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I am not sure why https://80000hours.org/ suggests hedge funds or banking as potential career paths, if you wanna have a positive impact on the world (short/long term).
such jobs are high earning -> potentially good earnings to give more
plus, advantages for personal life/career
I agree that these are very alluring and mentally stimulating jobs (I would also would like to have fun while earning lots of money in a short amount of time). Though, I am not sure about their net positive impact.
Even if mathematicians/physicists working in hedge funds/banks do not cause direct market crashes (assumption), there is a big potential for harm: someone very rich is becoming even richer.
There is no reason for which these extremely wealthy individuals/institutions are aligned with EA goals / doing good.
It just increases the probability of wealth inequality, and skewing government level policies, as we already know such people have big power to influence regulators.
In practice, the assumption above falls, and the reality is scarier.
The links above mention about possible societal harms, but then, why keep the pages?
In my opinion the good done via donations significantly outweighs any marginal impact to making rich people richer (you can also filter for hedge funds where you agree more with the politics of the top people). Why do you think the harms you highlight outweigh the donations?
A more cynical defense is that someone is going to do the hedge fund job anyway, and the downsides of that job existing will be basically the same (maybe a tiny bit less if the replacement were ever so slightly less qualified).
On the other hand, the replacement in the role of "wealthy person" will likely spend little on charitable endeavors, and even then often less effective ones.
So one could argue that a job could be net negative on the whole -- and yet that the most positive thing a person could do is fill it, to at least extract the positives it offers effectively! (Not opining here on whether hedge funds are net positive or negative, too far out of my knowledge base).
Hi @Neel Nanda , @Jason , I am sure it has been discussed several times in the community. I was actually checking that website as I am into a moment of my life where I would like to purse something I really like, and was looking for ways to do this.
Now.
Let's say.
Average hedge fund guy ~ ten billion dollars in donations (say I have 10^5 people, with 10% donation per year, with 10^6 million dollars per year). Mostly go to developing countries, as they would affect more people in need (globally).
Investor ~ order of magnitude higher than the above (even if wrong), in profits. This is not marginal. Mostly go to invest more, shaping governments, etc...
Assumption 1: just from profits, typical investor has an "exponential" advantage in shaping governments and the world in general.
Assumption 2: this is for two reasons. First, you want societal stability. Second, you want appreciating assets. The two have to be in balance. Focusing on one can negatively influence the other.
Assumption 3: in the last decades too focus on a mono-dimensional metric, piggy bank size, instead of organic growth (hedge fund guy too, they are focus on organic growth, but that 10% is becoming bigger in their eyes).
Assumption 4: giving too much power, in this case bought with money, to a handful of people is very dangerous. No reason to have them aligned with "good" goals. Literally no reason.
In my opinion, all of these points imply a higher chance of the unintended(?) consequences.
One example is obviously profits going to an oil company with a business in Africa, and no interest into making sure that the money goes to the locals.
Another one, a bit scarier: Western societal instability (of particular relevance, UK and US).
Western country increased likelihood of instability, implies more poverty and social problems. More poverty -> people are less willing to donate (I am assuming most of the donations individuals make do not come from just hedge fund folks) -> millions of brothers and sisters in less developed countries count on that.
If this happens, your average Joe quant's action of working implied not just a harm to a Western country, but also to their good cause (as instability in Western stable countries makes more difficult to reach EA goals).
I think quant jobs are cool and have nice perks. I just wonder how much thought did 80000 hours folks put before advising those jobs given that the usual target are young ambitious people/experienced science researchers.
Perhaps I misunderstood the goal of the 80000 hours website, and maybe they refer to general, and not "good", impact.
I don't want to imply that you should go work for a hedge fund, only that I suspect 80K has likely thought about it. So figuring out why they may have reached the conclusion they did should hopefully help you to evaluate the pros and cons and make a decision that aligns best with your values.
The take on medical careers in this post is the flipside of the cynical defense I described, and maybe it is easier to see the flipside. Basically, the argument is that if you decide to go to med school, you replaced someone who would have otherwise been a physician. So the counterfactual difference in the world is limited to the difference in the quality of the medical services you would have provided vs. the quality your replacement would have provided.
I am less utilitarian than the average person here, and would personally not work for an organization as harmful as you believe hedge funds to be. (I never had any interest in working for one, so never took the time to investigate their net social impact.)
