"I doubt that people would eat much less meat if they had to kill animals themselves. I don't think the key is whether people see and feel the consequences of their actions. More important is whether they recognize those whom their actions affect as fellow persons, meriting moral consideration."

The above is really well said!

"My own reflections and reasoning about philosophy of mind have, so far, seemed to indicate against the idea that e.g. chickens merit moral concern." 

I would like to hear more on those thoughts, and I'm curious if and how much they've changed since this post was written @Holden Karnofsky 

Personally, I do think chickens, and even bugs merit moral concern (though the intensity of moral concern might vary), but I draw the line at (potentially) sentient machines, and prior to finding EA never thought about shrimp welfare. I'll be curious to question and unpack these intuitive beliefs I hold. Thanks for the food for thought. 

Is this just for high-impact projects or also for people actively trying to pivot into a high-impact role, where the project essentially is landing a role and building a network? 

A clarification/example from the 80,000 hours AI bot regarding diminishing marginal returns I found helpful:

"The key idea is that a charity's average impact per dollar isn't the same as what your next dollar achieves.

Concrete example: imagine a program distributing vitamin supplements in one region.

• First $100k: reaches the villages closest to the road, with the worst deficiencies. Massive impact per dollar.
• Next $500k: reaches more remote villages — more spent on transport, populations slightly less in need. Still good, but less per dollar.
• Next $1M: the neediest people are already covered; now it's trucking supplements to areas with milder deficiency at high logistical cost. Much weaker per dollar.

The charity's average looks great — because the early dollars did so much. But your donation is the last dollar in, funding the marginal (weakest remaining) activity. That's "diminishing marginal returns": each additional dollar tends to buy less than the one before, because organisations naturally do the cheapest, highest-impact things first.

So the smart question isn't "which charity has the best track record per dollar?" but "where will one more dollar do the most?" — which might be a smaller org that hasn't yet exhausted its best opportunities, rather than a famous one that has."

- And there will be more on marginal impact a few pages further in the handbook!

Hi Emily! Thank you for articulating what I know so many people (including me) are struggling with. Personally, I've been trying to land a high-impact operations role for over 6 months now (been unemployed for 15 months), and talking to other people in the CEA bootcamp further confirmed that the EA/ non-profit / high-impact world (including AI Safety/governance) is so incredibly tough to break into. There are so many talented people committed to contribute their time and skills to make the world better through their daily work, and aren't given the chance to do so. We all have bills to pay- I refuse to give up, but don't judge people who (have to) do at some point. 

If people genuinely want to dedicate their careers to EA-aligned, impactful work, we should make it easy for them! Don't we want more people working on the worlds biggest problems? I've thought about possible solutions- one being that more people who've gained experience in the high-impact space should (be encouraged and trained to) branch out and start their own orgs, so that the old role could be filled again, plus new ones created over time in the newly formed organization. 

I also read that about 70% of roles are now being filled through referrals (non-EA specific, source: https://jobgether.com/job-seekers-guide#the-market), and hear referrals to be of importance within EA as well. Similar to @Mark Aiken's sentiment, while signaling alignment is important, we need to be cautious to not let the EA ecosystem be a somewhat closed loop. On a side note, I have similar feelings about EAG events too (I would have loved to attend and volunteer at the one in my city, but was not approved)- but that's a whole other topic. 

What a great idea! As someone still relatively new to EA, I can't believe I never heard about it until last year. There is so much potential to bring EA to wider audiences. I'll be sure to share the podcast 😊

Hi everyone 🦋

My name is Leonie, and I'm an Operations generalist looking for a remote ops(-adjacent) role at a high-impact organization! I spent 3.5 years running operations in a $1–2M revenue organization and took on shared leadership during an unplanned absence of company leadership- maintaining continuity and supporting operational and financial priorities.

I came across EA in Fall of last year, through my job search. I was struck by the concept that good intentions aren't enough, and that we can and should use evidence to figure out where our efforts actually do the most good. Since then, I've read career guides and core EA ideas, applied to high-impact jobs, and started engaging with my local EA group. I'm currently halfway through CEA's High-Impact Carer Pivot Bootcamp (highly recommend!) and new to this Forum. 

I have many thoughts and questions about how to pick a cause area, and would love to chat with people working in AI safety/governance about risk to cause harm, and wonder how pro-AI someone should be to enter (and more importantly, stay (fulfilled) in) the field. If that's you, please don't be shy to say hi, I'd love to pick your brain!  

Hi Sofia! 

Great and very relatable post- and something I've been personally wrangling with since being part of a layoff last year. Truly so much has changed since I last applied for work in 2021. I'm currently learning the importance of networking and wish I had -like you suggest- connections and preparations in place before needing them. 

Truth be told though, this time of unemployment has been the greatest gift. It gave me the chance to pause and reassess what I really want to do, which became really clear after coming across EA through my job search. Now I'm halfway through CEA's High-Impact Career Pivot Bootcamp and have a lot more strategy to my job search- and will hopefully soon land a remote operations role. 

I hope you enjoy your sabbatical in June- taking time to fill your own cup is a crucial part of showing up your best for others!