Quick takes

USA has ~85k annual mowing injury ER visits: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29395756/ ~44% of which are fractures and amputation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30067452/ Lawncare's also ~5% of USA pollution: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-21/lawn-mowers-are-the-next-electric-frontier https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/banks.pdf Autonomous mowing robots eliminate most of mowing's danger, pollution, labor cost/time, and noise

I often return to this bit of 80000 Hours' anonymous career advice, about how when you're great at your job, no one's advice is that useful. I like it a lot. It reminds me of Agnes Callard's observation about a young writer asking Margaret Atwood for advice and getting only the trite advice to "write every day":

There are quite a few posts/some discussion on 1. The value of language learning for career capital 2. The dominance of English in EA and the advantages it confers See., e.g., https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qf6pGhm9a7vTMFLtc/english-as-a-dominant-language-in-the-movement-challenges https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/k7igqbN52XtmJGBZ8/effective-language-learning-for-effective-altruists I expect these issues to become less important very soon as new AI-powered technology gets better. To an extent, the Babblefish is already here and nearly useable. E.g., the latest timekettle translator earbuds (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTP57ZRM?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1) are getting rave reviews from some people (https://bsky.app/profile/joshuafmask.bsky.social/post/3lcm22p6nsc2o)

I'm currently facing a career choice between a role working on AI safety directly and a role at 80,000 Hours. I don't want to go into the details too much publicly, but one really key component is how to think about the basic leverage argument in favour of 80k. This is the claim that's like: well, in fact I heard about the AIS job from 80k. If I ensure even two (additional) people hear about AIS jobs by working at 80k, isn't it possible going to 80k could be even better for AIS than doing the job could be? In that form, the argument is naive and implausible. But I don't think I know what the "sophisticated" argument that replaces it is. Here are some thoughts: * Working in AIS also promotes growth of AIS. It would be a mistake to only consider the second-order effects of a job when you're forced to by the lack of first-order effects. * OK, but focusing on org growth fulltime seems surely better for org growth than having it be a side effect of the main thing you're doing. * One way to think about this is to compare two strategies of improving talent at a target org, between "try to find people to move them into roles in the org, as part of cultivating a whole overall talent pipeline into the org and related orgs", and "put all of your fulltime effort into having a single person, i.e. you, do a job at the org". It seems pretty easy to imagine that the former would be a better strategy? * I think this is the same intuition that makes pyramid schemes seem appealing (something like: surely I can recruit at least 2 people into the scheme, and surely they can recruit more people, and surely the norm is actually that you recruit a tonne of people" and it's really only by looking at the mathematics of the population as a whole you can see that it can't possibly work, and that actually it's necessarily the case that most people in the scheme will recruit exactly zero people ever. * Maybe a pyramid scheme is the extreme of "what if literally everyone in EA work

People in EA end up optimizing for EA credentials so they can virtue signal to grantmakers, but grantmakers would probably like people to scope out non-EA opportunities because that allows us to introduce unknown people to the concerns we have

At this point, we need an 80k page on "What to do after leaving Open AI" 1. Don't start another AI safety lab

I noticed the most successful people, in the sense of advancing their career and publishing papers, I meet at work have a certain belief in themselves. What is striking, no matter their age/career stage, it is like they are already taking certain their success and where to go in the future.   I also noticed this is something that people from non-working class backgrounds manage to do.   Second point. They are good at finishing projects and delivering results in time.   I noticed that this was somehow independent from how smart is someone.   While I am very good at single tasks, I have always struggled with long term academic performance. I know it is true for some other people too.   What kind of knowledge/mentality am I missing? Because I feel stuck.

In America, dining services influence far more meals than vegans' personal consumption Aramark, Compass Group, etc. each serve billions of meals annually, and even the largest individual correctional facilities, hospital campuses, school districts, public universities, baseball stadiums, etc. each serve millions of meals annually to largely captive audiences