With this post, Iām not trying to tell them what they should do.
I think that conflicts with some phrasings in this post, which are stated as recommendations/āimperatives. So if in future you again have the goal of not telling people what they should do but rather providing something more like emotional support or a framework, I recommend trying to avoid that kind of phrasing. (Because as mentioned in another comment, I think this post in effect provides career advice and that that advice is overly specific and will only be right for some readers.)
Example paragraph thatās stated as about what people should do:
Donāt try to wake up and save the world. Donāt be bycatch. Take 15 years and become a domain expert. Take a career and become a macrostrategy expert. Mentor. Run small and non-EA projects. Circle back to EA periodically with your newfound skills and see what a difference you can make then. There is absolutely no way we can have a longtermist movement if we canāt be longtermist about our own lives and careers. But if we can, then we can.
I can see how you might interpret it that way. Iām rhetorically comfortable with the phrasing here in the informal context of this blog post. Thereās a āYou can...ā implied in the positive statements here (i.e. āYou can take 15 years and become a domain expertā). Sticking that into each sentence would add flab.
There is a real question about whether or not the average person (and especially the average non-native English speaker) would understand this. Iām open to argument that one should always be precisely literal in their statements online, to prioritize avoiding confusion over smoothing the prosody.
I think that conflicts with some phrasings in this post, which are stated as recommendations/āimperatives. So if in future you again have the goal of not telling people what they should do but rather providing something more like emotional support or a framework, I recommend trying to avoid that kind of phrasing. (Because as mentioned in another comment, I think this post in effect provides career advice and that that advice is overly specific and will only be right for some readers.)
Example paragraph thatās stated as about what people should do:
I can see how you might interpret it that way. Iām rhetorically comfortable with the phrasing here in the informal context of this blog post. Thereās a āYou can...ā implied in the positive statements here (i.e. āYou can take 15 years and become a domain expertā). Sticking that into each sentence would add flab.
There is a real question about whether or not the average person (and especially the average non-native English speaker) would understand this. Iām open to argument that one should always be precisely literal in their statements online, to prioritize avoiding confusion over smoothing the prosody.