Touch fuzzy, get util

contact_antitype

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I don't think it's in any way shameful to spend some of your time doing things that aren't the "best" use of your time. In fact, I do a lot of this. I have a life I want to lead, and I won't apologise for doing things that make me happy.

But in any case, community discussion of where best to give is usually positive from a util standpoint. It tends to teach you and other people around you structured and evaluated ways to prioritise your giving better, that are grounded in practical experience. And assuming you will be giving a whole bunch of money over the rest of your life, learning how to do it better is a super good use of time. There's a reason Giving What We Can used to run "where to allocate £1000" sessions back when it did more community outreach.

dan.pandori 🔸

1mo

In response to "EA doesn't recommend becoming a politician":

80000 does recommend policy work. https://80000hours.org/skills/political-bureaucratic/

EA forum posts making similar recommendations seem common.

It is hard to say if EA-as-a-monolith recommends any particular thing, but I think many EAs would encourage (competent and electable) folks to consider a policy career.

contact_antitype

1mo

Politician as in "running for office" is a little distinct, I definitely agree/get that we want some EA/ people doing policy especially in AIS. That was possibly a weak example, but it's hard to think of specifically unexpected examples of something.

dan.pandori 🔸

1mo

That's a fair distinction. And it is also true that this isn't the main point of your post, so not an issue if it isn't 100% accurate.

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If no, not the best use of time

"No" is easier to discuss because it leads to just a meta-level problem. It means Michael got fuzzies, but the fuzzies are helping him with self-growth, reflection, education, or helping others in the community that way (you would flip the question, was reading the post fuzzies or utils), so these are very load-bearing fuzzies for any utils.

This is important, because if I ask a question like, "should I work in finance even though I find bio-risk more interesting?" now I have a load-bearing fuzzy, where my interest in bio-risk might sustain my career better.

Or maybe it's a misaligned fuzzy, where it's interfering with my higher impact career path.

At this point, the whole dichotomy is just dead in the water. It restates the questions I had before learning anything about EA, and takes us all the way back to the cliche career advice "follow your passion [which gives you fuzzies which sometimes can be exchanged for utils.]"

If yes, the best use of time

If it was the best use of Michael's time, it seems to imply there's something not fungible about community participation. Likely enough. But I think it's important to not dismiss this for two reasons:

Do we just undervalue communities in general? Maybe Michael could have gone to church and convinced someone to become an EA.

Are we good at identifying non-fungible career activities in general? For example: voting is non-fungible so it might be worth your time in utils.

Take note of innovators: for instance, EA doesn't recommend becoming a politician (I think), yet several have passed critical AI legislation that EA now backs.

Conclusion

I think I covered a few topics along the way:

Self-care: so much fuzzy is load-bearing for util that it's misleading to treat it as a low-impact category. So do more fuzzy, probably.

Semantics: using fuzzy/util to model career selection won't help; it just begs the question, how important is passion.

Non-fungible career: community participation and some other stuff like voting seem non-fungible, so they can be util-level impact even if they're not being done by a professional.