Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

Hide table of contents
by Cipolla
2 min read2 answers 0

12

Career choiceOpportunities to take action
Frontpage

I am in a career that I do not want to pursue. 

I have not been productive. I am quite stressed and anxious. But I am still keeping it and creating new science collaborations and research projects.

I have recently realised that I probably did university, a PhD, and started a scientific career just for FOMO. 

Mainly because of prestige, the perks of the academic life, and comparing myself to my peers (a lot of which had very clear ideas about their science careers since their start, and it shows it now). Obviously I was attracted to the science aspect of it, but I think it was just for fun (and also to please expectations of others).

But I have been not happy in my life for several years now. I think my anxiety has been manifesting itself into my body (mainly with head confusion and headaches).[1]

Even if I see myself as a professor in the next few years (something that you usually need to plan well in advance to create the right support network of people), I still fail to see how this can bring me happiness in my life.

After discovering certain online communities (like this one and lesswrong) I opened my eyes, and discovered that the pleasure of research can be pursued in different ways.

But I am still pondering on my future. Mainly because of fear.

My ideal scenario is the following: have a personal business (so that I can have "individual freedom"), while pursuing economic/social research in some university/research institute in a vibrant city. In particular, I would like to focus on topics like economic/social inequality. Something I have always promised myself to do after retiring (I would also love to do random bits of science, but I need to focus on single topics). 

I do not know how to do this (and how I could distinguish myself to gain the first bits of momentum). And on top of that, I am so afraid of starting a new path and being labelled as a failure.

I have not much interest in working in a company (tried internships and was unproductive). And do not see any place that makes me scream I wanna go there. Only reason I would consider it is money.

The problem is that I am the kind of person that will not use their mental resources to finish a task in absence of a deep sincere interest. On the other hand, to pursue the deep interest, I need to jump into the unknown. And I am afraid of regretting my choice.

 

  1. ^

    Someone suggested long-covid, but not sure where it leads.

12

0
0

Reactions

0
0
New Answer
New Comment


2 Answers sorted by
Top

ScienceMon🔸

7
1
0

It sounds like we're around the same age, both a few years out of a PhD (mine was in bio). I'm happy to email/talk 1-on-1 with you about this:

  1. Do not continue down the academic path. Your mind and body are clearly telling you to stop! Instead, start applying for jobs as you wind down your ongoing projects.
  2. Probably don't start a business right now. Not unless you have a major technical edge in a lucrative area and a suite of business-relevant skills (I couldn't infer this from your post).
  3. If your internships were at large/established companies, I would be unsurprised that they went poorly. There are stark cultural differences between academia and the corporate world.
  4. Consider joining a startup. Culturally, this will be a smoother transition than to big corporate. You will be paid much more than you are as a postdoc. The people around you will generally be happier than your academic colleagues. And you'll build skills that are relevant to starting your own business one day.

Academia is wonderful in many ways, but it teaches people that life is linear, which is a damn lie. Life isn't linear! You have decades ahead of you that will be filled with personal growth and bringing happiness to other people.

Cipolla1
0
0

Thanks a lot! I will consider it :)

Reply

Phib

3
1
0

Personally I cannot say much to this, but vs there being no answer/comment, here’s my naive suggestion:

If you haven’t already considered the 80000 hours career guide and their advising, that seems like a good resource for someone in your position.

