“There’s no point working on a problem if you can’t find any roles that are a good fit for you – you won’t be satisfied or have much impact.”
“If you’re already an expert in a problem, then it’s probably best to work within your area of expertise. It wouldn’t make sense for, say, an economist who’s crushing it to switch into something totally different. However, you could still use the framework to narrow down sub-fields e.g. development economics vs. employment policy.”
In my understanding, EA also considers personal fit and thus working on other problems if the person can make a bigger impact from there. For example, if somebody alive today possesses the same aptitudes as (with all due respect) Martin Luther King Jr., then he’d be better in tackling Racism than Malaria nets and AI risks.
Hi, interesting post. I’m new here so please excuse faults in my comment.
“Is EA really all about taking every question and twisting it back to malaria nets and AI risk?”
Based on this article https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/:
“There’s no point working on a problem if you can’t find any roles that are a good fit for you – you won’t be satisfied or have much impact.”
“If you’re already an expert in a problem, then it’s probably best to work within your area of expertise. It wouldn’t make sense for, say, an economist who’s crushing it to switch into something totally different. However, you could still use the framework to narrow down sub-fields e.g. development economics vs. employment policy.”
In my understanding, EA also considers personal fit and thus working on other problems if the person can make a bigger impact from there. For example, if somebody alive today possesses the same aptitudes as (with all due respect) Martin Luther King Jr., then he’d be better in tackling Racism than Malaria nets and AI risks.