You don’t need to have argued yourself out of the position. Here’s the thought: ideas are important. Evidence in this direction is EA coming along and showing people their previous ideas were bad. Continuing in the same line, unless we think we have all the best ideas already—which would be frighteningly arrogant—that suggests continuing to developing our ideas would be very useful. Hence working on ideas is still very important for those who, as you said, already “get it”.
Gworly is right that people aren’t lacking ideas. You (astupple) were right that they often lacking good ideas.
Further, on this:
It doesn’t take long, relative to the effort that will be invested to do something, to read and think enough to decide what to do, so it seems more likely to me that on the margin we need more desire to do than more curation of ideas about what to do
This is statement lots of philosophers, including those within EA, would disagree with. Indeed, the whole point of 80k is that your life is a long time and it’s fitting to spend a non-trivial period reflecting on how to do good.
You don’t need to have argued yourself out of the position. Here’s the thought: ideas are important. Evidence in this direction is EA coming along and showing people their previous ideas were bad. Continuing in the same line, unless we think we have all the best ideas already—which would be frighteningly arrogant—that suggests continuing to developing our ideas would be very useful. Hence working on ideas is still very important for those who, as you said, already “get it”.
Gworly is right that people aren’t lacking ideas. You (astupple) were right that they often lacking good ideas.
Further, on this:
This is statement lots of philosophers, including those within EA, would disagree with. Indeed, the whole point of 80k is that your life is a long time and it’s fitting to spend a non-trivial period reflecting on how to do good.