I want to hold out that Eli sweeping the offices is more truly heroic than Eli chasing after the biggest project or the most prestigious role or the highest status research area.
I also admire this orientation, props to Eli.
I note that you think the orientation is more important than the action but I do think that doing some marginally helpful task for an EA org is now slightly overrated by the community. I’d want to make salient the much larger class of unheroic yet valuable actions which one can take outside of the professional EA community, such as:
Making progress on some unexciting but helpful research question (like this post on coal seam fires).
Building the EA community where they are, especially if it’s outside of the US or the UK.
Pursuing a career in a more niche or risky cause area, even if it proves not to pay off.
I have a lot of respect for people who do/are doing the above, especially when they know it probably won’t secure them a place in the history books.
Thanks for this piece, I really enjoyed it.
I also admire this orientation, props to Eli.
I note that you think the orientation is more important than the action but I do think that doing some marginally helpful task for an EA org is now slightly overrated by the community. I’d want to make salient the much larger class of unheroic yet valuable actions which one can take outside of the professional EA community, such as:
Making progress on some unexciting but helpful research question (like this post on coal seam fires).
Building the EA community where they are, especially if it’s outside of the US or the UK.
Pursuing a career in a more niche or risky cause area, even if it proves not to pay off.
I have a lot of respect for people who do/are doing the above, especially when they know it probably won’t secure them a place in the history books.
Strong agree, thanks for pointing this out Ollie