I would argue (perhaps self-servingly) that academia is another example of such a path
Academia is, in my mind, the textbook example of people doing something because it’s familiar, not because they’ve searched for it and it’s the right choice. Most of the academics I know will freely state that it only makes sense to go into academia for fame, not for money- and so it’s not clear to me what you think the EA benefit is. (Convincing students to become EA? Funding student organizations seems like a better way to do that.)
Most of the academics I know will freely state that it only makes sense to go into academia for fame, not for money- and so it’s not clear to me what you think the EA benefit is.
The goal is to get direct impact by doing high-impact research. One of the key points here is that donating money is just one particularly straightforward way to do good!
Academia is, in my mind, the textbook example of people doing something because it’s familiar, not because they’ve searched for it and it’s the right choice.
I have certainly seen this before, although I think it’s less prevalent (but by no means absent) near the top.
The goal is to get direct impact by doing high-impact research.
One concern is that high-impact research is hard to come by. But it’s definitely a possibility (and one that 80K has acknowledged in many places)! What kind of research are you looking in?
The goal is to get direct impact by doing high-impact research.
Can you expand on that a little, to spell out some concrete high-impact research opportunities that you think some EAs should be focusing their careers on?
If you’re asking about me personally, I work on artificial intelligence; an (out of date) research statement can be found here. My research also sometimes branches out into nearby fields such as statistics, program analysis, and theoretical computer science.
More generally, if I found myself switching fields then some major contenders would be bioinstrumentation, neuroscience, materials science, synthetic biology, and political science. Of course, the particular choice of problem within a field is in many ways more important than the field itself, so in some sense this list is just cataloguing my biases.
Academia is, in my mind, the textbook example of people doing something because it’s familiar, not because they’ve searched for it and it’s the right choice. Most of the academics I know will freely state that it only makes sense to go into academia for fame, not for money- and so it’s not clear to me what you think the EA benefit is. (Convincing students to become EA? Funding student organizations seems like a better way to do that.)
The goal is to get direct impact by doing high-impact research. One of the key points here is that donating money is just one particularly straightforward way to do good!
I have certainly seen this before, although I think it’s less prevalent (but by no means absent) near the top.
One concern is that high-impact research is hard to come by. But it’s definitely a possibility (and one that 80K has acknowledged in many places)! What kind of research are you looking in?
Can you expand on that a little, to spell out some concrete high-impact research opportunities that you think some EAs should be focusing their careers on?
If you’re asking about me personally, I work on artificial intelligence; an (out of date) research statement can be found here. My research also sometimes branches out into nearby fields such as statistics, program analysis, and theoretical computer science.
More generally, if I found myself switching fields then some major contenders would be bioinstrumentation, neuroscience, materials science, synthetic biology, and political science. Of course, the particular choice of problem within a field is in many ways more important than the field itself, so in some sense this list is just cataloguing my biases.