I am someone who held on to prior career plans after encountering EA for what, in retrospect, feels like too long in light of my goals at the time. So I recognize the phenomenon you're describing in the post, but at the same time I was not interested in re-examining my career when I first encountered EA and I am quite confident that if anyone had tried to directly persuade me that my plans were misguided, it would have turned me off from the movement in much the same way as your friend who left the Precipice reading group.
For engaging with people who are interested in EA ideas but otherwise similarly stuck on their career plan, I suggest the following:
- Ask them what role they see their career playing in their life. What are they trying to accomplish with their career? If the answer is anything besides "to have the most impact I can," that probably explains most of the disconnect between what you and they see as ideal career plans. [ETA: Khorton expanded on this idea much more eloquently in another comment.]
- Ask what they love most about their current work, and what they find limiting or frustrating about it.
- Ask what else they thought about doing with their lives before settling on their career plan, and what was attractive about those other options. Centering the conversation on paths they already thought about first can help reveal other considerations that their current career is trading off against.
- At this point, you could ask if they could ever imagine switching to something else in the future. If they say no, they're not ready to have a conversation about it, so just drop it. If they say yes or maybe, they will probably offer some unprompted thoughts on what they might switch to, which can then provide an opening for you to offer ideas that are aligned with the goals they shared with you at the beginning but could be higher-impact than their current option set.
Thinking about other career possibilities is a necessary first step, but for someone anchored on their current career it will likely take some time for them to act on those thoughts. To accelerate the process, you could prompt them (maybe in a subsequent conversation) to think about what circumstances would cause them to actually make a switch. Again, it's crucial to do this in a way that isn't pushy or manipulative -- you need to have achieved some buy-in from them to get to this point rather than jumping straight to it.
Hope that helps!
What I'm hearing in this article is "some people lock in their view of what the best way to improve the world is while they're still in middle school and don't update after that." I agree that's a problem! Encouraging people to consider a variety of careers that could help people and think about what evidence might change their mind definitely seems helpful.
Something this post doesn't acknowledge, but I think is really important, is that doing good isn't the only goal in most people's career choice! Most people want a career that they enjoy and are good at, that pays well and is respected by their family and friends. There can be lots of other more individual factors too.
When I mention my career in EA circles, people often assume that I think my career is the best way to improve the world, without taking my own happiness or any other factors into account. They'll ask questions like, "How did you decide that policy work was the best way for you to do good?" It's often less awkward to just talk about how my job allows me to do good than to talk about how much fun I have working with clever people to make important decisions, how I've been interested in policy since I was a kid, how much I value a stable salary with a generous pension, or the great pay during parental leave.
I wonder if that's sometimes happening in these circles. Maybe your friend who wanted to be a scientist really was 100% interested in improving the world and was frustrated you couldn't see his point of view, but maybe he was just really excited about being a scientist for personal reasons and felt like you were implying he's a bad person for not being willing to give up his life's dream after attending a couple of seminars. I wouldn't be too quick to assume which situation is going on here, and I'd really encourage you when having these conversations to emphasize that people have more than one goal and that's fine.