So I think I agree with the general point, but having thought about this a fair bit recently too, I think that there is something tricky that is missing from your presentation. You write:
Periodically step back to notice how your proxy goals misalign with your big goals.
Re-engineer your proxy goals or incentive environment to make sure that the work you’re doing actually promotes your big goal.
The issue is that lots of things actually do require deep, sustained effort to make progress on, or it may require deep sustained effort to get the necessary skills for something. So to some extent you can’t just periodically re-adjust...you really do need to place a bet on something and double down on it, or you may forever be tacking your trajectory and never really having any impact on anything. This is really hard to figure out.
More speculatively, there is a broader critique of EA here too which has been mentioned recently in other posts where it just feels nicer and cooler and more interesting to keep ‘EA’ as your central thing—as the core part of your identity—rather than being like ‘OK I’ve decided the best thing to do is to get a job in, say, this government department’ and to just double down on that. Once you do the latter it might feel like you kinda leave EA behind more than you wanted to.
So I think I agree with the general point, but having thought about this a fair bit recently too, I think that there is something tricky that is missing from your presentation. You write:
The issue is that lots of things actually do require deep, sustained effort to make progress on, or it may require deep sustained effort to get the necessary skills for something. So to some extent you can’t just periodically re-adjust...you really do need to place a bet on something and double down on it, or you may forever be tacking your trajectory and never really having any impact on anything. This is really hard to figure out.
More speculatively, there is a broader critique of EA here too which has been mentioned recently in other posts where it just feels nicer and cooler and more interesting to keep ‘EA’ as your central thing—as the core part of your identity—rather than being like ‘OK I’ve decided the best thing to do is to get a job in, say, this government department’ and to just double down on that. Once you do the latter it might feel like you kinda leave EA behind more than you wanted to.