Three not particularly important or related thoughts from having thought about SHIC a fair amount:
One of the hardest parts of high school outreach I think will be getting people to continue to be engaged over their college career (assuming they go to college), which is four years of substantial chance of value drift before any direct impact happens. Whereas recruiting from college, the distance is much less.
It seems like the typical “good student” high schoolers optimize a lot for having authority figures like them, which could easily lead them to endorse—even enthusiastically—EA views they don’t end up holding all that strongly. This could skew outreach and the perception of success.
I think one of the best things about hearing about EA pre-college is it would let you set up your college plan (e.g., major, internships) in an EA-directed way, which I think is one of the most useful things to do for an EA-career, as opposed to having to make some sort of more difficult within-college or post-college transition. (On reflection with full hindsight, I’m not sure what I would’ve done differently or how I would’ve had more impact if I had heard of EA in high school rather than halfway through college, but I certainly did feel off-guard in that respect.)
I think one of the best things about hearing about EA pre-college is it would let you set up your college plan (e.g., major, internships) in an EA-directed way
To me, this seems like the best case for engaging with high schoolers over college students. I seem to meet a lot of EAs who study something that doesn’t correlate well with most high-impact careers and find themselves wishing they’d heard about EA sooner so they could have studied something more practical.
The major questions I have with this are 1) can you actually convince high schoolers to change their career plans, and 2) if so, will they actually apply EA ideas in a way that increases their impact? (or as opposed to just blindly following 80k recommendations and doing something they don’t like or aren’t good at.) I guess both are also risks associated with trying to get anyone to make an EA-related career change, but high schoolers seem more at risk to me, particularly with #2 since I think they have less self-awareness regarding their skills and interests.
Three not particularly important or related thoughts from having thought about SHIC a fair amount:
One of the hardest parts of high school outreach I think will be getting people to continue to be engaged over their college career (assuming they go to college), which is four years of substantial chance of value drift before any direct impact happens. Whereas recruiting from college, the distance is much less.
It seems like the typical “good student” high schoolers optimize a lot for having authority figures like them, which could easily lead them to endorse—even enthusiastically—EA views they don’t end up holding all that strongly. This could skew outreach and the perception of success.
I think one of the best things about hearing about EA pre-college is it would let you set up your college plan (e.g., major, internships) in an EA-directed way, which I think is one of the most useful things to do for an EA-career, as opposed to having to make some sort of more difficult within-college or post-college transition. (On reflection with full hindsight, I’m not sure what I would’ve done differently or how I would’ve had more impact if I had heard of EA in high school rather than halfway through college, but I certainly did feel off-guard in that respect.)
To me, this seems like the best case for engaging with high schoolers over college students. I seem to meet a lot of EAs who study something that doesn’t correlate well with most high-impact careers and find themselves wishing they’d heard about EA sooner so they could have studied something more practical.
The major questions I have with this are 1) can you actually convince high schoolers to change their career plans, and 2) if so, will they actually apply EA ideas in a way that increases their impact? (or as opposed to just blindly following 80k recommendations and doing something they don’t like or aren’t good at.) I guess both are also risks associated with trying to get anyone to make an EA-related career change, but high schoolers seem more at risk to me, particularly with #2 since I think they have less self-awareness regarding their skills and interests.