However, we can also err by thinking about a too narrow reference class
Just to pick up on this, a worry I’ve had for a while—which I’m don’t think I’m going to do a very job explaining here—is that the reference class people use is “current EAs” not “current and future EAs”. To explain, when I started to get involved in EA back in 2015, 80k’s advice, in caricature, was that EAs should become software developers or management consultants and earn to give, whereas research roles, such as becoming a philosopher or historian, are low priority. Now the advice has, again in caricature, swung the other way: management consultancy looks very unpromising, and people are being recommended to do research. There’s even occassion discussion (see MacAskill’s 80k podcast) that, on the margin, philosophers might be useful. If you’d taken 80k’s advice seriously and gone in consultancy, it seems you would have done the wrong thing. (Objection, imagining Wiblin’s voice: but what about personal fit? We talked about that. Reply: if personal fit does all the work—i.e. “just do the thing that has greatest personal fit” - then there’s no point making more substantive recommendations)
I’m concerned that people will funnel themselves into jobs that are high-priority now, in which they have a small comparative advice to other EAs, rather than jobs in which they will later have a much bigger comparative advantage to other EAs. At the present time, the conversation is about EA needing more operations roles. Suppose two EAs, C and D, are thinking about what to do. C realises he’s 50% better than D at ops and 75% better at research, so C goes into Ops because that’s higher priority. D goes into research. Time passes the movement grows. E now joins. E is better than C at Ops. The problem is that C has taken an ops role and it’s much harder for C to transition to research. C only has a comparative advantage at ops in the first time period, thereafter he doesn’t. Overall, it looks like C should just have gone into research, not ops.
In short, our comparative advantage is not fixed, but will change over time simply based on who else shows up. Hence we should think about comparative advantage over our lifetimes rather than the shorter term. This likely changes things.
I agree it’s really complicated, but merits some thinking. The one practical implication I take is “if 80k says I should be doing X, there’s almost no chance X will be the best thing I could do by the time I’m in a position to do it”
Before operations it was AI strategy researchers, and before AI strategy researchers it was web developers. At various times it has been EtG, technical AI safety, movement-building, etc. We can’t predict talent shortages precisely in advance, so if you’re a person with a broad skillset, I do think it might make sense to act as flexible human capital and address whatever is currently most needed.
I think I’d go the other way and suggest people focus more on personal fit: i.e. do the thing in which you have greatest comparative advantage relative to the world as a whole, not just to the EA world.
I agree with the “in short” section. I’m less sure about exactly how it changes things. It seems reasonable to think more about your comparative advantage compared to the world as a whole (taking that as a proxy for the future composition of the community), or maybe just try to think more about which types of talent will be hardest to attract in the long-term. I don’t think much the changes in advice about etg and consulting were due to this exact mistake.
One small thing we’ll do to help with this is ask people to project the biggest talent shortages at longer time horizons in our next talent survey.
This is a good point, although talent across time is comparatively harder to estimate. So “act according to present-time comparative advantage” might be a passable approximation in most cases.
We also need to consider the interim period when thinking about trades across time. If C takes the ops job, then in the period between C taking the job and E joining the movement, we get better ops coverage. It’s not immediately obvious to me how this plays out, might need a little bit of modelling.
Just to pick up on this, a worry I’ve had for a while—which I’m don’t think I’m going to do a very job explaining here—is that the reference class people use is “current EAs” not “current and future EAs”. To explain, when I started to get involved in EA back in 2015, 80k’s advice, in caricature, was that EAs should become software developers or management consultants and earn to give, whereas research roles, such as becoming a philosopher or historian, are low priority. Now the advice has, again in caricature, swung the other way: management consultancy looks very unpromising, and people are being recommended to do research. There’s even occassion discussion (see MacAskill’s 80k podcast) that, on the margin, philosophers might be useful. If you’d taken 80k’s advice seriously and gone in consultancy, it seems you would have done the wrong thing. (Objection, imagining Wiblin’s voice: but what about personal fit? We talked about that. Reply: if personal fit does all the work—i.e. “just do the thing that has greatest personal fit” - then there’s no point making more substantive recommendations)
I’m concerned that people will funnel themselves into jobs that are high-priority now, in which they have a small comparative advice to other EAs, rather than jobs in which they will later have a much bigger comparative advantage to other EAs. At the present time, the conversation is about EA needing more operations roles. Suppose two EAs, C and D, are thinking about what to do. C realises he’s 50% better than D at ops and 75% better at research, so C goes into Ops because that’s higher priority. D goes into research. Time passes the movement grows. E now joins. E is better than C at Ops. The problem is that C has taken an ops role and it’s much harder for C to transition to research. C only has a comparative advantage at ops in the first time period, thereafter he doesn’t. Overall, it looks like C should just have gone into research, not ops.
In short, our comparative advantage is not fixed, but will change over time simply based on who else shows up. Hence we should think about comparative advantage over our lifetimes rather than the shorter term. This likely changes things.
I completely agree. I considered making the point in the post itself, but I didn’t because I’m not sure about the practical implications myself!
I agree it’s really complicated, but merits some thinking. The one practical implication I take is “if 80k says I should be doing X, there’s almost no chance X will be the best thing I could do by the time I’m in a position to do it”
That seems very strong—you’re saying all our recommendations are wrong, even though we’re already trying to take account of this effect.
Before operations it was AI strategy researchers, and before AI strategy researchers it was web developers. At various times it has been EtG, technical AI safety, movement-building, etc. We can’t predict talent shortages precisely in advance, so if you’re a person with a broad skillset, I do think it might make sense to act as flexible human capital and address whatever is currently most needed.
I think I’d go the other way and suggest people focus more on personal fit: i.e. do the thing in which you have greatest comparative advantage relative to the world as a whole, not just to the EA world.
I agree with the “in short” section. I’m less sure about exactly how it changes things. It seems reasonable to think more about your comparative advantage compared to the world as a whole (taking that as a proxy for the future composition of the community), or maybe just try to think more about which types of talent will be hardest to attract in the long-term. I don’t think much the changes in advice about etg and consulting were due to this exact mistake.
One small thing we’ll do to help with this is ask people to project the biggest talent shortages at longer time horizons in our next talent survey.
This is a good point, although talent across time is comparatively harder to estimate. So “act according to present-time comparative advantage” might be a passable approximation in most cases.
We also need to consider the interim period when thinking about trades across time. If C takes the ops job, then in the period between C taking the job and E joining the movement, we get better ops coverage. It’s not immediately obvious to me how this plays out, might need a little bit of modelling.