This was a fantastic post Gemma, it really resonated with me and I honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve read on here this year :)
Some points that spoke to me, along with reflections from my own experience:
I defer a lot less when making career decisions and thinking about cause prioritisation. I’m still not great at it but I’m much less likely to assume something is true just because someone I respected said it. This is probably a good thing—better late than never
Agreed that this is a good thing. I think that coming to the EA community/movement (as opposed to being aware of the ideas) later in my life I already have career and personal networks that are (mostly) separate from EA, and I think that makes it mentally easier/less socially costly to hold views that aren’t the majority, or a slightly different from the Orthodoxy.
I agree with this post that EA is three radical ideas I want to protect (radical empathy, scope sensitivity and scout mindset) but in my opinion the most impressive part of EA is the execution.
Agreed again! My personal experience is that being part of the EA community made me want to ‘walk the walk’ of my beliefs more, specifically for me it was going vegetarian and signing the GWWC pledge. I think that’s something that the EA community does really well.[1]
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Finally, on the question of “going out to bat for the EA movement post FTX” I think I’m getting more and more into the idea of doing so more loudly, and especially calling out bad criticisms of EA that we let slide too often. Maybe that can be my contribution to the 3rd wave ‘do-ocracy’ of EA 🙂
This is kinda related to Scott’s Effective Altruism As A Tower Of Assumptions. For example, if you think GW/Randomista charities don’t take into account autonomy and personal knowledge then that’s fine, donate to GiveDirectly!
I feel similarly about finding EA later in my life—I heard about it when I was a few years into my career rather than in university. I’m glad I did because if I’d heard about it in uni, I could imagine it becoming my whole deal. I’ve got a lot of value from working a normie corporate job first and I’m glad a lot of my friends really don’t care about EA at all.
One of my other half-written drafts is about the benefits of doing graduate training at an employer that churns out dozens of graduates a year rather than a small EA organisation (where the quality of management, mentorship, training and support is more variable). I think the 80k advice on career capital for new grads is great and getting people to think about their long term output (thinking 20-30 years head rather than just 5) is excellent, but I think their ideas for initial first jobs are limited (and so obviously written by cerebral oxford grads who would have access to top of the range opportunities).
IMO they underrate graduates spending their first few years post-grad joining professions where there are existing networks and professional ethics requirements. Examples would be law/accountancy/engineering/medicine/teaching etc. I think there are downsides (time requirement, skills you might not use later) but I think there are benefits to having a more diverse non-academia EA talent pipeline and I want to spread effective giving into those spaces!! Having the pipeline mostly filled with early start up employees, policy people and management consultants is high risk—none of these roles are accountable to external ethical or professional standards. Plus, having worked in international tax, I now have opinions on potentially high impact tax policy work that isn’t obvious to people without that background—I like being able to bring a different perspective.
This was a fantastic post Gemma, it really resonated with me and I honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve read on here this year :)
Some points that spoke to me, along with reflections from my own experience:
Agreed that this is a good thing. I think that coming to the EA community/movement (as opposed to being aware of the ideas) later in my life I already have career and personal networks that are (mostly) separate from EA, and I think that makes it mentally easier/less socially costly to hold views that aren’t the majority, or a slightly different from the Orthodoxy.
Agreed again! My personal experience is that being part of the EA community made me want to ‘walk the walk’ of my beliefs more, specifically for me it was going vegetarian and signing the GWWC pledge. I think that’s something that the EA community does really well.[1]
***
Finally, on the question of “going out to bat for the EA movement post FTX” I think I’m getting more and more into the idea of doing so more loudly, and especially calling out bad criticisms of EA that we let slide too often. Maybe that can be my contribution to the 3rd wave ‘do-ocracy’ of EA 🙂
This is kinda related to Scott’s Effective Altruism As A Tower Of Assumptions. For example, if you think GW/Randomista charities don’t take into account autonomy and personal knowledge then that’s fine, donate to GiveDirectly!
Thank you! That’s very kind!
I feel similarly about finding EA later in my life—I heard about it when I was a few years into my career rather than in university. I’m glad I did because if I’d heard about it in uni, I could imagine it becoming my whole deal. I’ve got a lot of value from working a normie corporate job first and I’m glad a lot of my friends really don’t care about EA at all.
One of my other half-written drafts is about the benefits of doing graduate training at an employer that churns out dozens of graduates a year rather than a small EA organisation (where the quality of management, mentorship, training and support is more variable). I think the 80k advice on career capital for new grads is great and getting people to think about their long term output (thinking 20-30 years head rather than just 5) is excellent, but I think their ideas for initial first jobs are limited (and so obviously written by cerebral oxford grads who would have access to top of the range opportunities).
IMO they underrate graduates spending their first few years post-grad joining professions where there are existing networks and professional ethics requirements. Examples would be law/accountancy/engineering/medicine/teaching etc. I think there are downsides (time requirement, skills you might not use later) but I think there are benefits to having a more diverse non-academia EA talent pipeline and I want to spread effective giving into those spaces!! Having the pipeline mostly filled with early start up employees, policy people and management consultants is high risk—none of these roles are accountable to external ethical or professional standards. Plus, having worked in international tax, I now have opinions on potentially high impact tax policy work that isn’t obvious to people without that background—I like being able to bring a different perspective.
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Good for you on bad criticisms! Keep at it 💪