ElliotJDavies

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ElliotJDavies Dec 19, 2024, 7:01 PM
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on: Treat future you like a different person—invest in your motivation
I’ve linked a template at the end with questions I’d find helpful for channeling my short-term motivation into action—maybe you’d find them helpful too!

This is awesome, great job!

ElliotJDavies Dec 16, 2024, 12:55 PM
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in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
I agree with most of what you wrote here, but think that the pledge, as a specific high resolution effort, is not helpful.

This is quite possible, but that’s why we will have M&E and are committing bounded amounts of time to this project. - Although neither of these are much help if there’s a distinct externality/direct harm to the wider community

> You’re confusing what zero-sum does and does not mean
Would you be able to explain why you think so? I can see you’ve linked to a post but it would take me >15 minutes to read and I think that would be a bad use of my time
I also think that looking at the outcomes for those who made pledges and stuck around is selecting on the outcome variable; the damage that high expectations have may be on-net worthwhile, but it would be unreasonable to come to that conclusion on the basis of talking to who stuck around.
I think my suggestion for randomised outreach and follow-up here would largely control for this

ElliotJDavies Dec 13, 2024, 8:21 AM
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in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
starting from community dynamics that seem to dismiss anyone not doing direct work as insufficiently EA

This seems like very unfortunate zero-sum framing to me. Speaking personally, I’ve taken the 10% pledge, been heavily involved in Giveffektivt.dk, pushed for GWWC to have (the first) pledge table at EAGxNordics ’24, and excited to support 10% pledge communities.

When I work on expanding the 10% pledge community, that does not mean I am disparaging using one’s career to do good, and vice versa.

commitment by young adults into pledges to continue that level of dedication for their entire careers
I am curious if you are see the adverse effect playing out on harm to the individual or opportunity cost as a result of harm to the individual?

Fx, I took the pledge in 2020 (iirc), and have (deliberately) earned very little working as a community builder—to such an extent that I haven’t saved a sufficient runaway. This has lead to decent amounts of stress over several years.

It’s pretty clear to me that the stress caused was “worth it”, in terms of the amount of good that money could do if given to mosquito nets.

However, I think the larger consideration is opportunity cost, as a result of me being less productive.

But does that mean I think the pledge, or the drowning child thought experiment ect. have been net negative (assuming their affects were isolated to only me)?. No, I think that’s too little resolution. I think they’ve been net-positive, it’s just that we haven’t fine-tuned our community yet.

What would this finetuning look like? I am unsure, but I think it would look like a lot of support to plan your career and look for opportunities, but also strong cultural norms for living active fulfilling lives.

I think a lot of the purported solutions to reducing burnout (and associated adverse affects) are low-resolution and facile, fx earning huge salaries.

ElliotJDavies Dec 12, 2024, 8:28 PM
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in reply to: Julia_Wise🔸’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
I’d think a better way to get feedback is to ask “What do you think of this pledge wording?” rather than encourage people to take a lifelong pledge before it’s gotten much external feedback.
The idea of an Minimal Viable Product is you’re unsure what part of your product provides value and what parts are sticking points. After you release the MVP the sticking points are much clearer, and you have a much better idea on where to focus your limited time and money.

ElliotJDavies Dec 12, 2024, 5:57 PM
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in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Thanks for your feedback! I appreciate it and agree that maximize it a pretty strong world. Just to clarify the crux here, would you say that this project doesn’t make sense over-all or would you say that the text of the pledge be changed to something more manageable?

ElliotJDavies Dec 12, 2024, 5:57 PM
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in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Thanks for flagging this Arepo, I will reach out to them!

ElliotJDavies Dec 12, 2024, 5:16 PM
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in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Thanks for flagging this! I didn’t know this was the was the case—I will reach out to them

ElliotJDavies Dec 12, 2024, 5:14 PM
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in reply to: Aleksi Maunu’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
This is such a great question. We considered a very limited pool of ideas, for a very limited amount of time. I think the closest competitor was Career for Good.

The thinking being, that we can always get something up, test if there’s actually interest in this, before actually spending significant resources into the branding side of things.

One con of the current name is that it could elicit some reactions

I agree that seems to being played out here! This could pose a good reason to change the name

It might be largely down to whether someone interprets better as “better than I might otherwise do” or “better than others’ careers”
In case there was any doubt, we didn’t intend to say “Better than others”. The fact that Bettercareers.com was taken was seen by myself as a positive update

ElliotJDavies Dec 12, 2024, 5:06 PM
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in reply to: PabloAMC 🔸’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Thanks for flagging this Pablo! I added it to the post after I read your comment

ElliotJDavies Dec 10, 2024, 6:37 PM
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in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Thanks for the feedback Neel! Obviously as noted above, we released this quickly (after <12 hours of work) to get feedback exactly like this. We will focus on rewording the pledge statement to try to reduce or, if we’re especially lucky, nullify the concerns you’ve raised here.

ElliotJDavies Dec 9, 2024, 10:32 PM
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in reply to: Tori’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Does the pledge commit me to pursuing high-impact work specifically, or could it also include earning to give if that turns out to be my best option for impact later down the line?
This is such a great question, and a vitally important consideration. With the current wording of the pledge, it states:
I commit to using my skills, time, and opportunities to maximize my ability to make a meaningful difference
I take this wording to include Earning To Give, when it’s the most impactful option available to you.

