In general I’ve noticed a pattern (of which the above two linked posts are an example) where 80k posts something like “our posts stating that ‘A is true’ have inadvertently caused many people to believe that A is true, here’s why A is actually false” while leaving up the old posts that say ‘A is true’ (sometimes without even a note that they might be outdated). This is especially bad when the older ‘A is true’ content is linked conveniently from the front page while the more recent updates are buried in blog history.
The posts I linked on whether it’s worth pursuing flexible long-term career capital (yes says the Career Guide page, no says a section buried in an Annual Report, though they finally added a note/link from the yes page to the no page a year later when I pointed it out to them) are one example.
The “clarifying talent gaps” blog post largely contradicts an earlier post still linked from the “Research > Overview (start here)” page expressing concerns about an impending shortage of direct workers in general, as well as Key Articles suggesting that “almost all graduates” should seek jobs in research, policy or EA orgs (with earning-to-give only as a last resort) regardless of their specific skills. The latter in turn contradict pages still in the Career Guide and other posts emphasizing earning-to-give as potentially superior to even such high-impact careers as nonprofit CEO or vaccine research.
Earlier they changed their minds on replaceability (before, after); the deprecated view there is no longer prominently linked anywhere but I’m unsure of the wisdom of leaving it up at all.
Given how much 80k’s views have changed over the past 5-10 years, it’s hard to be optimistic about the prospects for successfully building narrow career capital targeted to the skill bottlenecks of 5-10 years from now!
Re point 1, as you say the career capital career guide article now has the disclaimer about how our views have changed at the top. We’re working on a site redesign that will make the career guide significantly less prominent, which will help address the fact that it was written in 2016 and is showing its age. We also have an entirely new summary article on career capital in the works—unfortunately this has taken a lot longer to complete than we would like, contributing to the current unfortunate situation.
Re point 2, the “clarifying talent gaps” post and “why focus on talent gaps” article do offer different views as they were published three years apart. We’ve now added a disclaimer linking to the new one.
The “Which jobs help people the most?” career guide piece, taken as a whole, isn’t more positive about earning to give than the other three options it highlights (research, policy and direct work).
I think your characterisation of the process we suggest in the ‘highest impact careers’ article could give readers the wrong impression. Here’s a broader quote:
When it comes to specific options, right now we often recommend the following five key categories, which should produce at least one good option for almost all graduates:
Research in relevant areas
Government and policy relevant to top problem areas
Work at effective non-profits
Apply an unusual strength to a needed niche
Otherwise, earn to give
You say that that article ‘largely contradicts’ the ‘clarifying talent gaps’ post. I agree there’s a shift in emphasis, as the purpose of the second is to make it clearer, among other things, how many people will find it hard to get into a priority path quickly. But ‘largely contradicts’ is an exaggeration in my opinion.
Re point 3, the replaceability blog post from 2012 you link to as contradicting our current position opens with “This post is out-of-date and no longer reflects our views. Read more.”
Our views will continue to evolve as we learn more, just as they have over the last seven years, though more gradually over time. People should take this into account when following our advice and make shifts more gradually and cautiously than if our recommendations were already perfect and fixed forever.
Updating the site is something we’ve been working on, but going back to review old pages trades off directly with writing up our current views and producing content about our priority paths, something that readers also want us to do.
One can make a case for entirely taking down old posts that no longer reflect our views, but for now I’d prefer to continue adding disclaimers at the top linking to our updated views on a question.
If you find other old pages that no longer reflect our views and lack such disclaimers, it would be great if you could email those pages to me directly so that I can add them.
Re point 2, the “clarifying talent gaps” post and the “why focus on talent gaps” article do offer different views. They were published three years apart. The older post opens with a disclaimer linking to the new one.
Just to be clear, I added the disclaimer to that page today after lexande wrote their initial comment. I don’t think Rob realised that the disclaimer was new.
Just to address your last point/question: I don’t think that the right thing to take away from 80,000 Hours changing its mind over the years on some of these points is pessimism about the targeted career capital one builds now being useful in 5-10 years—there are a lot of ways to do good, and these changes reflect 8,000 Hours changing views on what the absolute optimal way of doing good is. That’s obviously a hard thing to figure out, and it obviously changes over time. But most of their advice seems pretty robust to me. Even if it looks like in 5-10 years it would have been absolutely optimal to be doing something somewhat different, having followed 80,000 Hours advice would still likely put you in a position that is pretty close to the best place to be.
