Both were great. It’s great to hear from your perspective as an economics professor and hear about your work!
Also, thanks for your comment. I think I get what you’re saying:
(It’s not clear why anyone should listen to my opinions about their life choices) but yes, it seems perfectly valid to go into any discipline, and you can have a huge value and generate impact in many paths of life.
Also, there’s a subthread here about elitism that is difficult to unpack, but it seems healthy to discuss “production functions”, skill and related worldviews explicitly at some point.
To be frank, by giving my narrative example, I was trying to touch on past messaging issues that actually happened.
These messaging issues are alluded in this article, also by Benjamin Todd:
Basically, the problem is as suggested in my example—in the past, the need for very specific skills or profiles was misinterpreted as a need for general talent. This did result in bad outcomes.
I chose to give my narrative instead of directly pointing to a past instance of the issue.
By doing this, I hoped to be more approachable to those less familiar with the history. It is also less confrontational while making the same point.
Thanks for writing back—and for the unnecessary complements of my inaugural posts :) -- Charles! I only know the context of mis-messaging around skills at a high level, so it is hard for me to respond without knowing what ‘bad outcomes’ look like. I don’t doubt that something like this could happen, so I now see the point you were trying to make.
I was responding as someone who read your (intentionally not fleshed out) hypothetical and thought the appropriate response might actually be for someone well-suited for ‘biology’ to work on building those broad skills even with a low probability of achieving the original goal.
Hi Kevin!
I saw your excellent posts as an economics professor and also cutting WIFI.
Both were great. It’s great to hear from your perspective as an economics professor and hear about your work!
Also, thanks for your comment. I think I get what you’re saying:
(It’s not clear why anyone should listen to my opinions about their life choices) but yes, it seems perfectly valid to go into any discipline, and you can have a huge value and generate impact in many paths of life.
Also, there’s a subthread here about elitism that is difficult to unpack, but it seems healthy to discuss “production functions”, skill and related worldviews explicitly at some point.
To be frank, by giving my narrative example, I was trying to touch on past messaging issues that actually happened.
These messaging issues are alluded in this article, also by Benjamin Todd:
https://80000hours.org/2018/11/clarifying-talent-gaps/
Basically, the problem is as suggested in my example—in the past, the need for very specific skills or profiles was misinterpreted as a need for general talent. This did result in bad outcomes.
I chose to give my narrative instead of directly pointing to a past instance of the issue.
By doing this, I hoped to be more approachable to those less familiar with the history. It is also less confrontational while making the same point.
Thanks for writing back—and for the unnecessary complements of my inaugural posts :) -- Charles! I only know the context of mis-messaging around skills at a high level, so it is hard for me to respond without knowing what ‘bad outcomes’ look like. I don’t doubt that something like this could happen, so I now see the point you were trying to make.
I was responding as someone who read your (intentionally not fleshed out) hypothetical and thought the appropriate response might actually be for someone well-suited for ‘biology’ to work on building those broad skills even with a low probability of achieving the original goal.