I would disagree with this too, especially for advice given to college students (the students in our course are mostly first- and second-years, added to my original comment for clarity). We recommend they try out different paths because often their go-to career options may not be particularly high-impact. Our advice is targeted mostly for the 4 years of College. But I think it’s generally good advice for most people to know, because of your own personal interests and inclinations.
I also noticed in the link you provide that 80K suggests going straight to graduate school, which I would also not recommend unless you are certain of what you want to do (and because it can be a substantial financial burden, especially in the US).
One of 80K’s strongest features was (since they seem to be moving in a different direction) giving good generic career advice, especially for undergraduates. It would be a shame to lose this because I think it makes a great initial impression to newcomers and convinces them straight off the bat of how useful EA can be in helping them make meaningful impact, even if they aren’t convinced by all of the ideas behind EA immediately.
One of 80K’s strongest features was (since they seem to be moving in a different direction) giving good generic career advice, especially for undergraduates. It would be a shame to lose this because I think it makes a great initial impression to newcomers and convinces them straight off the bat of how useful EA can be in helping them make meaningful impact, even if they aren’t convinced by all of the ideas behind EA immediately.
That sounds plausible to me if the same recommendations apply to newcomers and to die-hard EAs, such that “do we give advice that’s useful for general audiences?” is just a question of “which good-to-follow advice do we emphasize?” and not “which advice is good for a given demographic to follow?”.
On the other hand, I don’t want 80K to give advice that’s actively bad for die-hard EAs to follow, no matter how useful that advice is to students in general. From my perspective (which might reflect a different set of goals than yours, since I’m not coming at this question from your position), that would make it too hard to just zip over to 80K’s website for advice and trust that I’m getting relevant information.
I don’t think we should underestimate the value of being able to trust that an information source is giving us exactly what it thinks the very best advice is, without having to worry about how much the source might be diluting that advice to make it more memetic or easy-to-sell. Being able to just take statements on the 80K website at face value is a big deal.
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.
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.
These days 80k explicitly advises against trying to build flexible career capital (though I think they’re probably wrong about this).
I would disagree with this too, especially for advice given to college students (the students in our course are mostly first- and second-years, added to my original comment for clarity). We recommend they try out different paths because often their go-to career options may not be particularly high-impact. Our advice is targeted mostly for the 4 years of College. But I think it’s generally good advice for most people to know, because of your own personal interests and inclinations.
I also noticed in the link you provide that 80K suggests going straight to graduate school, which I would also not recommend unless you are certain of what you want to do (and because it can be a substantial financial burden, especially in the US).
One of 80K’s strongest features was (since they seem to be moving in a different direction) giving good generic career advice, especially for undergraduates. It would be a shame to lose this because I think it makes a great initial impression to newcomers and convinces them straight off the bat of how useful EA can be in helping them make meaningful impact, even if they aren’t convinced by all of the ideas behind EA immediately.
That sounds plausible to me if the same recommendations apply to newcomers and to die-hard EAs, such that “do we give advice that’s useful for general audiences?” is just a question of “which good-to-follow advice do we emphasize?” and not “which advice is good for a given demographic to follow?”.
On the other hand, I don’t want 80K to give advice that’s actively bad for die-hard EAs to follow, no matter how useful that advice is to students in general. From my perspective (which might reflect a different set of goals than yours, since I’m not coming at this question from your position), that would make it too hard to just zip over to 80K’s website for advice and trust that I’m getting relevant information.
I don’t think we should underestimate the value of being able to trust that an information source is giving us exactly what it thinks the very best advice is, without having to worry about how much the source might be diluting that advice to make it more memetic or easy-to-sell. Being able to just take statements on the 80K website at face value is a big deal.
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.