Curated and popular this week
LintzA
 ·  · 15m read
 · 
Cross-posted to Lesswrong Introduction Several developments over the past few months should cause you to re-evaluate what you are doing. These include: 1. Updates toward short timelines 2. The Trump presidency 3. The o1 (inference-time compute scaling) paradigm 4. Deepseek 5. Stargate/AI datacenter spending 6. Increased internal deployment 7. Absence of AI x-risk/safety considerations in mainstream AI discourse Taken together, these are enough to render many existing AI governance strategies obsolete (and probably some technical safety strategies too). There's a good chance we're entering crunch time and that should absolutely affect your theory of change and what you plan to work on. In this piece I try to give a quick summary of these developments and think through the broader implications these have for AI safety. At the end of the piece I give some quick initial thoughts on how these developments affect what safety-concerned folks should be prioritizing. These are early days and I expect many of my takes will shift, look forward to discussing in the comments!  Implications of recent developments Updates toward short timelines There’s general agreement that timelines are likely to be far shorter than most expected. Both Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have recently said they expect AGI within the next 3 years. Anecdotally, nearly everyone I know or have heard of who was expecting longer timelines has updated significantly toward short timelines (<5 years). E.g. Ajeya’s median estimate is that 99% of fully-remote jobs will be automatable in roughly 6-8 years, 5+ years earlier than her 2023 estimate. On a quick look, prediction markets seem to have shifted to short timelines (e.g. Metaculus[1] & Manifold appear to have roughly 2030 median timelines to AGI, though haven’t moved dramatically in recent months). We’ve consistently seen performance on benchmarks far exceed what most predicted. Most recently, Epoch was surprised to see OpenAI’s o3 model achi
Dr Kassim
 ·  · 4m read
 · 
Hey everyone, I’ve been going through the EA Introductory Program, and I have to admit some of these ideas make sense, but others leave me with more questions than answers. I’m trying to wrap my head around certain core EA principles, and the more I think about them, the more I wonder: Am I misunderstanding, or are there blind spots in EA’s approach? I’d really love to hear what others think. Maybe you can help me clarify some of my doubts. Or maybe you share the same reservations? Let’s talk. Cause Prioritization. Does It Ignore Political and Social Reality? EA focuses on doing the most good per dollar, which makes sense in theory. But does it hold up when you apply it to real world contexts especially in countries like Uganda? Take malaria prevention. It’s a top EA cause because it’s highly cost effective $5,000 can save a life through bed nets (GiveWell, 2023). But what happens when government corruption or instability disrupts these programs? The Global Fund scandal in Uganda saw $1.6 million in malaria aid mismanaged (Global Fund Audit Report, 2016). If money isn’t reaching the people it’s meant to help, is it really the best use of resources? And what about leadership changes? Policies shift unpredictably here. A national animal welfare initiative I supported lost momentum when political priorities changed. How does EA factor in these uncertainties when prioritizing causes? It feels like EA assumes a stable world where money always achieves the intended impact. But what if that’s not the world we live in? Long termism. A Luxury When the Present Is in Crisis? I get why long termists argue that future people matter. But should we really prioritize them over people suffering today? Long termism tells us that existential risks like AI could wipe out trillions of future lives. But in Uganda, we’re losing lives now—1,500+ die from rabies annually (WHO, 2021), and 41% of children suffer from stunting due to malnutrition (UNICEF, 2022). These are preventable d
 ·  · 8m read
 · 
In my past year as a grantmaker in the global health and wellbeing (GHW) meta space at Open Philanthropy, I've identified some exciting ideas that could fill existing gaps. While these initiatives have significant potential, they require more active development and support to move forward.  The ideas I think could have the highest impact are:  1. Government placements/secondments in key GHW areas (e.g. international development), and 2. Expanded (ultra) high-net-worth ([U]HNW) advising Each of these ideas needs a very specific type of leadership and/or structure. More accessible options I’m excited about — particularly for students or recent graduates — could involve virtual GHW courses or action-focused student groups.  I can’t commit to supporting any particular project based on these ideas ahead of time, because the likelihood of success would heavily depend on details (including the people leading the project). Still, I thought it would be helpful to articulate a few of the ideas I’ve been considering.  I’d love to hear your thoughts, both on these ideas and any other gaps you see in the space! Introduction I’m Mel, a Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy, where I lead grantmaking for the Effective Giving and Careers program[1] (you can read more about the program and our current strategy here). Throughout my time in this role, I’ve encountered great ideas, but have also noticed gaps in the space. This post shares a list of projects I’d like to see pursued, and would potentially want to support. These ideas are drawn from existing efforts in other areas (e.g., projects supported by our GCRCB team), suggestions from conversations and materials I’ve engaged with, and my general intuition. They aren’t meant to be a definitive roadmap, but rather a starting point for discussion. At the moment, I don’t have capacity to more actively explore these ideas and find the right founders for related projects. That may change, but for now, I’m interested in
Recent opportunities in Career choice
12
AIS Netherlands is looking for a Founding Executive Director (EOI form)
7 authors
· · 5m read
0
0
111
Projects I'd like to see in the GHW meta space
Melanie Basnak🔸
· · 8m read
2
2
15
Applications Open: Pivotal 2025 Q3 Research Fellowship
2 authors
· · 2m read
0
0
View more