All of Ben's Comments + Replies

Thanks for sharing this piece and looking for constructive feedback. I'd agree with most of the points made by other commenters.  I would also suggest:

• Engage more with primary sources and more things  written by people outside of effective altruism. There are thousands of climate scientists with interesting things to say, and a relatively small number of people in EA thinking about this. 
• General humility about this field - we don't have great data on what the climate and society will be like in 50, 100, 200, 500+ years time, and it's hard to

Thanks! Did you think it was worth a read?

Interesting. OK, I added a link to this as an answer. Thanks for suggesting!

I don't think any of the protagonists / characters in these books are "an EA" (whatever that means) in the way that question seems to be looking for. 

Fascinating, thanks for sharing!

Thanks - happy to help. 

1) You're right that pandemics and climate change are both part of the course. Taking the figures in the Precipice at face value,  the biggest risks are unaligned AI and engineered pandemics. From the unit list at UCL, and the biographies of the unit leaders on the 'natural and anthropogenic risks' unit, Joanna Faure Walker (a geophysicist) and Punam Yadav (who focuses on humanitarian projects), I couldn't see any specific content on weaponisation and conflict, which are topics I'm more interested in. That is not to say th... (read more)

Great, thanks for sharing!

Super useful, thanks!

Thanks for posting this Ben, and great to see the discussions. Wishing you all the best!

Strongly upvoted for the link to the Castle. Btw in one podcast I'm pretty sure I heard Wiblin say "the general vibe of the thing"

Ah ok, no worries. I'm considering the course - do you know anyone who's currently on it?

Thanks Aaron. Sure - "perhaps you're not aware" was not intended to be condescending at all. And yes, the later sentence you wrote was the tone I was hoping for. 

Thanks for putting this together. I'd be interested in the UCL write-up - is there an estimate on when that might be out please? 

This is a nice idea,  but I agree with Hauke that this risks increasing the extent to which EA is an echo chamber.  Perhaps you're not aware of the (over)hype around some of these books in EA.  

 I think  Rationally Speaking is particularly good at engaging with a range of people and perspectives.  

Yeah I haven't read any of his stuff, just mentioning that he works on totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Not having read The Road to Unfreedom, it looks like he identifies trends in several geographies which could be useful for the questions you're looking at. 

There's also a chapter in Global Catastrophic Risks on the topic, though I forget who wrote it

Someone shared this link with me which supports your view  that lump-sum is generally better, especially if you don't have diminishing utility.  

No idea - I think it most depends on the specifics of your situation. On average I think people who start organisations later in their life using their experience and contacts are likely to be more successful.  

I think staying where you are seems like a good option. There seems to be an assumption that just because you stay in the same job for the next few years you'll automatically be there for the next 15 - is that really true? Also maybe you could make a public commitment to leave after X years, or donate your income above a certain level to avoid getting lured in by the money side of it. 

Interesting, thanks for posting about it! 

It sounds like if you've been rejected from studying masters courses then that's useful feedback. Even for people who have done well on those courses, I think there are many more applicants than places to work in philosophy. 

And if you're already trying to overcome really steep odds, by working in academia with eight years working independently, then this might not be the area you're best suited to. 

I don't know about it but there could be work in neuroscience or psychology that you might find interesting. 

Also have you seen this? 

Some jobs here

I don't think anyone can give you a direct answer - it'll depend on your own personal circumstances, but if you've got savings then I can vouch that option 2 could be good. Have you tried applying for any jobs in that space? 

Hi Daniel, 

Great to hear from you. Here are some of my own thoughts (not official in any way at all, and people in the community have all sorts of different views). I share your interest in AI safety and climate change. Is there an AI safety community in Germany? If not people thinking about AGI, there's probably some big universities working on near-term control problems that could be interesting. It might be good to meet some other people working in the area. 

Also if you're interested in climate and AI, this a huge field of people working on everything from forecasting to flood prediction to increasing crop yields - have you tried applying for any jobs in that space?

Hi Jack! I worked in consulting at EY for four years before joining CEA in operations, and you might find a role in management/leadership/operations interesting. You might find a direct role that's more fun than ETG (I think I did!)

