Yeah, I do think the selection effects here are substantial.
I do think I can identify multiple other very similarly popular pieces of advice that did turn out to be bad reasonably frequently, and caused people to regret their choices, which is evidence the selection effects aren’t completely overdetermining the outcome.
Concretely, I think I know of a good number of people who regret taking the GWWC pledge, a good number of people who regret trying to get an ML PhD, and a good number of people who regret becoming active in policy. I do think those pieces of advice are a bit more controversial than the “don’t become a doctor” advice within the EA Community, so the selection effects are less strong, but I do think the selection effects are not strong enough to make reasoning from experience impossible here.
Yeah, I do think the selection effects here are substantial.
I do think I can identify multiple other very similarly popular pieces of advice that did turn out to be bad reasonably frequently, and caused people to regret their choices, which is evidence the selection effects aren’t completely overdetermining the outcome.
Concretely, I think I know of a good number of people who regret taking the GWWC pledge, a good number of people who regret trying to get an ML PhD, and a good number of people who regret becoming active in policy. I do think those pieces of advice are a bit more controversial than the “don’t become a doctor” advice within the EA Community, so the selection effects are less strong, but I do think the selection effects are not strong enough to make reasoning from experience impossible here.
To be clear, I wasn’t aiming to criticize “don’t become a doctor”, but rather “don’t continue to be a doctor.”