I had conversations along the lines of “I already did a Bachelor’s in Biology and just started a Master’s in Nanotech, surely it’s too late for me to pivot to AI safety”. To which my response is “You’re 22, if you really want to go into AI safety, you can easily switch”.
I think this pattern is especially suspicious when used to justify some career that’s impactful in one worldview over one that’s impactful in another.
E.g. I totally empathize with people who aren’t into longtermism, but the reasoning should not be “I have already invested in this cause area and so I should pursue it, even though I believe the arguments that say it’s >>10x less impactful than longtermist cause areas”.
I also get the impression that sometimes people use “personal fit for X” and “have already accumulated career capital for X” interchangeably, when I think the former is to a significant degree determined through inate talents. Thus the message “personal fit matters” is sometimes heard as a weaker version of “continue what you’re already doing”.
Hey, thanks for writing this!
Strong +1 for this part:
I think this pattern is especially suspicious when used to justify some career that’s impactful in one worldview over one that’s impactful in another.
E.g. I totally empathize with people who aren’t into longtermism, but the reasoning should not be “I have already invested in this cause area and so I should pursue it, even though I believe the arguments that say it’s >>10x less impactful than longtermist cause areas”.
I also get the impression that sometimes people use “personal fit for X” and “have already accumulated career capital for X” interchangeably, when I think the former is to a significant degree determined through inate talents. Thus the message “personal fit matters” is sometimes heard as a weaker version of “continue what you’re already doing”.