I am not sure why https://80000hours.org/ suggests hedge funds or banking as potential career paths, if you wanna have a positive impact on the world (short/long term).
See for example here https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/front-office-finance/ or https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/trading-in-quantitative-hedge-funds/ .
If I understand, the main rationale is:
I agree that these are very alluring and mentally stimulating jobs (I would also would like to have fun while earning lots of money in a short amount of time). Though, I am not sure about their net positive impact.
Even if mathematicians/physicists working in hedge funds/banks do not cause direct market crashes (assumption), there is a big potential for harm: someone very rich is becoming even richer.
There is no reason for which these extremely wealthy individuals/institutions are aligned with EA goals / doing good.
It just increases the probability of wealth inequality, and skewing government level policies, as we already know such people have big power to influence regulators.
In practice, the assumption above falls, and the reality is scarier.
The links above mention about possible societal harms, but then, why keep the pages?
Just my two cents.
In my opinion the good done via donations significantly outweighs any marginal impact to making rich people richer (you can also filter for hedge funds where you agree more with the politics of the top people). Why do you think the harms you highlight outweigh the donations?
A more cynical defense is that someone is going to do the hedge fund job anyway, and the downsides of that job existing will be basically the same (maybe a tiny bit less if the replacement were ever so slightly less qualified).
On the other hand, the replacement in the role of "wealthy person" will likely spend little on charitable endeavors, and even then often less effective ones.
So one could argue that a job could be net negative on the whole -- and yet that the most positive thing a person could do is fill it, to at least extract the positives it offers effectively! (Not opining here on whether hedge funds are net positive or negative, too far out of my knowledge base).
Hi @Neel Nanda , @Jason , I am sure it has been discussed several times in the community. I was actually checking that website as I am into a moment of my life where I would like to purse something I really like, and was looking for ways to do this.
Now.
Let's say.
Average hedge fund guy ~ ten billion dollars in donations (say I have 10^5 people, with 10% donation per year, with 10^6 million dollars per year). Mostly go to developing countries, as they would affect more people in need (globally).
Investor ~ order of magnitude higher than the above (even if wrong), in profits. This is not marginal. Mostly go to invest more, shaping governments, etc...
Assumption 1: just from profits, typical investor has an "exponential" advantage in shaping governments and the world in general.
Assumption 2: this is for two reasons. First, you want societal stability. Second, you want appreciating assets. The two have to be in balance. Focusing on one can negatively influence the other.
Assumption 3: in the last decades too focus on a mono-dimensional metric, piggy bank size, instead of organic growth (hedge fund guy too, they are focus on organic growth, but that 10% is becoming bigger in their eyes).
Assumption 4: giving too much power, in this case bought with money, to a handful of people is very dangerous. No reason to have them aligned with "good" goals. Literally no reason.
In my opinion, all of these points imply a higher chance of the unintended(?) consequences.
One example is obviously profits going to an oil company with a business in Africa, and no interest into making sure that the money goes to the locals.
Another one, a bit scarier: Western societal instability (of particular relevance, UK and US).
Western country increased likelihood of instability, implies more poverty and social problems. More poverty -> people are less willing to donate (I am assuming most of the donations individuals make do not come from just hedge fund folks) -> millions of brothers and sisters in less developed countries count on that.
If this happens, your average Joe quant's action of working implied not just a harm to a Western country, but also to their good cause (as instability in Western stable countries makes more difficult to reach EA goals).
I think quant jobs are cool and have nice perks. I just wonder how much thought did 80000 hours folks put before advising those jobs given that the usual target are young ambitious people/experienced science researchers.
Perhaps I misunderstood the goal of the 80000 hours website, and maybe they refer to general, and not "good", impact.
I don't want to imply that you should go work for a hedge fund, only that I suspect 80K has likely thought about it. So figuring out why they may have reached the conclusion they did should hopefully help you to evaluate the pros and cons and make a decision that aligns best with your values.
The take on medical careers in this post is the flipside of the cynical defense I described, and maybe it is easier to see the flipside. Basically, the argument is that if you decide to go to med school, you replaced someone who would have otherwise been a physician. So the counterfactual difference in the world is limited to the difference in the quality of the medical services you would have provided vs. the quality your replacement would have provided.
I am less utilitarian than the average person here, and would personally not work for an organization as harmful as you believe hedge funds to be. (I never had any interest in working for one, so never took the time to investigate their net social impact.)