I’m a doctor and I think there’s a lot of underappreciated value in medicine including:
Clout: Society grants an inappropriate amount of respect to doctors, regardless of whether they’re skilled or not, junior or senior. If you have a medical degree people respect you, listen to you, take you more seriously.
Hidden societal knowledge: Not many people get to see as broad a cross-section of society as you see studying medicine. You meet people at their very best and worst, you meet incredibly knowledgeable people and people that never learnt to read, people who have lived incredible lives and people who have been through trauma that you couldn’t imagine. You gain an understanding of how broad the spectrum of human experience is. It’s humbling and grounding.
Social skills: Medicine is a crash course on how not to be cripplingly socially awkward (not everyone passes with flying colours). You become better at relating to people, making them feel comfortable, talking about difficult topics, navigating conflict. These are all highly transferable skills.
Latent medical knowledge: There’s a real freedom in being comfortable knowing when and when not to go to the hospital. Some people go to the Emergency Department every time they have a stomach ache, just in case. Learning medicine means you have a general idea about what problems are actually worth worrying about.
Job security: You can be pretty sure you’ll always have a job no matter what (until GPT-6 arrives, but that applies to anything).
Opens doors: Studying med doesn’t mean you need to be a doctor. You can use the insider knowledge of the medical field in med tech (not many doctors can code, useful combo), or to work in medical research (make some malaria vaccines) or global health.
I don’t feel like my work as a doctor is directly very impactful (I mostly do hospital paperwork). But I gave 50% of my income in my first year and I’m giving 10% of my income since. In this way you can have a lot of positive impact.
Hello Ben(what if you could give 20% of your income? Would it be double more impactful)
1.Thanks for answering, there are fewer people in EA working at biology field.
2.ETG is really somethink we can conisder about, according to Toby Ord’s podcasts on 80000 hours, he said talent gaps are much needed instead of funding gaps, most EA comapnies would rather get a great worker rather than getting $100000 donation,(but things like animal welfare may be different, its funding gaps are bigger). You should also consider careers like biology professor, if you’re a good one, you’re actually winning research funds for important topics like malaria research for EAs, too.
3.Yeah, of course medicine gives you social skills and medicine knowledge can be used more medical research I don’t know medicine, but I doubt:(i)If you’re working in non medical field(such as animal welfare, lab-grown meat), do you need those detailed clinical medicine knowledge?(ii)Won’t working as a resaercher(bioinformatics engineer) better for building your career capital rather than being a doctor? The two areas require different experiences.
4.As my article, is medicine a more narrow subject? CS is more useful than biology, because every company needs CS employees, but maybe not biology. An medicine is only human-biology. You don’t need medicine to work at AI risks or climate change.
Sorry if my comment showed disrepect for someone who is expert as medicine.
I’m a doctor and I think there’s a lot of underappreciated value in medicine including:
Clout: Society grants an inappropriate amount of respect to doctors, regardless of whether they’re skilled or not, junior or senior. If you have a medical degree people respect you, listen to you, take you more seriously.
Hidden societal knowledge: Not many people get to see as broad a cross-section of society as you see studying medicine. You meet people at their very best and worst, you meet incredibly knowledgeable people and people that never learnt to read, people who have lived incredible lives and people who have been through trauma that you couldn’t imagine. You gain an understanding of how broad the spectrum of human experience is. It’s humbling and grounding.
Social skills: Medicine is a crash course on how not to be cripplingly socially awkward (not everyone passes with flying colours). You become better at relating to people, making them feel comfortable, talking about difficult topics, navigating conflict. These are all highly transferable skills.
Latent medical knowledge: There’s a real freedom in being comfortable knowing when and when not to go to the hospital. Some people go to the Emergency Department every time they have a stomach ache, just in case. Learning medicine means you have a general idea about what problems are actually worth worrying about.
Job security: You can be pretty sure you’ll always have a job no matter what (until GPT-6 arrives, but that applies to anything).
Opens doors: Studying med doesn’t mean you need to be a doctor. You can use the insider knowledge of the medical field in med tech (not many doctors can code, useful combo), or to work in medical research (make some malaria vaccines) or global health.
I don’t feel like my work as a doctor is directly very impactful (I mostly do hospital paperwork). But I gave 50% of my income in my first year and I’m giving 10% of my income since. In this way you can have a lot of positive impact.
Hello Ben(what if you could give 20% of your income? Would it be double more impactful)
1.Thanks for answering, there are fewer people in EA working at biology field.
2.ETG is really somethink we can conisder about, according to Toby Ord’s podcasts on 80000 hours, he said talent gaps are much needed instead of funding gaps, most EA comapnies would rather get a great worker rather than getting $100000 donation,(but things like animal welfare may be different, its funding gaps are bigger). You should also consider careers like biology professor, if you’re a good one, you’re actually winning research funds for important topics like malaria research for EAs, too.
3.Yeah, of course medicine gives you social skills and medicine knowledge can be used more medical research I don’t know medicine, but I doubt:(i)If you’re working in non medical field(such as animal welfare, lab-grown meat), do you need those detailed clinical medicine knowledge?(ii)Won’t working as a resaercher(bioinformatics engineer) better for building your career capital rather than being a doctor? The two areas require different experiences.
4.As my article, is medicine a more narrow subject? CS is more useful than biology, because every company needs CS employees, but maybe not biology. An medicine is only human-biology. You don’t need medicine to work at AI risks or climate change.
Sorry if my comment showed disrepect for someone who is expert as medicine.