I don't really know anything about the best ETG routes, but one that strikes me that could be big business at the moment is insolvency and restructuring - lots of organisations will be unfortunately going through that so there could be quite  a few roles. 

Also a few friends of mine who were at PwC worked in deals/valua... (read more)

That's a tricky one, sorry to hear it. It could just be random chance - plenty of jobs have churn, and I think a surprising amount of doing well in jobs is getting along with other people. I wonder if you had any managers, colleagues, or friends who you think might have any specific feedback? On the other hand, this could just be chance. 

I think this is an interesting area of research - I'm not aware of much writing by EAs, but bear in mind the EA community is pretty small compared to the total number of people researching this and related fields across the world - you might find some other organisations or researchers who've looked into this more.

That sounds like a  huge range of options. With an MPP-MBA you might do well in policy. Are there any government or related roles you think you'd be interested in? And is there a particular area you'd like to work in? E.g. if you were more passionate about animal welfare than nuclear security, that would suggest some pretty different career routes. 

Different people in the community will have different views, but my own take is that the capitalism and markets can be great for growth and improving productive capacity but you want to make sure that the benefits are spread throughout society (see the book Why Nations Fail). 

I'm sorry to hear that you're feeling overwhelmed by things. I've felt the same way at time. It's important to look after yourself, take time off, and connect with other people. For me, I love watching the Simpsons, going for runs with my friends, and drinking coffee!

My own take ... (read more)

Have you tried applying for any roles in clean energy? It's an absolutely booming sector, especially if Biden gets the US to rejoin and more things start happening in the US. 

Sounds interesting! I'd say it's worth doing the easy and reversible things first (e.g. trying out stuff within your company), and maybe put in a few applications to jobs like these. You could study international development, but you might get some job offers without needing the masters course. You can always apply to some masters' courses anyway and see what happens. 

They seem like fairly different job offers - are there any other things you might prefer to do? This should depend on how much runway you have and how much income you think you need, but of those two roles it sounds like you're more interested in the health care one ("I'm just not passionate about being in a consumerism industry") and you might learn a lot there. Also if after two years you get bored, then you could always move on, and your role might be quite different if they go through an IPO. 

My rough guess is that option 2 would be more fun and since a lot of these areas have quite a lot of funding, maybe it'd be more your comparative advantage. You mention general management and operations, but I wonder if you have any health/lab-specific knowledge that could be used to work in these areas. I guess Covid has changed this a bit but my guess is that pandemic preparedness, especially in the developing world, is still terribly neglected.

Yep - Lucius Caviola and Stefan Schubert, and also Joshua Greene at Harvard. Lucius and Stefan have a bunch of their videos on YouTube. Also have you considered applying to GPI?

I would say don't get an MBA unless you are really really sure, as they are mega-expensive and I think marketed very broadly to people who often don't benefit from them

Hey Jeremy! Myself and Joan Gass at CEA, and Markus Anderljung at FHI,  all use skills like the ones you mention above, from our consulting backgrounds, at non-profits. 

I sometimes look at this filter on the 80K job board and one example of a role you might like is this one. I also think that working in government is often a good thing to do, and so maybe there could be some US trade/aid organisations which you might find interesting, and also this talk. If you think that consulting means you can boost the productivity of companies and lead to ec... (read more)

It's great that you've been so persistent! It seems like you're fairly set on politics - what is it that motivates you to work on that, and are there any other routes to do something similar?

On a) I think it depends on how well suited you are to the role and on b) Have you tried applying for roles in emerging technologies or security? This could be a cheap test to see if you might like working there, and whether you'd actually need to do further study.

R&D is a public good, and so we'd expect it to be systemically underfunded by the private sector and provided in some part at least by governments. Some economists, such as Mariana Mazzucato argue that government plays a key role in both funding R&D and in applying it for public benefit. Lant Pritchett argues that development comes through interlocking transformations, including the build-up of state capability.   

But in your comments below, and from having read through your blog, it seems like you're not such a fan of government or even ... (read more)

By the way EA Funds now includes the Founders Pledge climate fund which I think is a bit more straightforward than the animal welfare argument

I've been learning to code with Python and I did my first tiny bit of machine learning - I figured out how to do a polynomial regression to look at global average sea surface temperatures!