Discover more from Hamish's Thing of the Day
The idea for this comic comes out of a few EA Forum posts I’ve read.
From EA for dumb people?:
I want to leave the world a better place. But I feel like I don't fit, because frankly, I'm not smart enough.
Most people aren't Oxford or Harvard graduates. Most people aren't even university graduates. So do we have a place in EA?
Whenever I come on the EA forum I literally feel like my brain is going to explode with some of the stuff that is posted on here, I just don't understand it.
And After one year of applying for EA jobs: It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation:
“Hey you! You know, all these ideas that you had about making the world a better place, like working for Doctors without Borders? They probably aren’t that great. The long-term future is what matters. And that is not funding constrained, so earning to give is kind of off the table as well. But the good news is, we really, really need people working on these things. We are so talent constraint… (20 applications later) … Yeah, when we said that we need people, we meant capable people. Not you. You suck.”
Finally, from My mistakes on the path to impact:
Some level of risk-taking is good and necessary, but my deference to the EA community made me blind towards the risks I was taking. I did not think carefully enough about the position I would be in if focusing on EA jobs failed: that of a long-unemployed graduate with no particular skills.
Maybe do earn to give? Long-termism makes sense, but you still can do good if it's not long-term. You also could be the social media manager/runner of EA-aligned or otherwise good organizations, as that makes more people look at that stuff, meaning more people doing good on that stuff., as you seem to be good at that, and it doesn't require having a degree in quantum marketing(thing I made up). Here's one good opportunity for social media stuff: https://airtable.com/appYQIIq3t2Hrq16O/shrW3a9lNXGtFqGpv