My main objection to this post is that personal fit still seems really important when choosing what to do within a cause. I think that one of EA’s main insights is “if you do explicit estimates of impact, you can find really big differences in effectiveness between cause areas, and these differences normally swamp personal fit”; that’s basically what you’re saying here, and it’s totally correct IMO. But I think it’s a mistake to try to apply the same style of reasoning within causes, because the effectivenesses between different jobs are much more similar and so personal fit ends up dominating the estimate of which one will be better.
My main objection to this post is that personal fit still seems really important when choosing what to do within a cause. I think that one of EA’s main insights is “if you do explicit estimates of impact, you can find really big differences in effectiveness between cause areas, and these differences normally swamp personal fit”; that’s basically what you’re saying here, and it’s totally correct IMO. But I think it’s a mistake to try to apply the same style of reasoning within causes, because the effectivenesses between different jobs are much more similar and so personal fit ends up dominating the estimate of which one will be better.