It is a genuine possibility that I will change the entire course of my life as a result of the information on 80k hours. I guess many of you already have. Have you checked all of their reasoning? What percentage ought one to check?
While I donāt disagree that some kind of āindependent auditorā might be useful, my advice to people considering a major change (which I make as a young person with relatively little life experience!) is as follows:
As best you can, try to only change your life by an amount proportionate with your trust in the change you plan to make.
If you donāt feel like you really understand 80Kās reasoning about a certain issue, read as much of their relevant work as you can find. If that doesnāt give you enough confidence, reach out to them directly. If they donāt have enough time or coaching slots to respond personally, ask people on the Forum for their thoughts on the likely effects of a given life-change. If you still feel fairly uncertain after that, keep asking questions and looking for better evidence.
And if you still canāt find enough evidence after trying everything you can findā¦ consider not changing your life, or trying out some smaller version of the change (freelancing for a few weeks instead of taking a new job, signing up for Try Giving instead of the full Giving What We Can pledge, etc.)
It may be the case that no career path has truly ironclad evidence for effectiveness, at least not in a way that applies to every job-seeker (since no two people have the same skills/āpersonality/āalternative options). If you come to believe that, you may be forced to make a change based on whatever evidence you can find (or based on more concrete information like salary, location, and other things that impact your personal well-being). But overall, I hope that people in EA mostly make life-changing decisions if they have a lot of confidence in those decisions, whether because of personal research or because they think highly of the quality of research conducted by EA organizations.
(I work for CEA, but these views are my ownāand, as I mentioned above, theyāre being made by someone who hasnāt undergone too many major life changes.)
Thanks for responding (and for encouraging me, I think, to write this in the first place).
Only change your life by an amount proportionate with your trust in the change you plan to make.
Sure. The point I am trying to make is that I would pay to have some of that work done for me. If enough people would then you could pay someone to do it. I donāt think we disagree with the thinking that needs to be done, but I think I am less inclined/āless trusting that I will do it well and would prefer and infrastructural solution.
I also agree that some infrastructure would be good. In the meantime, I suggest reading criticisms of EA from both non-EAs and from EAs, and how EAs respond to the criticism (or how one could successfully respond to it). Thatās probably the closest you can get to external audits and checking for flaws in EA.
Unfortunately thereās no central repository of EA criticism that I know of (this seems quite valuable to me!). Carl Shulman said on Facebook recently on a post by Julia Galef that he keeps a personal bookmarks folder of criticisms of groups that he has some affiliation with or interest in. If youāre interested, you could try contacting him to see if itās shareable.
You can also check the mistakes pages of EA orgs, like GiveWell and 80000 Hours (and their evaluations page). Thatās only a partial solution since there could be many mistakes by EA orgs that they themselves donāt recognize, but itās one step forward of many.
Yes, I agree that infrastructure would be better than no infrastructure. Iām not sure who Iād trust to do this job well among people who arenāt already working on something impactful, but perhaps there are people in EA inclined towards a watchdog/āauditor mentality who would be interested, assuming that the orgs being āauditedā could work out an arrangement that everyone felt good about.
While I donāt disagree that some kind of āindependent auditorā might be useful, my advice to people considering a major change (which I make as a young person with relatively little life experience!) is as follows:
As best you can, try to only change your life by an amount proportionate with your trust in the change you plan to make.
If you donāt feel like you really understand 80Kās reasoning about a certain issue, read as much of their relevant work as you can find. If that doesnāt give you enough confidence, reach out to them directly. If they donāt have enough time or coaching slots to respond personally, ask people on the Forum for their thoughts on the likely effects of a given life-change. If you still feel fairly uncertain after that, keep asking questions and looking for better evidence.
And if you still canāt find enough evidence after trying everything you can findā¦ consider not changing your life, or trying out some smaller version of the change (freelancing for a few weeks instead of taking a new job, signing up for Try Giving instead of the full Giving What We Can pledge, etc.)
It may be the case that no career path has truly ironclad evidence for effectiveness, at least not in a way that applies to every job-seeker (since no two people have the same skills/āpersonality/āalternative options). If you come to believe that, you may be forced to make a change based on whatever evidence you can find (or based on more concrete information like salary, location, and other things that impact your personal well-being). But overall, I hope that people in EA mostly make life-changing decisions if they have a lot of confidence in those decisions, whether because of personal research or because they think highly of the quality of research conducted by EA organizations.
(I work for CEA, but these views are my ownāand, as I mentioned above, theyāre being made by someone who hasnāt undergone too many major life changes.)
Thanks for responding (and for encouraging me, I think, to write this in the first place).
Sure. The point I am trying to make is that I would pay to have some of that work done for me. If enough people would then you could pay someone to do it. I donāt think we disagree with the thinking that needs to be done, but I think I am less inclined/āless trusting that I will do it well and would prefer and infrastructural solution.
I also agree that some infrastructure would be good. In the meantime, I suggest reading criticisms of EA from both non-EAs and from EAs, and how EAs respond to the criticism (or how one could successfully respond to it). Thatās probably the closest you can get to external audits and checking for flaws in EA.
Unfortunately thereās no central repository of EA criticism that I know of (this seems quite valuable to me!). Carl Shulman said on Facebook recently on a post by Julia Galef that he keeps a personal bookmarks folder of criticisms of groups that he has some affiliation with or interest in. If youāre interested, you could try contacting him to see if itās shareable.
You can also check the mistakes pages of EA orgs, like GiveWell and 80000 Hours (and their evaluations page). Thatās only a partial solution since there could be many mistakes by EA orgs that they themselves donāt recognize, but itās one step forward of many.
Yes, I agree that infrastructure would be better than no infrastructure. Iām not sure who Iād trust to do this job well among people who arenāt already working on something impactful, but perhaps there are people in EA inclined towards a watchdog/āauditor mentality who would be interested, assuming that the orgs being āauditedā could work out an arrangement that everyone felt good about.