Notes from an angel of feedback who generally liked the post, but as usual, will comment mostly when he sees a chance to be constructive or invite a response:
Thanks for using headers, summarizing the post up front (including the reasoning for the unusual style), and asking for feedback at the end (in a creative, good-humored way).
The style started out funny/âlight, but started to weigh down the prose by the âepiphanyâ section. Even in jest, Iâm wary of using the name âSt. Xâ to describe anyone in EA; that can be easy to misinterpret for outside readers, and Iâd guess that it would also make some of the people so described pretty uncomfortable.
The fundamental point I took away from this is one Iâve also argued for in recent weeks: If you want to live by something like EA principles, you should try to do the best you can with the resources you have to offer (âhave to offerâ =/â= âhaveâ, you donât need to give everything you can spare or even close to that amount).
On the career front, this means you should do some kind of work that is some combination of intrinsically and consequentially fulfilling. Itâs good to aim for what you believe to be the highest-impact work you can do, but you arenât âobligatedâ to optimize your career (just like you arenât âobligatedâ to do anything else).
And if you donât get a job you applied for, that doesnât imply that you should feel despair, or like the person who did get the job is somehow âbetterâ than you. Thereâs a very big difference between âpeople who seem to be doing the most impactful workâ and âpeople who are the most âlegitâ/âârespectableâ in the communityâ. If you believe in the principles of EA and are trying to live in a way that does as much good as possible for other people given the resources you have to offer, you donât have anything left to prove.
If three people try applying to the same jobs and end up in positions A, B, and C, and it turns out that, a century from now, we know that B was the highest-impact job, this doesnât mean that the person with that job was âmore importantâ or âbetterâ or anything like that. What matters is that each person tried to find a way to have an impact as best they could. Weâre all part of the story of effective altruism.
Claudette Colvinâs activism was very similar to that of Rosa Parks. It turned out that Rosa Parks became much more famous, with a story that was more influential in the Civil Rights movement. This doesnât make Parks a âbetter Civil Rights participantâ than Colvin.
Iâd be remiss not to point out that almost all of historyâs would-be Spinozas, Beethovens, Kahlos, and Vonneguts never produced anything that stood the test of time. Itâs possible that for every musician who makes a good decision by not becoming an accountant, there are two musicians who make poor decisions by not becoming accountants. (Of course, thinking about ways to make an impact through your art/âtalent can be a very promising path, whether that means âconvincing fellow poker professionals to give to EA charitiesâ or âputting on concerts at EA Globalâ.)
Every historical issue can be approached in many ways, some of which are more likely to work than others. Even if we assume that MLK et al. found the optimal strategies for their situations, there are important differences between segregation, factory farming, and AI risk. You can find a historical analogue for nearly anything you want to do, but itâs still better to look at the features of your situation, consider your options, and choose something that seems like the best fit for the specific case at hand.
Altruistic are those who hunger and thirst for positive world-change, for the expected result is such transformation.
The âexpected resultâ seems to be âvery little or no changeâ, based on the track record of people who have tried to change the world over the millennia. Many revolutions are bloody failures. Many movements peter out and vanish, or find themselves on the wrong side of history. Hungering and thirsting help, but thinking, planning, and taking action are paramount.
Despite hundreds of thousands of monthly unique website visitors and tens of thousands of listeners for each podcast, 80Kâs job board typically has contained only a few dozen jobs. Predictably, many hundreds of people began applying for the same positions at the likes of Open Phil. Incredibly talented people started spending many months applying to a dozen or two EA jobs only to wind up empty-handed.
I donât know about historical numbers, but the 80K board currently has a number of jobs in the 150-200 range, plus a list of recommended organizations that might be able to create a new job for the right candidate. There are also manyotherresources for jobs that are EA-adjacent, EA-aligned, or at least âpromising ways to get involved in something that could help you make an impact laterâ. EA jobs are less rare than they seem at first.
Part of this feeling seems to come from something like the Friendship Paradox, though perhaps thereâs an even better mathematical analogue Iâm missing:
If 900 people apply to Open Phil and 100 people apply across 19 other jobs, the EA applicant community will consist of 95% not-super-competitive jobs and 90% people who experienced a lot of competition. Does that make the EA job market competitive, or does it mean that most applicants have quite narrow preferences about the work they want to do?*
(I applied to ~10 positions across EA last year, and in a few cases, was one of three or fewer applicants.)
