site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3018 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 27, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, they backtracked a little

Your claim: "the site generally just tends to say ‘become a software engineer, a quant or an investment banker’,"

Actual recommendation: only about 20% of people should earn to give

It's not a bit of backtracking, it's a total reversal.

only because the numbers suggest that unless you go into a handful of the most elite jobs you’re not taking to be earning to give any substantial amount.

Interesting claim. Let's check what the reasoning actually is.

Effective Altruism organizations are generally reporting that they are more talent-constrained than money-constrained.

Some effective altruists who are earning to give are doing so very successfully, and indeed can each already pay the salaries of a number of other people doing directly valuable work; this will only increase as they progress in their careers.

GoodVentures is looking to spend most of its multi-billion dollar resources over the next 30-40 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if other multi-billion dollar foundations also got explicitly on board with effective altruism. This would create a pressing need for talented people to spend this money well, rather than raise more money.

In general, important ideas seem to get funding: GiveDirectly has scaled up to moving $7 million/yr in cash transfers in just a few years; research into the responsible development of artificial intelligence now has major donors, including Elon Musk and Open Philanthropy, putting millions of dollars behind it, despite being an extremely niche area just a couple of years ago. Many people (i) want to make an impact, but only in a way that they also find personally enjoyable or which doesn’t disrupt their other life plans; (ii) don’t find many careers with direct impact enjoyable or practical; (iii) do find a particular high-earning career enjoyable and compatible with their other plans. For those people, earning to give can be a great option. But it potentially means that people who are open to pursuing any career path should pursue a different and more neglected option than earning to give.

In fact the reasons mostly revolve around the fact that there is simply a greater need for people actually doing work than more money. Perhaps you can spin this into what you said, but it strikes me as misleading and disingenuous.

Let's also take a look at the earning to give example on their [career guide] (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/).

He decided to train up to become a software engineer, and eventually got a job at Google.

We're not talking about one of a "handful of most elite jobs" here.

The new advice is also especially ridiculous becuase there aren’t huge amounts of well paid effective altruism jobs, there are barely enough for a handful of AI researchers and philosophers graduating from like the top 5-10 universities in the world.

This is a confusing pivot from the earlier claim that the site still mostly exists to get people to become SBFs. Nevertheless, let's look at their shortlist of career types.

  1. Earning to give
  2. Advocacy and communication
  3. (Fundamental) research
  4. Government
  5. Work for a nonprofit

There's plenty of career paths here that don't require you to become an AI philosopher. They constantly harp on global health concerns. None of these are going to make you rich, but then again, that really means you can't complain about them focusing exclusively on lucre.

Is this an autistically long response? Yes. However, it really grinds my gears when people make totally unsubstantiated and contradictory complaints about 80000 hours. There's plenty of legitimate disagreement to have, but this line of argument just has no basis in reality.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats