Lessons/​advice from Rotblat for Oscar (mainly for myself, sharing because of Lizka’s suggestion, written before reading Lizka’s specific advice, I suppose the similarities aren’t surprising given the content of the post)
Seek out advice from wise people you respect when making important decisions.
I remember when I was deciding whether to take an offer to intern at Jane Street I felt really conflicted and like I was somehow betraying my principles by working for a finance company and sought out advice from several (non-EA) older friends and mentors. I ended up deciding to take the offer, but I think it was a good process. Less positively, I recall just kind of drifting into the AI world and slowly finding AI risk arguments more compelling, but I think in retrospect I probably should have tried to find AI-risk-skeptical people (within and outside EA) to run things by more.
There are many fun and interesting intellectual challenges in the world! You can afford to turn down work on something that seems really challenging and exciting.
It is pretty hard to think about the counterfactual of what I would be doing if I had never been interested in altruism (maybe it is a nonsensical question, depending on one’s views of personal identity?) but my guess is I would be an academic mathematician or philosopher. But turns out there are plenty of interesting questions to think about outside of these fields as well! I’d like to imagine that even if medical physics wasn’t Rotblat’s top choice of the funnest intellectual field, that he found a lot of satisfaction in it regardless!
Social groups are powerful and amazing and dangerous.
I moved to Oxford earlier this year and meeting lots of interesting impressive new people has been great, but I can also feel my thinking being shaped by this milieu. E.g. maybe I am more reluctant than I should ideally be to work for a government, or go back to ETG, or generally go somewhere away from as high a density of EAs.
Lessons/​advice from Rotblat for Oscar (mainly for myself, sharing because of Lizka’s suggestion, written before reading Lizka’s specific advice, I suppose the similarities aren’t surprising given the content of the post)
Seek out advice from wise people you respect when making important decisions.
I remember when I was deciding whether to take an offer to intern at Jane Street I felt really conflicted and like I was somehow betraying my principles by working for a finance company and sought out advice from several (non-EA) older friends and mentors. I ended up deciding to take the offer, but I think it was a good process. Less positively, I recall just kind of drifting into the AI world and slowly finding AI risk arguments more compelling, but I think in retrospect I probably should have tried to find AI-risk-skeptical people (within and outside EA) to run things by more.
There are many fun and interesting intellectual challenges in the world! You can afford to turn down work on something that seems really challenging and exciting.
It is pretty hard to think about the counterfactual of what I would be doing if I had never been interested in altruism (maybe it is a nonsensical question, depending on one’s views of personal identity?) but my guess is I would be an academic mathematician or philosopher. But turns out there are plenty of interesting questions to think about outside of these fields as well! I’d like to imagine that even if medical physics wasn’t Rotblat’s top choice of the funnest intellectual field, that he found a lot of satisfaction in it regardless!
Social groups are powerful and amazing and dangerous.
I moved to Oxford earlier this year and meeting lots of interesting impressive new people has been great, but I can also feel my thinking being shaped by this milieu. E.g. maybe I am more reluctant than I should ideally be to work for a government, or go back to ETG, or generally go somewhere away from as high a density of EAs.