I agree that the vibe you’re describing tends to be a bit cultish precisely because people take it too far. That said, it seems right that low prestige jobs within crucially needed teams can be more impactful than high-prestige jobs further away from the action. (I’m making a general point; I’m not saying that MIRI is necessarily a great example for “where things matter,” nor am I saying the opposite.) In particular, personal assistant strikes me as an example of a highly impactful role (because it requires a hard-to-replace skillset).
(Edit: I don’t expect you to necessarily disagree with any of that, since you were just giving a plausible explanation for why the comment above may have turned off some people.)
I agree with this, and also I did try emphasizing that I was only using MIRI as an example. Do you think the post would be better if I replaced MIRI with a hypothetical example? The problem with that is that then the differences would be less visceral.
I agree that the vibe you’re describing tends to be a bit cultish precisely because people take it too far. That said, it seems right that low prestige jobs within crucially needed teams can be more impactful than high-prestige jobs further away from the action. (I’m making a general point; I’m not saying that MIRI is necessarily a great example for “where things matter,” nor am I saying the opposite.) In particular, personal assistant strikes me as an example of a highly impactful role (because it requires a hard-to-replace skillset).
(Edit: I don’t expect you to necessarily disagree with any of that, since you were just giving a plausible explanation for why the comment above may have turned off some people.)
I agree with this, and also I did try emphasizing that I was only using MIRI as an example. Do you think the post would be better if I replaced MIRI with a hypothetical example? The problem with that is that then the differences would be less visceral.