Thanks for your writeup, it’s reassuring to read your reasoning and decision. I (maybe self-servingly) find it very plausible that you’ve made the right call. I’m in a somewhat similar position; 3 months away from finishing my PhD on a biosecurity-related topic and staying in Germany with/for my partner for the next years and thus probably missing out on many opportunities that more mobile EAs have.
For me, the decision was pretty clear one I realised that both my affective well-being and life satisfaction were way higher than in previous relationships and that my partner had just an extremely good influence on me. And it seems very reasonable to prioritise this over the average short-term career decision (I’m not saying that things wouldn’t be different for extremely rare and impactful opportunities). There is and will be enough work for smart and engaged EAs that you don’t need to worry about losing a ton of impact by mainly doing something non-EA for a while and returning to, e.g., AI safety work if the circumstances are right. If your situation is at all like mine, the higher quality-of-life from your relationship alone seems worth it and I’d hazard that you will still learn a lot by working at Xanadu and doing distillation on the side.
I admit that things might be a bit different if your AI timelines are very short and you believe that the next X years are decisive for our survival, where X is small enough to induce anxiety about your hour-to-hour time management or something.
Thanks for sharing Jasper! It’s good to hear the experience of other people in a similar situation. 🙂 What do you plan to do?
Also, good luck with the thesis!
Thanks for your writeup, it’s reassuring to read your reasoning and decision. I (maybe self-servingly) find it very plausible that you’ve made the right call. I’m in a somewhat similar position; 3 months away from finishing my PhD on a biosecurity-related topic and staying in Germany with/for my partner for the next years and thus probably missing out on many opportunities that more mobile EAs have.
For me, the decision was pretty clear one I realised that both my affective well-being and life satisfaction were way higher than in previous relationships and that my partner had just an extremely good influence on me. And it seems very reasonable to prioritise this over the average short-term career decision (I’m not saying that things wouldn’t be different for extremely rare and impactful opportunities). There is and will be enough work for smart and engaged EAs that you don’t need to worry about losing a ton of impact by mainly doing something non-EA for a while and returning to, e.g., AI safety work if the circumstances are right. If your situation is at all like mine, the higher quality-of-life from your relationship alone seems worth it and I’d hazard that you will still learn a lot by working at Xanadu and doing distillation on the side.
I admit that things might be a bit different if your AI timelines are very short and you believe that the next X years are decisive for our survival, where X is small enough to induce anxiety about your hour-to-hour time management or something.
Thanks for sharing Jasper! It’s good to hear the experience of other people in a similar situation. 🙂 What do you plan to do? Also, good luck with the thesis!
Thanks Pablo, good luck to you too! I’ll apply to a few interesting remote positions and have some independent projects in mind. I’ll see :)