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?
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.