Did you have anything specific in mind when you said “then there are probably career choices that are much better in that respect”?
No. My observation was that this particular choice seems to be of no value for existential risk reduction, that if there are some choices that provide some value, that’s much better than no value at all (actually, this is faulty step, as even if a “better” choice is much better in relative value, its absolute value may still be low, so that it does almost no good), and that there probably are some (saying which ones can be expected to be useful and are plausible choices for a career needs considerably more research than I can think up for a comment, and I don’t know of a reference that already answers this question). If you go with professional philanthropy, optimize for money. This is generally an easier choice, as you can switch donation target without retraining and based on future knowledge about which organizations and kinds of activities become effective.
No. My observation was that this particular choice seems to be of no value for existential risk reduction, that if there are some choices that provide some value, that’s much better than no value at all (actually, this is faulty step, as even if a “better” choice is much better in relative value, its absolute value may still be low, so that it does almost no good), and that there probably are some (saying which ones can be expected to be useful and are plausible choices for a career needs considerably more research than I can think up for a comment, and I don’t know of a reference that already answers this question). If you go with professional philanthropy, optimize for money. This is generally an easier choice, as you can switch donation target without retraining and based on future knowledge about which organizations and kinds of activities become effective.