short-list would be things like:
Academia with an emphasis on being a public intellectual
Non-academic public intellectuals
Journalists and bloggers
The media generally
Politicians
Advocacy and campaigning groups
Maybe teaching too, though the scale seems somewhat less than those above.