I would be curious to hear what you think about this wording, and if you would like to see any changes to make it clearer? Alternatively, we could address it in an FAQ section.

ElliotJDavies Dec 9, 2024, 5:21 PM
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in reply to: Joey🔸’s comment on: Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Thank-you for the kind words Joey! I can confirm that you are the first Better Career Pledger!

Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!

ElliotJDaviesDec 9, 2024, 4:04 PM

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36 comments2 min readEA link

ElliotJDavies Dec 5, 2024, 5:44 PM
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on: Grit, humility, and courage: Three ingredients for building EA’s enduring impact
Part of what I think is so unique and inspiring about EA is that it’s not just an approach to doing good, but also a community that helps others do good on their own journey. When we face setbacks—whether in animal welfare campaigns or in our own institutions—we have a choice. We can stay defeated by these difficulties, or we can choose to learn from our failures and help the community as a whole learn and improve.
I really do like when the EA-Community, and posts like this, discuss this. On the current margin I think it increases my likelihood of embodying a growth mindset.

ElliotJDavies Dec 5, 2024, 5:28 PM
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on: Pulse 2024: Awareness and perceptions of effective altruism
Very interesting! I love the graphs comparing awareness of different orgs/concepts.

ElliotJDavies Dec 4, 2024, 2:28 PM
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in reply to: Michael Townsend🔸’s comment on: GWWC’s 2024 evaluations of evaluators
canonical arguments for focusing on cost-effectiveness involve GHW-specific examples, that don’t clearly generalize to the GCR space.
I am not sure I understand the claim being made here. Do you believe this to be the case, because of a tension between hits based and cost-effective giving?

If so, I may disagree with the point. Fundamentally if you’re an “hit” grant-maker, you still care about (1) The amount of impact as a result of a hit (2) the odds on getting a hit (3) Indicators which may lead up to getting a hit (4) The marginal impact of your grant.

1&2) Require solid theory of change, and BOTEC EV calculations
3) Good M&E

Fundamentally, I wouldn’t see much of a tension between hits based and cost-effective giving, other than a much higher tolerance for risk.

ElliotJDavies Dec 4, 2024, 2:17 PM
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in reply to: huw’s comment on: GWWC’s 2024 evaluations of evaluators
Good job on highlighting this. While I very much understand GWWC’s angle of approach here, I can see that there’s essentially a dynamic that could be playing out whereby some areas (Animal Welfare and Global Development) get increasingly rigorous, while other areas (Longtermist problem-areas and Meta-EA) don’t receive the same benefit.

ElliotJDavies Nov 15, 2024, 9:27 AM
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in reply to: Ben Millwood🔸’s comment on: ElliotJDavies’s Quick takes
I see a dynamic playing out here, where a user has made a falsifiable claim, I have attempted to falsify it, and you’ve attempted to deny that the claim is falsifiable at all.

I recognise it’s easy to stumble into these dynamics, but we must acknowledge that this is epistemically destructive.
Strictly speaking your salary is the wrong number here.

I don’t think we should dismiss empirical data so quickly when it’s brought to the table—that sets a bad precedent.

other costs of employing you (and I’ve seen estimates of the other costs at 50-100% of salary
I can also provide empirical data on this if that is the crux here?

Notice that we are discussing a concrete empirical data point, that represents a 600% difference, while you’ve given a theoretical upper bound of 100%. That leaves a 500% delta.
Keeping in mind that the pay for work tasks generally isn’t that high
Would you be able to provide any concrete figures here?
In reality, the org of course values your work more highly than the amount they pay to acquire it
I view pointing to opportunity cost in the abstract as essentially an appeal to ignorance.

Not to say that opportunity costs do not exist, but you’ve failed to concretise them in a way, and that makes it hard to find the truth here.

I could make similar appeals to ignorance in support of my argument, like the idea the benefit of getting a better candidate is very high, as candidate performance is fat-tailed ect. - but I believe this is similarly epistemically destructive. If I were to make a similar claim, I would likely attempt to concretise it.

ElliotJDavies Nov 14, 2024, 2:51 PM
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in reply to: saulius’s comment on: saulius’s Shortform
Completed this, but was difficult!

ElliotJDavies Nov 14, 2024, 2:48 PM
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in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: ElliotJDavies’s Quick takes
It takes a significant amount of time to mark a test task. But this can be fixed by just adjusting the height of the screening bar, as opposed to using credentialist and biased methods (like looking at someone’s LinkedIn profile or CV).

My guess is that, for many orgs, the time cost of assessing the test task is larger than the financial cost of paying candidates to complete the test task
This is an empirical question, and I suspect is not true. For example, it took me 10 minutes to mark each candidates 1 hour test task. So my salary would need to be 6* higher (per unit time) than the test task payment for this to be true.

I also think the justice-implications of compensating applicants are unclear (offering pay for longer tasks may make them more accessible to poorer applicants)
This is a good point.

ElliotJDavies

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