Are there armies in any time in history in which individuals should have served in the military to do the most good in expected global utility? If so, what seems to be the criteria?
Arguably the codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WWII were doing a tremendous amount of good that they wouldn’t have been able to match doing other things. But in the context of conscription, this kind of thing seems extremely unlikely. Not only does it depend on a comically evil yet powerful enemy, it also depends on the ability of a handful of individuals to make an outsized contribution to the war effort by means of their scarce, special skills. There does not seem to be anything half as dangerous as Nazi Germany that we can fight by military means, and it is not clear that there is a comparable niche in which people with special skills can do much good in. Of course, even if there were such a niche, chances are you would not have the ability to exploit it, almost by definition.
I suspect that for the typical person in the developed world, working their usual job and donating any surplus income to effective charities vastly outweighs the marginal good they would do joining any military in any capacity. So I believe that the answer to your last question is Yes, you should expect a random EA to regret joining the military (assuming that the only thing that motivates them is EA concerns). And I believe that the factors in favour of not joining are so overwhelming that the answers to your second and third questions, no matter what they may be, would not change the calculus.
So if we assume that the person is in such a niche, and has the ability to exploit it, then the question would be to quantify how evil is the enemy. Israel’s favorite enemy these days is Iran, so it seems that I should learn more about Iran and give my best predictions regarding it’s future. One thing that immediatly comes to mind is that there are many similarities between Saudi-Arabia and Iran, while Israel seems to have a good relationship with Saudi-Arabia, so on what grounds should I believe that Iran is evil?
A large part of why the code breakers produced so much value was that there was an open war and ending open wars is high utility. Given that there’s no open war between Israel and Iran it’s unlikely that you would get similar gains even if you think Iran is evil (whatever a country being evil is supposed to mean).
Arguably the codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WWII were doing a tremendous amount of good that they wouldn’t have been able to match doing other things. But in the context of conscription, this kind of thing seems extremely unlikely. Not only does it depend on a comically evil yet powerful enemy, it also depends on the ability of a handful of individuals to make an outsized contribution to the war effort by means of their scarce, special skills. There does not seem to be anything half as dangerous as Nazi Germany that we can fight by military means, and it is not clear that there is a comparable niche in which people with special skills can do much good in. Of course, even if there were such a niche, chances are you would not have the ability to exploit it, almost by definition.
I suspect that for the typical person in the developed world, working their usual job and donating any surplus income to effective charities vastly outweighs the marginal good they would do joining any military in any capacity. So I believe that the answer to your last question is Yes, you should expect a random EA to regret joining the military (assuming that the only thing that motivates them is EA concerns). And I believe that the factors in favour of not joining are so overwhelming that the answers to your second and third questions, no matter what they may be, would not change the calculus.
So if we assume that the person is in such a niche, and has the ability to exploit it, then the question would be to quantify how evil is the enemy. Israel’s favorite enemy these days is Iran, so it seems that I should learn more about Iran and give my best predictions regarding it’s future. One thing that immediatly comes to mind is that there are many similarities between Saudi-Arabia and Iran, while Israel seems to have a good relationship with Saudi-Arabia, so on what grounds should I believe that Iran is evil?
A large part of why the code breakers produced so much value was that there was an open war and ending open wars is high utility. Given that there’s no open war between Israel and Iran it’s unlikely that you would get similar gains even if you think Iran is evil (whatever a country being evil is supposed to mean).