Hi lexande, Habryka, Milan — As you note, the quiz is no longer current content. It has been moved way down in the site structure, and carries this disclaimer:
“N.B. The results from this quiz were last reviewed in 2016 and the ranking may no longer reflect our current views. Your top results should be read as suggestions for further research, not recommendations. … The quiz doesn’t tell you what you should do, but can give you ideas to research further.”
Yep, I saw that. I didn’t actually intend to criticize your use of the quiz, sorry if it came across that way. I just gave it a try and figured I would contribute some data.
(This doesn’t mean I agree with how 80k communicates information. I haven’t kept up at all with 80k’s writing, so I don’t have any strong opinions either way here)
Yeah, my response was directed at cole_haus suggesting the quiz as an example of 80k currently providing personalized content, when in fact it’s pretty clearly deprecated, unmaintained, and no longer linked anywhere prominent within the site. (Though I’m not sure what purpose keeping it up at all serves at this point.)
Yeah, I hadn’t realized it was more or less deprecated. (The page itself doesn’t seem to give any indication of that. Edit: Ah, it does. I missed the second paragraph of the sidenote when I quickly scanned for some disclaimer.)
Also, apparently unfortunately, it’s the first sublink under the 80,000 Hours site on Google if you search for 80,000 Hours.
“The page itself doesn’t seem to give any indication of that.”
As I pointed out it says at the top:
“N.B. The results from this quiz were last reviewed in 2016 and the ranking may no longer reflect our current views. Your top results should be read as suggestions for further research, not recommendations. … The quiz doesn’t tell you what you should do, but can give you ideas to research further.”
We’ve been working to get it downgraded from the Google search results, but unfortunately we don’t have full control over that.
I like there being a record of out-of-date recommendations and tools on the 80K site [edit: so I know how they’ve updated, and so I can access the parts of old resources that aren’t out of date].
A curated list of Archive links might work OK as a replacement, I suppose. But in general, given that various pages have accumulated offsite hyperlinks over the years, I think it’s more informative to plaster giant “this content is out-of-of-date because X” disclaimers on the relevant pages, rather than just taking the page down.
That applies to most of the deprecated pages, but doesn’t apply to the quiz, because its results are based on the database of existing career reviews. The fact that it gives the same results for nearly everybody is the result of new reviews being added to that database since it was written/calibrated. It’s not actually possible to get it to show you the results it would have showed you back in 2016 the last time it was at all endorsed.
Yep, the quiz may be an exception! I was commenting on the general thread of discussion on this page “just take everything down that’s out of date,” and the quiz subthread was just the one that caught my eye. My apologies for making it sound like the quiz in particular is the thing I want preserved; I don’t have a strong view on that.
FWIW, I was specifically looking for a disclaimer and it didn’t quickly come to my attention. It looks like a few other people in these subthreads may have also missed the disclaimer.
Congressional staffer and policy oriented jobs are the top two highest weighted profiles of about 20 so everyone will automatically get these (followed by a ranked list of the remaining 15 options, but only the first profile is displayed, possibly a glitch). The biggest filter is quantitative—if you select no it cuts 15 profiles, then a cut of any profiles with weights of 0.
The weights are biased—it’s impossible to get arts or marketing as a final result (because it’s not a recommended job pathway within EA). The basic premise is if you are good at math and science—do these high-impact math and science jobs. If not, do any other non-quantitative high-impact job we recommend.
The results aren’t personal enough to have it be designed like this—a simple list of all 35 profiles with a quantitative skills filter and then ranking profiles by 80k’s weights would be sufficient enough. It’s really not well-suited for a quiz, but a filtered list like the job board might be more effective.
Note that the “policy-oriented government job” article is specific to the UK. Some of the arguments about impact may generalize but the civil service in the UK in general has more influence on policy than in the US or some other countries, and the more specific information about paths in etc doesn’t really generalize at all.
fwiw I’ve never gotten those outcomes when I’ve taken the quiz.
