All of 80000_Hours's Comments + Replies

We also offer audio version of those highlights for all episodes on the '80k After Hours' feed: https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/

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Hi Michael,

I wonder if there might have been a misunderstanding. In previous comments, we’ve said that:

1. We're adding an episode making the case for near termism, likely in place of the episode on alternative foods. While we want to keep it higher level, that episode is still likely to include more object-level material than e.g. Toby’s included episode does.

2. We're going to swap Paul Christiano’s episode out for Ajeya Cotra, which is a mostly meta-level episode that includes coverage of the advantages of near-termism over longtermism.

3. We're adding the

Hey commenters — so as we mentioned we've been discussing internally what other changes we should make to address the concerns raised in the comments here, beyond creating the 'ten problem areas' feed.

We think the best change to make is to record a new episode with someone who is in favour of interventions that are 'higher-evidence', or that have more immediate benefits, and then insert that into the introduction series.

Our current interviews about e.g. animals or global development don't make the case in favour of 'short-termist' approaches because the gu... (read more)

Hi all of the commenters here — thanks again for all the further thoughts on the compilation.

We're in the process of discussing your feedback internally and figuring out whether to make any further changes, and if so what they should be. We don't want to rush that, but will get back to you as soon as we can.

— Rob and Keiran

Hey Khorton, thanks for checking that. Initially I was puzzled by why I'd made this error but then I saw that "People could rate more than one area as the “top priority”. As a result the figures sum to more than 100%.

That survey design makes things a bit confusing, but the end result is that each of these votes can only be read as a vote for one of the top few priorities. — Rob

Hi Neel thanks for these thoughts. I've responded to the broader issue in a new top-level comment.

Just on the point that we should be explicit that this is longtermism focused, while longtermism isn't in the title I tried to make it pretty explicit in the series' 'Episode 0':

One final note before we start. We wanted to keep this introduction to just ten episodes, which meant we had to make some tough decisions about what made the cut. This selection skews towards focusing on longtermism and efforts to preserve a long and positive future for humanity, bec

[Just threading responses to different topics separately.] Regarding including Dave Denkenberger's episode, the reason for that isn't that alternative foods or disaster resilience are especially central EA problem areas.

Rather, in keeping with the focus on worldview and 'how we think', we put it in there as a demonstration of entrepreneurship, independent thinking, and general creativity. I can totally see how people could prefer that it be replaced with a different theme, but that was the reasoning. (We give the motivation for including each episode in their respective intros.) — Rob and Keiran

Hey Brian, Ula, and other commenters,

Thanks again for all the feedback! To what extent each piece of content closely associated with EA should aim to be 'representative' is a vexed issue that folks are going to continue to have different views on, and we can't produce something that's ideal to everyone simultaneously.

Fortunately in this case I think there's a change we can make that will be an improvement from everyone's perspective.

We had planned to later make another collection that would showcase a wider variety of things that EAs are up to. Given your ... (read more)

Hi Brian, (also Ula and Neel below),

Thanks for the feedback. These comments have prompted us to think about the issue some more — I won't be able to get you a full answer before the weekend, but we're working on a bigger picture solution to this which I hope will address some of your worries.

We should be able to fill you in on our plans next week. (ADDED: screw it we'll just finish it tonight — posted as a new top level comment.)

— Rob

Just a visual metaphor of most centuries being boring and only a few standing out as uniquely influential.

Thanks for producing this Peter, it's very helpful. I sent you some metric data on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, but now that I've seen the post, I can give you the best numbers for the table. I would suggest putting these figures in instead.

Net new podcast subscribers added

2017 - 4,600

2018 - 10,500

Total podcast downloads/plays

2017 - 87,600 (average episode length 1.61 hours.)

2018 - 517,100 (average episode length 1.97 hours.)

Notes on interpretation

1. The podcast only started half way through 2017, I'm not sure how you want to handle that.

2. Those are the maxi

Hi lexande - thanks for taking the time to share your worries with us. We take our responsibility towards our users seriously.

I don’t think we’re likely to come to agreement right now on a lot of the other specific issues that have been raised.

That said, it’s helpful to know when our users strongly disagree with our priorities and we take that into account when we form our plans.

80,000 Hours wrote some quick notes on this back in 2015:

Potentially promising career paths in poorer countries

They were rough then and may have become out of date in the last 3 years, but hopefully can still help people generate ideas.

We have a forthcoming post on whether the expressions 'talent gap/bottleneck/constraint' are generating more heat than light and should be phased out in favour of more specific terms.

Hi Evan,

Responses to the survey do help to inform our advice but it’s only considered as one piece of data alongside all the other research we’ve done over the years. Our writeup of the survey results definitely shouldn’t be read as our all-things-considered view on any issue in particular.

Perhaps we could have made that clearer in the blog post but we hope that our frank discussion of the survey’s weaknesses and our doubts about many of the individual responses gives some sense of the overall weight we put on this particular source.

We've written a new post in part to address this question: Many EA orgs say they place a lot of financial value on their previous hire. What does that mean, if anything? And why aren't they hiring faster?

Hi Peter,

It sounds like you mostly agree with our take on earning to give in the high impact careers article. That article is fairly new but it will become one of the central pages on the site after a forthcoming re-organisation. Let us know if there are other articles on the site you think are inconsistent with that take - we can take a look and potentially bring them into line.

We agree with you that earning to give can be a genuinely great option and don’t intend to demoralize people who choose that path. As we write in that article, we believe that “an... (read more)

"Does the answer refer to high impact opportunities in general in the world"

That question is intended to look at the highest-impact jobs available in the world as a whole, in contrast with the organisations being surveyed. Given the top response was government and policy experts, I think people interpreted it correctly.

Hi Alex thanks I fixed 30. 2,4,6 and 15 are working for me - can you email over a screenshot of the error you're getting?

"given the relative abundance of cash available to EA orgs (through OpenPhil and Good Ventures), a rate as high as this is surprising."

Three thoughts: i) the range of figures offered was very wide, ii) orgs that are strongly supported by large institutional donors gave lower figures, iii) if those orgs expect OpenPhil/GoodVentures/etc to give them even more money in future years, they could still sensibly report a high discount rate.

Fair point. I thought about calling them articles... but they're definitely not all articles. Thought about calling them 'content releases' but that felt like corporate vagueness.

I should have gone with something nobody could dispute: 32 new(ish) universal resource locators. ;) - RW

Hi Geoffrey, we agree this would be very valuable. Our materials are already heading in that direction, but I think it will be at least a year or two before we do a major research push to produce that guide due to other competing priorities.

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