I agree that there are fewer lower hanging fruit than there used to be. On the other hand, there’s more guidance on what to do and more support for how to do it (perhaps “better maps to the trees” and “better ladders”—I think I’m plagiarising someone else on the ladder bit). I’d guess that it is now overall somewhat or significantly harder for someone in the position Ben Todd was in to make something as useful as 80k, but it doesn’t seem totally clear.
And in any case, something as useful as 80k is a high bar! I think something could be much less useful and still be very useful. And someone perhaps could “skill up” more than Ben Todd had, but only for like a couple years.
And I think there really are still a lot of fairly low hanging fruit. I think some evidence for this is the continuing number of EA projects that seem to fill niches that seem like they obviously should be filled, seem to be providing value, and are created by pretty early-career people. (I can expand on this if you want, but I think e.g. looking at lists of EA orgs already gives a sense of what I mean.)
I agree with many parts of your comment, but I continue to think only some sizeable fraction of people should be advised to “Go make yourself big and strong somewhere else, then come back here and show us what you can do”, while also:
many people should try both approaches at first
many people should focus mostly on the explicitly EA paths (usually after trying both approaches and getting some evidence about comparative advantage)
many people should go make themselves big and strong and impactful somewhere else,and then just stay there, doing great stuff
I think it’s perhaps a little irresponsible to give public advice that’s narrower than that—narrower advice makes sense if you’re talking to a specific person and you have evidence about which of those categories of people they’re part of, but not for a public audience.
(I think it’s also fine to give public advice like “on the margin, somewhat more people should be doing X, and some ways to tell if you specifically should be doing X are Y and Z”. I think 80k’s advice tends to look like that. Though even that often gets boiled down by other people to “quick, everyone should do X!”, and then creates problems.)
I agree that there are fewer lower hanging fruit than there used to be. On the other hand, there’s more guidance on what to do and more support for how to do it (perhaps “better maps to the trees” and “better ladders”—I think I’m plagiarising someone else on the ladder bit). I’d guess that it is now overall somewhat or significantly harder for someone in the position Ben Todd was in to make something as useful as 80k, but it doesn’t seem totally clear.
And in any case, something as useful as 80k is a high bar! I think something could be much less useful and still be very useful. And someone perhaps could “skill up” more than Ben Todd had, but only for like a couple years.
And I think there really are still a lot of fairly low hanging fruit. I think some evidence for this is the continuing number of EA projects that seem to fill niches that seem like they obviously should be filled, seem to be providing value, and are created by pretty early-career people. (I can expand on this if you want, but I think e.g. looking at lists of EA orgs already gives a sense of what I mean.)
I agree with many parts of your comment, but I continue to think only some sizeable fraction of people should be advised to “Go make yourself big and strong somewhere else, then come back here and show us what you can do”, while also:
many people should try both approaches at first
many people should focus mostly on the explicitly EA paths (usually after trying both approaches and getting some evidence about comparative advantage)
many people should go make themselves big and strong and impactful somewhere else, and then just stay there, doing great stuff
I think it’s perhaps a little irresponsible to give public advice that’s narrower than that—narrower advice makes sense if you’re talking to a specific person and you have evidence about which of those categories of people they’re part of, but not for a public audience.
(I think it’s also fine to give public advice like “on the margin, somewhat more people should be doing X, and some ways to tell if you specifically should be doing X are Y and Z”. I think 80k’s advice tends to look like that. Though even that often gets boiled down by other people to “quick, everyone should do X!”, and then creates problems.)