At least for people I know it seems to have been really good advice, at least the doctor part.
It seems like this is almost certain to be true given post-hoc selection bias, regardless of whether or not it is good—it doesn’t differentiate between worlds where it is alienating or bad advice, and some people leave the community, and ones where it is good.
I’m generally leery of putting words in other people’s mouths, but perhaps people are using “bad advice” to mean different things, or at least have different central examples in mind.
There’s at least 3 possible interpretations of what “bad advice” can mean here:
A. Advice that, if some fraction of people are compelled to follow it across the board, can predictably lead to worse outcomes than if the advice isn’t followed.
B. Advice that, if followed by people likely to follow such advice, can predictably lead to worse outcomes than if the advice isn’t followed.
C. Words that can be in some sense considered “advice” that have negative outcomes/emotional affect upon hearing these words, regardless of whether such advice is actually followed.
Consider the following pieces of “advice”:
You should self-treat covid-19 with homeopathy.
You should eat raw lead nails.
#1 will be considered “bad advice” in all 3 interpretations (it will be bad if everybody treats covid-19 with homepathy(A), it will be bad if people especially susceptible to homeopathic messaging treat covid-19 with homeopathy(B), and also I will negatively judge someone for recommending self treatment with homeopathy(C)).
#2 is only “bad advice” in at most 2 of the interpretations (forcibly eating raw lead nails is bad(A), but realistically I don’t expect anybody to listen to such “recommendations” ( B), and this advice is so obviously absurd that context will determine whether I’d be upset about this suggestion (C)).
In context here, if Habryka (and for that matter me) doesn’t know any EA ex-doctors who regret no longer being a doctor (whereas he has positive examples of EA ex-doctors who do not regret this), this is strong evidence that telling people to not be doctors is good advice under interpretation B*, and moderate-weak evidence that it’s good advice under interpretation A.
(I was mostly reading “bad advice” in the context of B and maybe A when I first read these comments).
However, if David/Khorton interpret “bad advice” to mean something closer to C, then it makes more sense why not knowing a single person harmed by following such advice is not a lot of evidence for whether the advice is actually good or bad.
* I suppose you can posit a selection-effected world where there’s a large “dark matter” of former EAs/former doctors who quit the medical profession, regretted that choice, and then quit EA in disgust. This claim is not insane to me, but will not be where I place the balance of my probabilities.
Thanks this is very clear! Yes, I was thinking of outcome C—I’ve seen people decide not to get involved with the EA community because strangers repeatedly gave them advice they found offensive.
I think the world would be better if we didn’t regularly offend respected professionals, even if it’s been very helpful for 5 or 10 people—and I imagine those 5 or 10 people may have transitioned from medicine anyways when presented with the arguments without it being presented as quite such a definitive answer.
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.
It seems like this is almost certain to be true given post-hoc selection bias, regardless of whether or not it is good—it doesn’t differentiate between worlds where it is alienating or bad advice, and some people leave the community, and ones where it is good.
I’m generally leery of putting words in other people’s mouths, but perhaps people are using “bad advice” to mean different things, or at least have different central examples in mind.
There’s at least 3 possible interpretations of what “bad advice” can mean here:
A. Advice that, if some fraction of people are compelled to follow it across the board, can predictably lead to worse outcomes than if the advice isn’t followed.
B. Advice that, if followed by people likely to follow such advice, can predictably lead to worse outcomes than if the advice isn’t followed.
C. Words that can be in some sense considered “advice” that have negative outcomes/emotional affect upon hearing these words, regardless of whether such advice is actually followed.
Consider the following pieces of “advice”:
You should self-treat covid-19 with homeopathy.
You should eat raw lead nails.
#1 will be considered “bad advice” in all 3 interpretations (it will be bad if everybody treats covid-19 with homepathy(A), it will be bad if people especially susceptible to homeopathic messaging treat covid-19 with homeopathy(B), and also I will negatively judge someone for recommending self treatment with homeopathy(C)).
#2 is only “bad advice” in at most 2 of the interpretations (forcibly eating raw lead nails is bad(A), but realistically I don’t expect anybody to listen to such “recommendations” ( B), and this advice is so obviously absurd that context will determine whether I’d be upset about this suggestion (C)).
In context here, if Habryka (and for that matter me) doesn’t know any EA ex-doctors who regret no longer being a doctor (whereas he has positive examples of EA ex-doctors who do not regret this), this is strong evidence that telling people to not be doctors is good advice under interpretation B*, and moderate-weak evidence that it’s good advice under interpretation A.
(I was mostly reading “bad advice” in the context of B and maybe A when I first read these comments).
However, if David/Khorton interpret “bad advice” to mean something closer to C, then it makes more sense why not knowing a single person harmed by following such advice is not a lot of evidence for whether the advice is actually good or bad.
* I suppose you can posit a selection-effected world where there’s a large “dark matter” of former EAs/former doctors who quit the medical profession, regretted that choice, and then quit EA in disgust. This claim is not insane to me, but will not be where I place the balance of my probabilities.
Thanks this is very clear! Yes, I was thinking of outcome C—I’ve seen people decide not to get involved with the EA community because strangers repeatedly gave them advice they found offensive.
I think the world would be better if we didn’t regularly offend respected professionals, even if it’s been very helpful for 5 or 10 people—and I imagine those 5 or 10 people may have transitioned from medicine anyways when presented with the arguments without it being presented as quite such a definitive answer.
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.”