I got them on basically every setting that remotely applied to me.
Hi lexande, Habryka, Milan — As you note, the quiz is no longer current content. It has been moved way down in the site structure, and carries this disclaimer:
Yep, I saw that. I didn’t actually intend to criticize your use of the quiz, sorry if it came across that way. I just gave it a try and figured I would contribute some data.
(This doesn’t mean I agree with how 80k communicates information. I haven’t kept up at all with 80k’s writing, so I don’t have any strong opinions either way here)
Yeah, my response was directed at cole_haus suggesting the quiz as an example of 80k currently providing personalized content, when in fact it’s pretty clearly deprecated, unmaintained, and no longer linked anywhere prominent within the site. (Though I’m not sure what purpose keeping it up at all serves at this point.)
Yeah, I hadn’t realized it was more or less deprecated. (The page itself doesn’t seem to give any indication of that. Edit: Ah, it does. I missed the second paragraph of the sidenote when I quickly scanned for some disclaimer.)
Also, apparently unfortunately, it’s the first sublink under the 80,000 Hours site on Google if you search for 80,000 Hours.
“The page itself doesn’t seem to give any indication of that.”
As I pointed out it says at the top:
We’ve been working to get it downgraded from the Google search results, but unfortunately we don’t have full control over that.
Why don’t you just take it down entirely? It’s already basically non-functional.
I like there being a record of out-of-date recommendations and tools on the 80K site [edit: so I know how they’ve updated, and so I can access the parts of old resources that aren’t out of date].
A curated list of Archive links might work OK as a replacement, I suppose. But in general, given that various pages have accumulated offsite hyperlinks over the years, I think it’s more informative to plaster giant “this content is out-of-of-date because X” disclaimers on the relevant pages, rather than just taking the page down.
That applies to most of the deprecated pages, but doesn’t apply to the quiz, because its results are based on the database of existing career reviews. The fact that it gives the same results for nearly everybody is the result of new reviews being added to that database since it was written/calibrated. It’s not actually possible to get it to show you the results it would have showed you back in 2016 the last time it was at all endorsed.
Yep, the quiz may be an exception! I was commenting on the general thread of discussion on this page “just take everything down that’s out of date,” and the quiz subthread was just the one that caught my eye. My apologies for making it sound like the quiz in particular is the thing I want preserved; I don’t have a strong view on that.
Perhaps the case for keeping the page up has something to do with the page being highly ranked on Google search...
Ah, I see that now. Thanks.
FWIW, I was specifically looking for a disclaimer and it didn’t quickly come to my attention. It looks like a few other people in these subthreads may have also missed the disclaimer.
It’s not as prominent as it should be. We’re going to fix that.
Ah, I hadn’t taken the quiz in a couple years. Looks like they’ve changed it since then.
I just tried 5 different answer-configurations of the quiz: https://80000hours.org/career-quiz/
And got “congressional staffer” or “policy-oriented government job” for all configurations. Guess I should move to DC.
Congressional staffer and policy oriented jobs are the top two highest weighted profiles of about 20 so everyone will automatically get these (followed by a ranked list of the remaining 15 options, but only the first profile is displayed, possibly a glitch). The biggest filter is quantitative—if you select no it cuts 15 profiles, then a cut of any profiles with weights of 0.
The weights are biased—it’s impossible to get arts or marketing as a final result (because it’s not a recommended job pathway within EA). The basic premise is if you are good at math and science—do these high-impact math and science jobs. If not, do any other non-quantitative high-impact job we recommend.
The results aren’t personal enough to have it be designed like this—a simple list of all 35 profiles with a quantitative skills filter and then ranking profiles by 80k’s weights would be sufficient enough. It’s really not well-suited for a quiz, but a filtered list like the job board might be more effective.
Note that the “policy-oriented government job” article is specific to the UK. Some of the arguments about impact may generalize but the civil service in the UK in general has more influence on policy than in the US or some other countries, and the more specific information about paths in etc doesn’t really generalize at all.