[MrGLaDOS]

These fokes devoted quite some time into thinking about your problem: https://80000hours.org/

From their homepage: "You have 80,000 hours in your career. Make the right career choices, and you can help solve the world’s most pressing problems, as well as have a more rewarding, interesting life. We’re here to give you the information you need to find that fulfilling, high-impact career. Our advice is all free, tailored for talented graduates & young professionals, and based on five years of research alongside academics at Oxford."

The 80000 hours podcast can be long winded but is at times also quite interesting.

[yboris]

Before 80,000 Hours started, there was Giving What We Can - which gave me meaning in my life. It reminded me of how incredibly fortunate I am to be where I am: earning even $50k/year puts me in the richest 2% of the world! https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/

This means giving 10% of my income to cost-effective charities that help other individuals is entirely within my means.

Over the years, within the Effective Altruism (EA) community I have met amazing people - devoting their lives to solving important, neglected problems, people who give 50% of their income to help others, and more. I'm consistently inspired by them to do more - and it makes life a thrill.

[DenisM]

On a tangent, but did you bond with any of them?

[kaskavalci]

Sheer amount you make means nothing as your expenses may also be higher. If you live where you are the 2% while making 50k then you would feel it. Otherwise it's dry statistics.

[justaguyhere]

Can you share some blogs, names etc of the amazing people?

[bkcreate]

I recently watched a TED talk by Peter Singer that went into Effective Altruism pretty well

[atlasunshrugged]

I'll strongly second this, 80k hours and the Effective Altruism community in general isn't for everyone, but they have great data driven insights into high impact careers and really good resources to help you make decisions (and a really welcoming community). They've got a good quiz that helps direct you but I also recommend you just go through their career guide and if it speaks to you just look on FB for a local chapter and talk to the leader of it, in my experience they're quite helpful about giving you specific advice for your situation

https://80000hours.org/career-planning-tool/

[ozgooen]

Strongly thirded. I'm not sure I agree with absolutely everything they say, but overall I think they have a far more pragmatic and honest set of answers than any competing advice I hear. For disclosure, I worked there for a year.

The EA worldview takes some getting used to though.

[nnd]

My biggest issue with 80,000 hours is that it's a rational, but radically uninspiring advice in the end. It is a framework for those who buy into "don't follow your passion advice", and try to maximize their utility function instead.

[tvanantwerp]

A fair criticism. Personally, I've spent enough time around folks who followed their passion and seen where it got them that I'm 100% on board the utility function train.

[colordrops]

It's not binary though. It's a complex weaving dance between passion and utility for most people if you are to be both reasonably happy and well off.

[monk_e_boy]

The problem occurs when passion and expectations differ. An artist who expects a good, easy life, to be wealthy as a plumber etc.

Utility is fine. Packing shelves is fine. Do you have time to follow your passion out of work? Can you make your passion pay enough? Most people I've met who gave up on their passion seemed to want praise, fame and/or notoriety rather than the 'art' or whatever they were producing.

[kurthr]

Exactly, I know so many part-time artists/musicians... even a few part time scientists. If the passion/art is really important to you, you'll find a way (there's a homeless guy I know who paints and chalks). You may not get what you want, but maybe you'll still get what you need.

Somewhere in here there's the Peter principle that people rise to their highest level of incompetence... it's true in art as well as engineering/business.

[totololo]

Oh how I would LOVE to know more! Can you give examples?

[Aeolun]

Join a startup as a soon-to-be father, following your dreams, and have the thing explode in your face, then finally recover and get a job at a megacorp (a week before the baby is due)?

Utility for the win! Following your dreams is fun and all, but the risk/reward ratio is just way out there.

[adambyrtek]

Getting a stable job at a big company to be able to support your family after taking a risk on a startup doesn't sound like a terrible outcome to be honest.

[stefanmichael]

Sounds optimal actually, you want to take risk when allowed and stop taking that risk immediately when your life changes.

[pmarreck]

So the take-home here is take all your career risks before you take on dependents?

[Aeolun]

Yes, but probably not while your wife is pregnant.

[Reedx]

Acting and professional sports are good examples, but consider anything with very low odds. You hear about the successes, not about those who didn't make it (the 99%). They had passion too.

[cs02rm0]

I've only had a quick look. I really like the idea of the site, almost desperately so. But the lists of top things to work on that I found seemed a bit disappointing. AI safety policy made the top of one list.

My undergrad AI lecturer told us that it was widely "known" AI was soon going to be generally smarter than humans when he was an undergrad. He wasn't convinced evolutionary changes were going to get us there. It was some 15 years ago I was listening to him, probably 20 or more years before that when he was an undergrad. We still seem to be saying it's 10, 20, or some other made up number of years away.