For example, if you are working toward doing governmental AI policy, and in 5-10 years that area is more saturated and so slightly less optimal than they think now it will be, and now it’s better to be working in an independent think tank, or on other technology policy, etc., then (1) what you’re doing is probably still pretty close to optimal, and (2) you might be able to switch over because the direct work you’ve been engaging in has also resulted in useful career capital.
It’s also important to remember that if in 10 years some 80,000 Hours-recommended career path, such as AI policy, is less neglected than it used to be, that is a good thing, and doesn’t undermine people having worked toward it—it’s less neglected in this case because more people worked toward it.
The specific alternatives will vary depending on the path in question and hard to predict things about the future. But if someone spends 5-10 years building career capital to get an operations job at an EA org, and then it turns out that field is extremely crowded with the vast majority of applicants unable to get such jobs, their alternatives may be limited to operations jobs at ineffective charities or random businesses, which may leave them much worse off (both personally and in terms of impact) than if they’d never encountered advice to go into operations (and had instead followed one of the more common career path for ambitious graduates, and been able to donate more as a result).
I’m also concerned about broader changes in how we think about priority paths over the coming 5-10 years. A few years ago, 80k strongly recommended going into management consulting, or trying to found a tech startup. Somebody who made multi-year plans and sacrifices based on that advice would find today that 80k now considers what they did to have been of little value.
It’s also important to remember that if in 10 years some 80,000 Hours-recommended career path, such as AI policy, is less neglected than it used to be, that is a good thing, and doesn’t undermine people having worked toward it—it’s less neglected in this case because more people worked toward it.
80,000 Hours has a responsibility to the people who put their trust in it when making their most important life decisions, to do everything it reasonably can to ensure that its advice does not make them worse off, even if betraying their trust would (considered narrowly/naively) lead to an increase in global utility. Comments like the above, as well as the negligence in posting warnings on outdated/unendorsed pages until months or years later, comments elsewhere in the thread worrying about screening off people who 80k’s advice could help while ignoring the importance of screening off those who it would hurt, and the lack of attention to backup plans, all give me the impression that 80k doesn’t really care about the outcomes of the individual people who trust it, and certainly doesn’t take its responsibility towards them as seriously as it should. Is this true? Do I need to warn people I care about to avoid relying on 80k for advice and read its pages only with caution and suspicion?
Do you have examples of this?
The posts I linked on whether it’s worth pursuing flexible long-term career capital (yes says the Career Guide page, no says a section buried in an Annual Report, though they finally added a note/link from the yes page to the no page a year later when I pointed it out to them) are one example.
The “clarifying talent gaps” blog post largely contradicts an earlier post still linked from the “Research > Overview (start here)” page expressing concerns about an impending shortage of direct workers in general, as well as Key Articles suggesting that “almost all graduates” should seek jobs in research, policy or EA orgs (with earning-to-give only as a last resort) regardless of their specific skills. The latter in turn contradict pages still in the Career Guide and other posts emphasizing earning-to-give as potentially superior to even such high-impact careers as nonprofit CEO or vaccine research.
Earlier they changed their minds on replaceability (before, after); the deprecated view there is no longer prominently linked anywhere but I’m unsure of the wisdom of leaving it up at all.
Given how much 80k’s views have changed over the past 5-10 years, it’s hard to be optimistic about the prospects for successfully building narrow career capital targeted to the skill bottlenecks of 5-10 years from now!
Hi lexande —
Re point 1, as you say the career capital career guide article now has the disclaimer about how our views have changed at the top. We’re working on a site redesign that will make the career guide significantly less prominent, which will help address the fact that it was written in 2016 and is showing its age. We also have an entirely new summary article on career capital in the works—unfortunately this has taken a lot longer to complete than we would like, contributing to the current unfortunate situation.
Re point 2, the “clarifying talent gaps” post and “why focus on talent gaps” article do offer different views as they were published three years apart. We’ve now added a disclaimer linking to the new one.
The “Which jobs help people the most?” career guide piece, taken as a whole, isn’t more positive about earning to give than the other three options it highlights (research, policy and direct work).
