My guess is Ben’s referring to people like Holden Karnofsky, who went from working in finance to co-founding and -running GiveWell and then Open Phil to now doing research at a think tank.
Also Nick Bostrom, Nick Beckstead, Will Macaskill, Ben Todd, some of whom have been lifelong academics.
Probably different factors in different cases.
My guess is Ben’s referring to people like Holden Karnofsky, who went from working in finance to co-founding and -running GiveWell and then Open Phil to now doing research at a think tank.
Also Nick Bostrom, Nick Beckstead, Will Macaskill, Ben Todd, some of whom have been lifelong academics.
Probably different factors in different cases.