I am glad you raised this point. I am not a neuropsychologist so please treat this comment with a low level of confidence. Anecdotally, I have heard multiple times of psychologists wrongly diagnosing people as being on the Autism spectrum when really those patients were narcissists. For instance, someone with Asperger may violate social conventions because they don’t understand them. Someone with narcissism may violate social conventions because although they understand them, they don’t care or they actually enjoy the transgression. Someone with Asperger will have affective empathy but lower cognitive empathy so it may look like they don’t care about others suffering. A narcissist may truly not care about someone else’s suffering. I think it tends to especially the case for covert narcissism (also called vulnerable narcissism) because some of the behaviors are very similar. I may be wrong but I doubt that Asperger people are more prone to being sexual assailants. However, I believe narcissists certainly are more prone to it, and they would be the type to pretend to be neuro-atypical in order to justify their behaviors. I think this is terrible because it probably has the adverse effect of creating fear of people with Aspergers, who in my opinion don’t deserve this reputation.
ClaireB
A selection of lessons from Sebastian Lodemann
The passing of Sebastian Lodemann
Successif: Join our AI program to help mitigate the catastrophic risks of AI
We need to speak about mid-careers and high-impact organizations
Hi David,
Successif started with career advising as the primary activity in May of 2022. It’s my understanding that High Impact Professionals has been focused on helping people fundraise through their companies and manage EA workplace groups.We’ve had similar targets but different paths to impact. In the last few weeks, HIP announced new programs that overlap with some of our work, and we don’t yet know how these services will differ.
Thank you for the question, Joseph.
Many people do not have a “clear career path.” I think there might be a higher proportion of EAs who are very curious intellectually and have experimented with a variety of paths. I am 34 and I personally feel like I had many lives (advocate, refugee lawyer, lecturer, researcher…) that I am pressured to fit into a single narrative on the job market. When it comes to career transitions, it is important to be flexible and past career transitions can be a positive sign of that. So 5 years of work are 5 years of work. How wide or narrow these experiences are will play a role in determining what interventions are needed and what direction a person can take to an impactful career.
We have many people in our program with 10+ years of experience. Some of them have variety in their career histories and others have been on a singular path. Both of these are valuable and can serve different purposes.
In terms of PhDs, we generally do not count those years toward work experience.
We make exceptions and look at each individual profile as a whole, but in broad terms, we look at someone’s competence, motivation, commitment to effective causes and existential risks prevention, as well as specific signals (e.g., for agency, flexibility…).
Thanks for the questions, Vaidehi.
These insights are based on 102 former advisees, including 43 women.
Their expressed interest when they applied for our services are as follows:
44 Global health & development
38 AI safety
22 Animal welfare
17 biorisks prevention
2 nuclear arms risk prevention
11 climate change mitigation
Note that these are not mutually exclusive as people can express interest in multiple cause areas when applying. (Later, they engage in cause prioritization as part of our program.)
In terms of our own MLE, we had in-depth interviews with 24 past advisees and have a bi-annual anonymous survey. We have occasionally run surveys to gain insights on specific things (e.g., recently, on how to make EA community building events more inclusive of mid-career people).
Also, I should add that some people can have both!