I think your characterisation of the process we suggest in the ‘highest impact careers’ article could give readers the wrong impression. Here’s a broader quote:
You say that that article ‘largely contradicts’ the ‘clarifying talent gaps’ post. I agree there’s a shift in emphasis, as the purpose of the second is to make it clearer, among other things, how many people will find it hard to get into a priority path quickly. But ‘largely contradicts’ is an exaggeration in my opinion.
Re point 3, the replaceability blog post from 2012 you link to as contradicting our current position opens with “This post is out-of-date and no longer reflects our views. Read more.”
Our views will continue to evolve as we learn more, just as they have over the last seven years, though more gradually over time. People should take this into account when following our advice and make shifts more gradually and cautiously than if our recommendations were already perfect and fixed forever.
Updating the site is something we’ve been working on, but going back to review old pages trades off directly with writing up our current views and producing content about our priority paths, something that readers also want us to do.
One can make a case for entirely taking down old posts that no longer reflect our views, but for now I’d prefer to continue adding disclaimers at the top linking to our updated views on a question.
If you find other old pages that no longer reflect our views and lack such disclaimers, it would be great if you could email those pages to me directly so that I can add them.
Rob says:
Just to be clear, I added the disclaimer to that page today after lexande wrote their initial comment. I don’t think Rob realised that the disclaimer was new.
[Rob’s now edited his post to make that clear.]
Hey Lexande-
Just to address your last point/question: I don’t think that the right thing to take away from 80,000 Hours changing its mind over the years on some of these points is pessimism about the targeted career capital one builds now being useful in 5-10 years—there are a lot of ways to do good, and these changes reflect 8,000 Hours changing views on what the absolute optimal way of doing good is. That’s obviously a hard thing to figure out, and it obviously changes over time. But most of their advice seems pretty robust to me. Even if it looks like in 5-10 years it would have been absolutely optimal to be doing something somewhat different, having followed 80,000 Hours advice would still likely put you in a position that is pretty close to the best place to be.
For example, if you are working toward doing governmental AI policy, and in 5-10 years that area is more saturated and so slightly less optimal than they think now it will be, and now it’s better to be working in an independent think tank, or on other technology policy, etc., then (1) what you’re doing is probably still pretty close to optimal, and (2) you might be able to switch over because the direct work you’ve been engaging in has also resulted in useful career capital.
It’s also important to remember that if in 10 years some 80,000 Hours-recommended career path, such as AI policy, is less neglected than it used to be, that is a good thing, and doesn’t undermine people having worked toward it—it’s less neglected in this case because more people worked toward it.
The specific alternatives will vary depending on the path in question and hard to predict things about the future. But if someone spends 5-10 years building career capital to get an operations job at an EA org, and then it turns out that field is extremely crowded with the vast majority of applicants unable to get such jobs, their alternatives may be limited to operations jobs at ineffective charities or random businesses, which may leave them much worse off (both personally and in terms of impact) than if they’d never encountered advice to go into operations (and had instead followed one of the more common career path for ambitious graduates, and been able to donate more as a result).
I’m also concerned about broader changes in how we think about priority paths over the coming 5-10 years. A few years ago, 80k strongly recommended going into management consulting, or trying to found a tech startup. Somebody who made multi-year plans and sacrifices based on that advice would find today that 80k now considers what they did to have been of little value.
80,000 Hours has a responsibility to the people who put their trust in it when making their most important life decisions, to do everything it reasonably can to ensure that its advice does not make them worse off, even if betraying their trust would (considered narrowly/naively) lead to an increase in global utility. Comments like the above, as well as the negligence in posting warnings on outdated/unendorsed pages until months or years later, comments elsewhere in the thread worrying about screening off people who 80k’s advice could help while ignoring the importance of screening off those who it would hurt, and the lack of attention to backup plans, all give me the impression that 80k doesn’t really care about the outcomes of the individual people who trust it, and certainly doesn’t take its responsibility towards them as seriously as it should. Is this true? Do I need to warn people I care about to avoid relying on 80k for advice and read its pages only with caution and suspicion?
Hi lexande—thanks for taking the time to share your worries with us. We take our responsibility towards our users seriously.
I don’t think we’re likely to come to agreement right now on a lot of the other specific issues that have been raised.
That said, it’s helpful to know when our users strongly disagree with our priorities and we take that into account when we form our plans.