TL;DR: Should I give up my highly risky and possibly even immoral career pursuit and go into charity work or not?
I’ve spent the last 6 years (from ages 24-30) trying to get into a career that’s incredibly competitive, with little to show for it (I’m purposefully not revealing what it is, so as not to conjure up any biases people may have about it). From what I’ve read, this is par for the course, and it could easily take a few more years to break in, but the base rate of success is about 1%. Of course, strategizing and training smarter than I have been should theoretically help, but sheer luck definitely does play a factor in this field. In most situations with odds like this (e.g. raffles), I wouldn’t bother betting so much as a dime. Should I not extend that conclusion to my career? (I of course assume that no one on here will reply with “just follow your passion no matter what!” ;-) )
One could argue that, unlike raffles, I’m not risking anything this situation: even if I totally fail, I will have still gained whatever skills and life experience from the attempt, aka even if I lose, I win. However, there are moral considerations:
In 80,000 hours parlance, I would consider this a relatively “unethical” field with middle-class income as the most realistic possibility, and since I don’t have any expertise in any other field, including anything related to charity or high-earning, there’s no reason not to select this profession for moral reasons except for the fact that, as with any business, it takes money to make money. And the idea of spending, say, $2000 for the chance of making a living at this profession versus another seems immoral to me. To translate that into a thought exercise, it’s as if someone is telling me that if I shoot two children in the head (i.e. a conservative estimate of the number of children that money could have saved had I sent it to a charity instead of investing in this risky career), I get to roll a 100-sided die to see if I luck out with my intended career (which will likely pay only just as much as any other middle class career, so there’s no reason to believe I’d be able to make up for that $2000 and save an even greater number of lives, especially since I already intend to give as much as I’m comfortable giving). Since I wouldn’t shoot the two children even for 100% chance of success, I obviously wouldn’t do it just for a 1% chance.
I could theoretically restrict myself to only cash outlays that have a pretty certain certain ROI or only engage in things that require no initial investment, and I know of many people who (as far as I know) succeeded at this business in that way, but I would imagine that that restriction hobbles my chances even more. Although the “even if I lose, I still win” thing would technically still be true, I would think I’d end up getting immensely frustrated with essentially shooting myself in the foot and feel like I was wasting my time and energy that could be more productively spent doing something else.
This seems rather convincing to me (so if you detect any errors in logic, please let me know!), so why am I posting it here? I suppose it’s because something’s holding me back. I can’t cut the cord. I’m still harboring that hope that “I’ll be one of the lucky ones.” I’m like that guy hunched over the craps table at two in the morning after gambling his life savings away saying “just one more roll, one more roll...” I feel like this clinging must be at least partially due to the American “you can do whatever you set your mind to” crap that’s been drilled into my subconscious my entire life. It must also be partially due to the fact that I’ve considered my field the “most importantest thing ever,” as untrue as that may be, ever since I was a kid, which is probably largely due to my father’s influence. There’s no other field or job I find interesting, except some charity stuff, but as I said, I have no expertise or training in that, would just be taking a job away from someone else, that’s a competitive field too, etc.
Any advice/suggestions/comments/manifestos?
Thanks! :)
Given the unbelievable difficulty in overcoming cognitive bias (mentioned in this article and many others), is it even realistic to expect that it’s possible? Maybe there are a lucky few who may have that capacity, but what about a majority of even those with above-average intelligence, even after years of work at it? Would most of them not just sort of drill themselves into a deeper hole of irrationality? Even discussing their thoughts with others would be of no help, given the fact that most others will be afflicted with cognitive biases as well. Since this blog is devoted to precisely that effort (i.e. helping people become more rational), I would think that those who write posts here must have reason to believe that it is indeed quite possible, but do you have any examples of such improvement? Have any scientists done any studies on overcoming cognitive bias? The ones I’ve seen only show that being aware of cognitive bias barely removes its effects.
It almost seems like the only way to truly overcome cognitive biases is to do something like design a computer program based on something you know for sure you’re not biased about (e.g. statistics that people formed correct opinions about in various experiments) and then run it for something you are likely to be biased about.
I apologize if there are already a bunch of posts (or even comments!) answering this question; I’ve been on the site like all day and haven’t come across any, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.