I think this post would be better if it went into some more detail on the career transition process, and perhaps mentioned some lessons learned that are applicable to those intentionally aiming for transitions.
Of these two, I find Baxter more interesting and relevant to EA. Baxter:
- Didn’t intend to move into this field at all at first. (This is bad news for EA people trying to manufacture a career change, but still interesting, and may cause people to update in favor of doing relatively casual research into a field, rather than thinking “Oh, a few hours a week will never get me anywhere”.) - Performed self-study. (I’d love to hear more about this. The article mentions he bought a subscription to a magazine or journal, then something something, then wrote a paper. What was the something something? Was Aviation Weekly really sufficient for this? Did it involve a lot of talks with this neighbor of his?) - Created a useful deliverable in the field. (Actionable!) - Got the deliverable in the hands of someone influential in the field. (Also actionable—moreso for EA’s than most people, since the EA community is small and happy to connect people. If you have a decent AI paper and want to get it in the hands of a particular org, you can probably do that without much trouble)
Ina Garten, on the other hand, is simultaneously less reproducible (due to the high initial expense and commitment of her transition) and misses out on the more interesting part of her transition. You talk about how she bought a grocery store, then ???, then celebrity chef. I think “Nuclear policy advisor to grocery store owner” is actually less of a move than “Grocery store owner to celebrity chef”. Even though the latter two appear intuitively closer (both deal with food), a sufficiently-rich person can just buy a grocery store like Ina did, but how do you go from that to a celebrity chef? How did Ina build her brand up? Was this Ina’s goal from the start, or did she approach it incrementally?
There’s definitely the seeds of a great article here, but it feels more like an article proposal/draft than a fully-fledged article. It leaves some of the most interesting/applicable parts out of the story. I understand this is more meant to be inspirational than a how-to manual, and that it is a LOT easier to summarise public research than to dive as deeply into the topic as would be needed to answer the questions I had. So, I understand if you’d rather leave it here, but if you wanted to put more time into this idea I think it would bear fruit in the above ways.
I think this post would be better if it went into some more detail on the career transition process, and perhaps mentioned some lessons learned that are applicable to those intentionally aiming for transitions.
Of these two, I find Baxter more interesting and relevant to EA. Baxter:
- Didn’t intend to move into this field at all at first. (This is bad news for EA people trying to manufacture a career change, but still interesting, and may cause people to update in favor of doing relatively casual research into a field, rather than thinking “Oh, a few hours a week will never get me anywhere”.)
- Performed self-study. (I’d love to hear more about this. The article mentions he bought a subscription to a magazine or journal, then something something, then wrote a paper. What was the something something? Was Aviation Weekly really sufficient for this? Did it involve a lot of talks with this neighbor of his?)
- Created a useful deliverable in the field. (Actionable!)
- Got the deliverable in the hands of someone influential in the field. (Also actionable—moreso for EA’s than most people, since the EA community is small and happy to connect people. If you have a decent AI paper and want to get it in the hands of a particular org, you can probably do that without much trouble)
Ina Garten, on the other hand, is simultaneously less reproducible (due to the high initial expense and commitment of her transition) and misses out on the more interesting part of her transition. You talk about how she bought a grocery store, then ???, then celebrity chef. I think “Nuclear policy advisor to grocery store owner” is actually less of a move than “Grocery store owner to celebrity chef”. Even though the latter two appear intuitively closer (both deal with food), a sufficiently-rich person can just buy a grocery store like Ina did, but how do you go from that to a celebrity chef? How did Ina build her brand up? Was this Ina’s goal from the start, or did she approach it incrementally?
There’s definitely the seeds of a great article here, but it feels more like an article proposal/draft than a fully-fledged article. It leaves some of the most interesting/applicable parts out of the story. I understand this is more meant to be inspirational than a how-to manual, and that it is a LOT easier to summarise public research than to dive as deeply into the topic as would be needed to answer the questions I had. So, I understand if you’d rather leave it here, but if you wanted to put more time into this idea I think it would bear fruit in the above ways.