I'm not even sure there's a significant future problem here. Not on the scale of, say, becoming a multi-planetary species or resolving issues with antibiotic resistance.

[dogcomplex]

Fair enough, but consider that a "dumb" AI running the world on incentives that don't match human and planet welfare is already our current condition - it's called The Economy. While the overall system isn't a perfect AI just yet, any specializable part is already operating at an intelligence far past the point of (most) individual human ability, and the tools to control this system (monetary policy, democratic systems) are increasingly being eroded (untraceable/uncontrollable money systems, pay-to-win democracy). There may be some human intelligence amongst the overall system but, even if we never make a Perfect AI to rule it all, the point at which we're not able to really change the incentive/value system is coming near - if it hasn't passed already.

(That probably has nothing to do with the actual AI Safety problems studied today in regards to pure AIs. But damned if this isn't an important-A-F cousin of the problem.)

[jarofgreen]

Is that not talking about general A.I. tho? And sure, many people argue that might never happen ... But we already have many specific A.I.s, and those specific A.I.s are already making lots of big decisions that affect people's lifes. Sounds like some safety policy there could be worth thinking about.

[ndnxhs]

Its not particularly interesting though. A calculator is a kind of specilized AI that can do maths massively faster than a human can.

[jarofgreen]

Well, it's not going to be interesting to everyone. But there are many people who are interested in it; Cathy O'Neil wrote a whole book about it. The main point is I'd argue that it's a big problem that needs people to look at it. (80,000 hours website was actually talking about general AI - https://80000hours.org/career-guide/world-problems/ - but I'd still argue specific A.I.s need attention too)

[cs02rm0]

Yes. But then specific AI safety is an even smaller problem.

[jarofgreen]

Disagree. It's a different problem, not necessarily smaller. It's clearly not yet a solved problem, and as some of the issues interact with many other social issues there are no easy answers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction is the usual starting point referenced here.

[hopler]

My passion is for utility

[quanticle]

What is the difference between "following your passion" and "maximizing your utility function"? "Utility function" is simply a fancy mathematical way of saying, "that which makes you happy". Maximizing your utility function is maximizing that which makes you happy, which is pretty close to following your passion, isn't it?

[nnd]

I meant it mostly in a sense of maximizing financial rewards by producing goods and services rewarded by the market. This activity may or may not overlap with what you enjoy doing. A typical example would be working in finance vs making art.

[kiliantics]

I've been following them for a few years and, while I think there are some good ideas, I find them ultimately too unwilling to part with the status quo. I think real change in our society will require more drastic efforts that don't follow normal college-educated career trajectories.

This is something I care quite deeply about so it is the "problem I decided to solve", as OP puts it. I think what we do in professional life will most likely not involve solving meaningful problems, since most industry is not focused on such things (and can't, because it is often the cause). For me, I try to work on political and especially labour issues outside of work, since that seems to me to be the most likely way to achieve significant improvements in society.

The fact that 80000 hours has seemingly never discussed ideas involving labour unions or grassroots political activism but rather focuses on think tanks and other elitist top-down approaches is pretty telling of their neoliberal bent.

[jellyksong]

Their career guide does specifically discuss social impact outside of your job, in terms of advocacy (what you've described), support roles, and donations.

[solveit]

Grassroots activism is great, but I think it's pretty clear that a single person at an elite think tank is more impactful than a single grassroot.

Now, if you think you can pull a Nelson Mandela, go for the activist approach, but most people can't, and 80,000 hours is in the business of giving advice to maximize expected utility.

[kiliantics]

The problem is that the single person's hands are tied because of their position. You can't influence the government from a think tank if you're suggesting prison abolition, banning cars from Manhattan, or even just massive social housing projects. Those think tanks would never get funded or get the time of day in government. Some things really need people power from below.

[solveit]

I think we're both completely correct. Some things need power from below, but those things are almost never the most efficient things to be working on precisely because they're so outside the political mainstream.

This is also the reason EA gets a lot of hate from various quarters. They take picking your battles to an extreme, and essentially come right out and say that many worthy causes are not the right ones to be fighting for.

[soneca]

I occasionally checked on them in the beginning when they were focusing on trying to find their problem to solve.

But it was very anti-climax and frustrating for me when they announced that their problem was to help other people find their problem. Too... comfortable solution I guess, I don't know. Not judging their choice here, just stating that as an expectator, from an entertainment point of view, it was frustrating.

[uwbassist]

I like 80,000 hours a lot, but I think it should be balanced with Yudkowski's advice to "Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

Be honest with yourself, balance your desire to do good (utilons) with your need as a human to feel good and recharge your altruism batteries by feeling connected to your good work.