If a certain piece of advice turns out to be good for most students but bad for most EA students, then I could see it being possibly interesting and useful for 80K to make a page like “Here’s how our advice to most students would differ from our advice to EA students.” That could then serve a dual purpose by clarifying what sensible “baseline” advice looks like. I think it would also be fine for 80K to link to some offsite, non-80K-branded career advice that they especially endorse for other students, even though they specifically don’t endorse it for maximizing your career’s altruistic impact.
I think this is a good idea. I personally don’t think general advice (that I’ve been referring to about personal fit and flexible career capital) would actively harm individual EAs personally (it might, but I doubt it) as a general framework. I also don’t think it would harm the community in the long term either, because we don’t want people to be demoralized or burn out. But, what you suggest might alleviate some of these concerns.
An alternative is to have clear paramterized if X then Y lists, like cole_haus suggests above would solve this issue of not getting the best advice. That way, there is not dilution, simply targeting different audiences. Any kind of mass-outreach has the problem that not everything will apply to everyone.
My biggest concern with what you suggest is that 80K as a major first point-of-contact for new EAs. According to the most recent EA Survey, 25% of new EAs in 2018 first heard of EA through 80K, way up from previous years of 5%. For the reasons I gave above, I think giving general (but still impact-related) advice is going to be really important for people to continue engaging with the community. It also probably won’t help the diversity issue (in professional expertise) with EA (although it seems like that’s fairly low-priority across the board). So, hardcore EA advice might be too much for newcomers vs. the more general “ease into the EA mindset” approach of the original 80K guide, which is still EA branded in some way so maintains engagement with the community.
Yeah, I don’t have a strong object-level view about exactly which advice is best for most EAs; I just wanted to voice some support for letting those recommendations drift apart if it does end up looking like EAs and non-EAs benefit from different things. I think “if X then Y” can definitely be a good solution.
I think this is a good idea. I personally don’t think general advice (that I’ve been referring to about personal fit and flexible career capital) would actively harm individual EAs personally (it might, but I doubt it) as a general framework. I also don’t think it would harm the community in the long term either, because we don’t want people to be demoralized or burn out. But, what you suggest might alleviate some of these concerns.
An alternative is to have clear paramterized if X then Y lists, like cole_haus suggests above would solve this issue of not getting the best advice. That way, there is not dilution, simply targeting different audiences. Any kind of mass-outreach has the problem that not everything will apply to everyone.
My biggest concern with what you suggest is that 80K as a major first point-of-contact for new EAs. According to the most recent EA Survey, 25% of new EAs in 2018 first heard of EA through 80K, way up from previous years of 5%. For the reasons I gave above, I think giving general (but still impact-related) advice is going to be really important for people to continue engaging with the community. It also probably won’t help the diversity issue (in professional expertise) with EA (although it seems like that’s fairly low-priority across the board). So, hardcore EA advice might be too much for newcomers vs. the more general “ease into the EA mindset” approach of the original 80K guide, which is still EA branded in some way so maintains engagement with the community.
Yeah, I don’t have a strong object-level view about exactly which advice is best for most EAs; I just wanted to voice some support for letting those recommendations drift apart if it does end up looking like EAs and non-EAs benefit from different things. I think “if X then Y” can definitely be a good solution.