Dear Benjamin, thank you so much for taking the time to write this thorough response. That’s certainly more than I ever expected. I hope you don’t feel like I meant to attack you personally for picking out copy you wrote—this was certainly not my intention and merely a coincidence.
I can only imagine how difficult it is for 80k to navigate all the different stakeholders and their opinions. And like I’ve said in many comments, I definitely think 80,000 Hours should pursue what they deem most important and right. However, I still wanted to raise this question, as I could really feel myself getting demotivated—it didn’t happen abruptly, but gradually with every piece of messaging I perceived to be devaluating the values I hold and the work I do. Of course I got biased over time. But then again, I know people who feel the same or similar as me, and some people here on the forum do as well, apparently.
I think the key issue might be that 80k ranks cause areas in a “rational” way in terms of their possible impact and neglectedness—but as a human, I think it’s natural to perceive this rather as a ranking of values (which in some sense it is), and of course having your personal values ranked “at the bottom” doesn’t exactly feel nice… Especially since I guess for many people, the decision to work in a certain cause area is probably mostly based on personal interests and less on objective considerations. There are many exceptions, surely, but I think for many people “choosing” animal welfare over longtermism isn’t so much an active choice, but rather a subconscious inclination that’s already set up long before you ever start to think about what you want to do. And when you’re then reading, that the thing you “chose” based on your intrinsic motivations isn’t “all that important” … well that’s where the demoralisation kicks in. 80k never puts it that drastically, of course, quite the opposite—but we’re talking about deep seated values here, the very core of what we are. So it’s probably natural to be quite defensive of them.
So for me, the whole thing is partly about how these messages might influence future decisions on career choice, but also strongly about how they make people feel about the choices they’ve already made and the values they currently hold—which they probably often don’t have all that much control over, like I said. It’s quite frustrating to think “Well, I’d really like to care deeply about all this, but I just don’t and there’s nothing I can do to change that, since I’m not a 100% rational being”.
It’s certainly not my place to give you advice on how to do your job and of course you have way more insight and experience in these trade-offs—but I feel sometimes wordings could be altered slightly to have less of a “rebuffing” effect whilst still having longtermism as the top cause area. At the same time I promise to try and actively perceive how you’re highlighting other cause areas instead of constantly nitpicking over exapmles where you don’t.
But a lot of people feel demotivated by EA/80k? A lot of left wing criticisms have this affect when talking about EA. “How dare you talk down to my systemic poverty social movement” etc. I just don’t think 80k’s job is to make you feel good? It’s to communicate true information. The truth is sometimes demotivating. For instance, I’m incredibly grateful for the ACLU existing but I don’t think it’s the most effective thing to go work for them right now.
Maybe your deep seated values don’t match the type of things happening in EA and that’s perfectly ok and legitimate. People should feel comfortable disagreeing with 80k and making choices different to them. I think at the end of the day their job is to communicate their beliefs/the truth not to motivate you.
Maybe your deep seated values don’t match the type of things happening in EA
Whoa okay, that’s a bit of an extreme statement—EA is incredibly broad and obviously I care about certaine cause areas that are deemed valid by the broader EA community—just not by 80k, apparently . But, as other commenters have pointed out, 80k doesn’t equal EA. Sure, longtermism plays a big part in the rest of EA (as I mentioned in my post) but it’s not EA’s top priority, as far as I know. Unlike 80k, I don’t think EA has a “top priority” because that would imply that the whole movement agrees on it which I don’t think is very likely going to happen. So it’s a little offending for you to suggest I’m not “suitable” for EA—when in fact I’m doing what the community always encourages you to do when you have an idea or feedback: share it.
Dear Benjamin, thank you so much for taking the time to write this thorough response. That’s certainly more than I ever expected. I hope you don’t feel like I meant to attack you personally for picking out copy you wrote—this was certainly not my intention and merely a coincidence.
I can only imagine how difficult it is for 80k to navigate all the different stakeholders and their opinions. And like I’ve said in many comments, I definitely think 80,000 Hours should pursue what they deem most important and right.
However, I still wanted to raise this question, as I could really feel myself getting demotivated—it didn’t happen abruptly, but gradually with every piece of messaging I perceived to be devaluating the values I hold and the work I do. Of course I got biased over time. But then again, I know people who feel the same or similar as me, and some people here on the forum do as well, apparently.
I think the key issue might be that 80k ranks cause areas in a “rational” way in terms of their possible impact and neglectedness—but as a human, I think it’s natural to perceive this rather as a ranking of values (which in some sense it is), and of course having your personal values ranked “at the bottom” doesn’t exactly feel nice… Especially since I guess for many people, the decision to work in a certain cause area is probably mostly based on personal interests and less on objective considerations. There are many exceptions, surely, but I think for many people “choosing” animal welfare over longtermism isn’t so much an active choice, but rather a subconscious inclination that’s already set up long before you ever start to think about what you want to do. And when you’re then reading, that the thing you “chose” based on your intrinsic motivations isn’t “all that important” … well that’s where the demoralisation kicks in. 80k never puts it that drastically, of course, quite the opposite—but we’re talking about deep seated values here, the very core of what we are. So it’s probably natural to be quite defensive of them.
So for me, the whole thing is partly about how these messages might influence future decisions on career choice, but also strongly about how they make people feel about the choices they’ve already made and the values they currently hold—which they probably often don’t have all that much control over, like I said. It’s quite frustrating to think “Well, I’d really like to care deeply about all this, but I just don’t and there’s nothing I can do to change that, since I’m not a 100% rational being”.
It’s certainly not my place to give you advice on how to do your job and of course you have way more insight and experience in these trade-offs—but I feel sometimes wordings could be altered slightly to have less of a “rebuffing” effect whilst still having longtermism as the top cause area. At the same time I promise to try and actively perceive how you’re highlighting other cause areas instead of constantly nitpicking over exapmles where you don’t.
But a lot of people feel demotivated by EA/80k? A lot of left wing criticisms have this affect when talking about EA. “How dare you talk down to my systemic poverty social movement” etc. I just don’t think 80k’s job is to make you feel good? It’s to communicate true information. The truth is sometimes demotivating. For instance, I’m incredibly grateful for the ACLU existing but I don’t think it’s the most effective thing to go work for them right now.
Maybe your deep seated values don’t match the type of things happening in EA and that’s perfectly ok and legitimate. People should feel comfortable disagreeing with 80k and making choices different to them. I think at the end of the day their job is to communicate their beliefs/the truth not to motivate you.
Whoa okay, that’s a bit of an extreme statement—EA is incredibly broad and obviously I care about certaine cause areas that are deemed valid by the broader EA community—just not by 80k, apparently . But, as other commenters have pointed out, 80k doesn’t equal EA. Sure, longtermism plays a big part in the rest of EA (as I mentioned in my post) but it’s not EA’s top priority, as far as I know. Unlike 80k, I don’t think EA has a “top priority” because that would imply that the whole movement agrees on it which I don’t think is very likely going to happen. So it’s a little offending for you to suggest I’m not “suitable” for EA—when in fact I’m doing what the community always encourages you to do when you have an idea or feedback: share it.