*This is a trick question. The answer is âboth things are true to some extentâ, which is almost always the answer in this situation.
Notes from an angel of feedback who generally liked the post, but as usual, will comment mostly when he sees a chance to be constructive or invite a response:
Thanks for using headers, summarizing the post up front (including the reasoning for the unusual style), and asking for feedback at the end (in a creative, good-humored way).
The style started out funny/âlight, but started to weigh down the prose by the âepiphanyâ section. Even in jest, Iâm wary of using the name âSt. Xâ to describe anyone in EA; that can be easy to misinterpret for outside readers, and Iâd guess that it would also make some of the people so described pretty uncomfortable.
The fundamental point I took away from this is one Iâve also argued for in recent weeks: If you want to live by something like EA principles, you should try to do the best you can with the resources you have to offer (âhave to offerâ =/â= âhaveâ, you donât need to give everything you can spare or even close to that amount).
On the career front, this means you should do some kind of work that is some combination of intrinsically and consequentially fulfilling. Itâs good to aim for what you believe to be the highest-impact work you can do, but you arenât âobligatedâ to optimize your career (just like you arenât âobligatedâ to do anything else).
And if you donât get a job you applied for, that doesnât imply that you should feel despair, or like the person who did get the job is somehow âbetterâ than you. Thereâs a very big difference between âpeople who seem to be doing the most impactful workâ and âpeople who are the most âlegitâ/âârespectableâ in the communityâ. If you believe in the principles of EA and are trying to live in a way that does as much good as possible for other people given the resources you have to offer, you donât have anything left to prove.
If three people try applying to the same jobs and end up in positions A, B, and C, and it turns out that, a century from now, we know that B was the highest-impact job, this doesnât mean that the person with that job was âmore importantâ or âbetterâ or anything like that. What matters is that each person tried to find a way to have an impact as best they could. Weâre all part of the story of effective altruism.
Claudette Colvinâs activism was very similar to that of Rosa Parks. It turned out that Rosa Parks became much more famous, with a story that was more influential in the Civil Rights movement. This doesnât make Parks a âbetter Civil Rights participantâ than Colvin.
Regarding the artists you mentioned:
Yes, people with outstanding talent in an area should be wary of giving that up to focus on something that seems more effective. Being world-class at anything can be really impactful.
Iâd be remiss not to point out that almost all of historyâs would-be Spinozas, Beethovens, Kahlos, and Vonneguts never produced anything that stood the test of time. Itâs possible that for every musician who makes a good decision by not becoming an accountant, there are two musicians who make poor decisions by not becoming accountants. (Of course, thinking about ways to make an impact through your art/âtalent can be a very promising path, whether that means âconvincing fellow poker professionals to give to EA charitiesâ or âputting on concerts at EA Globalâ.)
Every historical issue can be approached in many ways, some of which are more likely to work than others. Even if we assume that MLK et al. found the optimal strategies for their situations, there are important differences between segregation, factory farming, and AI risk. You can find a historical analogue for nearly anything you want to do, but itâs still better to look at the features of your situation, consider your options, and choose something that seems like the best fit for the specific case at hand.
The âexpected resultâ seems to be âvery little or no changeâ, based on the track record of people who have tried to change the world over the millennia. Many revolutions are bloody failures. Many movements peter out and vanish, or find themselves on the wrong side of history. Hungering and thirsting help, but thinking, planning, and taking action are paramount.
I donât know about historical numbers, but the 80K board currently has a number of jobs in the 150-200 range, plus a list of recommended organizations that might be able to create a new job for the right candidate. There are also many other resources for jobs that are EA-adjacent, EA-aligned, or at least âpromising ways to get involved in something that could help you make an impact laterâ. EA jobs are less rare than they seem at first.
Part of this feeling seems to come from something like the Friendship Paradox, though perhaps thereâs an even better mathematical analogue Iâm missing:
If 900 people apply to Open Phil and 100 people apply across 19 other jobs, the EA applicant community will consist of 95% not-super-competitive jobs and 90% people who experienced a lot of competition. Does that make the EA job market competitive, or does it mean that most applicants have quite narrow preferences about the work they want to do?*
(I applied to ~10 positions across EA last year, and in a few cases, was one of three or fewer applicants.)
*This is a trick question. The answer is âboth things are true to some extentâ, which is almost always the answer in this situation.
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I work for CEA, but these views are my own.