On your first point: the reason I chose to emphasize longtermism is because:
It’s what I’ve been thinking about the most (note that I am now professionally focused on longtermism, which doesn’t mean I don’t value other areas, but does mean that that’s where my mental energy goes).
I think longtermism is probably the thorniest, most frustrating area for career choice, so I wanted to focus my efforts on helping people in that category think through their options.
I thought a lot of what I was saying might generalize further, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to claim that it would. And I would have found it harder to make a list of aptitudes for all of EA without having noticeable omissions.
With all of that said, I hear you on why this felt unwelcoming, and regret that. I’ll add a link to this comment to the main post to help clarify.
On your second point, I did try to acknowledge the possibility of for-profit startups from a learning/skill-building point of view (paragraph starting with “I do think that if you have any idea for an organization that you think could succeed …”) though I do agree this sort of entrepreneurship can be useful for making money and having impact in other ways (as noted by MichaelA, below), not just for learning, and should have been clearer about that.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
On your first point: the reason I chose to emphasize longtermism is because:
It’s what I’ve been thinking about the most (note that I am now professionally focused on longtermism, which doesn’t mean I don’t value other areas, but does mean that that’s where my mental energy goes).
I think longtermism is probably the thorniest, most frustrating area for career choice, so I wanted to focus my efforts on helping people in that category think through their options.
I thought a lot of what I was saying might generalize further, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to claim that it would. And I would have found it harder to make a list of aptitudes for all of EA without having noticeable omissions.
With all of that said, I hear you on why this felt unwelcoming, and regret that. I’ll add a link to this comment to the main post to help clarify.
On your second point, I did try to acknowledge the possibility of for-profit startups from a learning/skill-building point of view (paragraph starting with “I do think that if you have any idea for an organization that you think could succeed …”) though I do agree this sort of entrepreneurship can be useful for making money and having impact in other ways (as noted by MichaelA, below), not just for learning, and should have been clearer about that.