You probably won’t successfully build up skills and become capable enough.
This post is absoultely not meaning to upset young aspiring EA people. However, I’ve seen a lot of EA people thinking “If I build up skills well, I’ll be hired in an EA org or enter an influencial non-EA orgs.” Holding that view is silimar to “If I have the talent and build up basketball skills well and is hard-working, I’ll get into NBA”. These are all true, but “if I build up skills well” is a really big if. I’m uncertain, but it seems only 10-20% of people successfully got jobs/grantings in the EA world.
That’d mean 80-90% of people failed to meet the standard of “a capable/skilled person that’s worth paid to do direct work”. In x-risks it may be easier to find a direct work job in the non-EA world. However, in a lot of fields, such as animal welfare and s-risks, the marginal contribution in the non-EA world may be significantly lower because the non-EA world don’t care about reducing farmed/wild animal suffering or digital suffering.
The point is: I think while working extremely hard to become a capable person, EA people should hold an attitude: “It’s probable I’ll failed to become capable enough to contribute to direct work meaningfully, and I have to bulld earn to give back-up plan”. “If a lot of people failed to build up their skills to be hired in EA world, what makes me thinks I probably would success?” BTW, Doing earn to give is still valuable(if you can donate over $50,000 a year).
The implication is: If you’re making a decision to trade-off between direct work and earn to give(such as to drop out of college/ to attend medical school or not), you shouldn’t be optimistic at all on the believe that “I’m going to build up my skills well and contribute effectively in direct-work” unless you already have clear-evidence that you’re extremely hard-working and are on the correct path of building skills for years
(Edit: I’m uncertain about my theory and is willing to hear critique, and it seems many people disagree this, but just clicking the disagree doesn’t help the world and change my thoughts, I’d love to hear your reasons if you can type down in reply)
I’m far more optimistic than you on this front. There are a wide range of roles in a wide range of organisations which require a wide range of skillsets. Just because you aren’t “good enough” to do one kind of job, doesn’t mean you can’t thrive or excel another. Marketing skills are different from ops skills which are different from grant-making skills. Some organisations need great cooks, practical activists or personal assistants.
Your teens or early 20s too young to determine if you will gain skill A or B. At 22 I was genuinely terrible at writing. Now I’m pretty good. At 22 I was immature and couldn’t have dreamed of leading an organisation. Perhaps I was 26-28 years old before I became stronger at critical thinking I was past 30 before I would have considered leading an organisation.
Sometimes there can be confidence issues of psychological barriers to break through when you are younger too, which prevent us gaining critical skills. Even very late blooming is rare but possible. Frank McCourt published his first novel Angela’s ashes at age 66, which won a Pulitzer prize.
Life can be complicated and have many twists and turns. Your situation at age 21 means something, but I wouldn’t over-index on it!
Thanks for your willingness to type down your critique. Your idea is basically: Maybe I can’t become a PR 90 researcher, but at least I probably could become PR 90 at something and collaborate with others and make impact.
But my critique is : Suppose you’re PR 90 at writing skills but average at every other things. Maybe you can apply for writing position in EA world, to help researchers publish better articles/papers. But it’s hard to get in EA world, if you work in non-EA world, it seems impossible to reduce AI s-risks if you’re only good at writing. You’ll still get a writing job in non-EA world, but what you’re going to write is probably not related to AI s-risks at all. It seems only people with the skill of research or policy can make impact for AI s-risks in the non-EA world(such as implementing safety designs). There’s in fact not that many skills that can make influences in the non-EA world, especially for s-risks
I think there is a huge difference between:
Being hired by an EA (TM) org
Doing something counterfactually impactful
If you were hired by an EA org as paid staff, you only get credit for the % that you are better than the next possible hire.
On the other hand, if you have a normal job and donate, all the donations are counterfactual.
Similarly, if you do unpaid work the bar is much lower, and would be something akin to “are the coordination costs worth it?”.
That’s partially true I think. However, some EA orgs aren’t funding constrainted at all, therefore they hire people that’s better than a certain bar, not hiring people in a limited number. In this, you get whole credit, because even if you decide not to work there, there won’t be another people hired
Why do you think earning to give is only valuable if you can give more than 50’000?
I think earning to give is valuable for anyone that can‘t do direct work. Even if they can give just 1$.
What I mean here is if you can give> $50000 a year, then it could be probable the contribution is better than direct work.
Of course, doing any small altruistic things is valuable and worth admiration(even only giving $1)
Ok I see what you mean. I agree. The number probably depends on how good you are and how good the next best person is but for every position there is probably some amount of money for which you rather left the position to someone else.
This is still an extremely high bar.