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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2138 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:

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I am very talented but I lack passion. I don't feel the urge to do or create anything. I don't want to express myself. I do absolutely nothing, and this has started to bother me.

Occasionally, I am motivated to make something, but it's because I see someone else's work and think I can easily do better. I always do.

Due to circumstances, I am going to be stuck in a limbo state for the next year, unable to pursue the only goal that I do have. During this time, what can I do to earn extra money online?

Game development seems like a good enough grift, right?

And, to be honest, what actually bothers me isn't that I don't do anything, but that I don't seem to have the natural urge that would lend itself to monetization.

Don't fall for the passion meme

https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-follow-your-passion/

most people do not even have passions to begin with

The 80,000 hours guys largely did follow their passion, though, the founder is a philosophy prof and the site essentially exists to encourage future SBFs to work in finance so they can maximize their contributions to Effective Altruism charities. Besides, the site generally just tends to say ‘become a software engineer, a quant or an investment banker’, both easier said than done and as easily derived from a conversation with a high school guidance counselor to whom the question “which jobs pay the most” is posed.

the site essentially exists to encourage future SBFs to work in finance so they can maximize their contributions to Effective Altruism charities. Besides, the site generally just tends to say ‘become a software engineer, a quant or an investment banker’,

This is not true and in fact they have been saying for years and years that you probably shouldn't earn to give.

https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/

Yes, they backtracked a little, but 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. 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. Your average grad, even ambitious and from a great college, isn’t getting an “EA job”. And almost all the valuable AI policy jobs go to middle aged people or certainly people with 10+ years of startup/VC/AI research experience and/or lobbying and political connections. Even your average competent Oxford PPE grad can’t just become an EA researcher easily, at least not with any hope of owning a home in Britain.

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.

Yes sure, it's funny when Will Macaskill tells you not to do philosophy.

https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/philosophy-academia/

EA no longer suggests earning to give as a top career option. They are talent constrained so they'll tell you to work for an effective organisation. So now the meme is to become an AI safety researcher.

Ben says he thinks the right person in the right role is worth the equivalent of $3-10M/year

https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/

EA and 80k hours are not there to help the average student with career advice. They exist to recruit top tier talent into the ecosystem. That's why the EA hubs are in London, Oxford and Cambridge.

All that said, I agree with the passion article. I don't think it's a good frame to think about things.

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