TDLR: Assuming that Long Termist causes are by far the most important, 80,000 hours might still be better off devoting more of their space to near-termist causes, to grow the EA community, increase the number working in long term causes and improve EA optics.
Background
80,000 hours is a front page to EA, presenting the movement/idea/question to the world. For many, their website is people’s introduction to effective altruism (link). and might be the most important internet-based introduction to Effective altrurism, - even if this is not their main purpose.
As I see it, 80,000 hours functions practically as a long-termist career platform, or as their staff put it, to "help people have careers with a lot of social impact". I’m happy that they have updated their site to make this long-termist focus a little more clear, but I think there is an argument that perhaps 20%-30% of their content should be near-term focused, and that this content should be more visible. These arguments I present have probably been discussed ad-nauseam within 80,000 hours leadership and EA leadership in general, and nothing I present is novel. Despite that, I haven’t seen these arguments clearly laid out in one place (I might have missed it), so here goes.
Assumptions
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to make these 3 assumptions. They aren’t necessarily true and I don’t necessarily agree with them, but they make my job easier and argument cleaner.
- Long termist causes are by far the most important, and where the vast majority of EAs should focus their work.
- Most of the general public are more attracted to near-termist EA than long-termist EA
- 80,000 hours is an important "frontpage" and "gateway" to EA
Why 80,000 hours might want to focus more on near-term causes
1. Near termist focus as a pathway to more future long termist workers
More focus on near termist careers might paradoxically lead to producing more long termist workers in the long run. Many people are drawn to the clear and more palatable idea that we should devote our lives to doing the most good to humans and animals alive right now (assumption 2). However after further thought and engagement they may change their focus to longtermism. I’m not sure we have stats on this, but I’ve encountered many forum members who seem to have followed this life pattern. By failing to appeal to the many who are attracted to near-termist EA now, we could miss out on significant numbers of long termist workers in a few years time.
2. Near termist causes are a more attractive EA “front door”
80,000 hours is a “front door” to Effective Altruism, then it is to make sure as many people enter the door as possible. Although 80,000 hours make it clear this isn’t one of their main intentions, there is huge benefit to maximizing community growth.
3. Some people will only ever want/be able to work on near-term causes.
There are not-unreasonable people who might struggle with the tenets/tractability of long-termism, or be too far along the road-of-life to move from medicine to machine learning, or just don’t want to engage with long termism for whatever reason. They may miss out a counterfactual fruitful living-your-best-EA-life, because when they clicked on the 80,000 hours website they didn’t manage to scroll down 5 pages to cause area no. 19 and 20 - the first 2 near-term cause areas “Factory farming” and “Easily preventable or treatable illness”. These are listed below well established and clearly tractable cause areas such as “risks from atomically precise manufacturing” and “space governance” [1]
There may be many people who never want to/be able decide to change careers to the highest impact long-term causes, but could change from their current work to a much higher impact near-termist cause if 80,000 hours had more/more obvious near term content.
4. Optics – Show the world that we EAs do really care about currently-alive-beings
I’m not saying that long termist EAs don’t care about people right now, but the current 80,000 hours webpage (and approach) could give a newcomer or media person this impression. Assuming optics are important (many disagree), an 80,000 hours page with a bit more emphasis on near-term content could show that long termists do deeply care about current issues, while clearly prioritising the long term future.
Arguments for the status quo
These are not necessarily the best arguments, just arguments I came up with right now, and push against my earlier arguments. I don't find it easy to argure against myself. If my earlier arguments don’t hold water at all than these are unnecessary.
Epistemic integrity
There is an element of disingenuity in pushing near term causes now, primarily to achieve the goal of generating more long termist workers later on. 80,000 hours should be as straight-forward and upfront as possible.
80,000 hours’ purpose is to maximise work impact, not grow the EA community
Although 80,000 hours happens to be an EA front door, this isn’t their primary purpose so they shouldn’t have to bend their content to optimise for this as well, even if it might be EV positive in the long run.
Long term problems are so many orders of magnitude more important that there should be no watering down or distraction of the core message.
80,000 hours should keep their focus crystal clear. If near termist causes receive even a little more airtime, people who might counterfactually have worked on longtermist causes might instead choose more attractive, but lower impact near term paths.
High uncertainty and obvious bias
I’m very uncertain about the strength of my arguments - I've written this because these may be important questions for consideration and discussion. Full disclosure I’m a mostly near termist myself, so I’m sure that bias comes through in the post ;).
And a cheapshot signoff
I leave you with a slightly-off-topic signoff. Picking someone who changed their career from “Global Health” to “Biosecurity” as one of the “stories we are especially proud of” seems a bit unnecessary. Surely as their gold standard “career change” pin-up story, they could find a higher EV career change. Someone who was previously planning to work for big pharma perhaps?
(I work at 80,000 Hours but on the 1on1 side rather than website.) Thanks for writing out your thoughts so clearly and thoroughly Nick. Thanks also for thinking about the issue from both sides - I think you’ve done a job job of capturing reasons against the changes you suggest. The main one I’d add is that having a lot more research and conversations about lots of different areas would need a very substantial increase in capacity.
I’m always sad to hear about taking away the impression that 80,000 Hours doesn’t care about helping present sentient creatures. I think the hardest thing about effective altruism to me is having to prioritise some problems over others when there are so many different sources of suffering in the world. Sometimes the thing that feels most painful to me is the readily avoidable suffering that I’m not doing anything about personally, like malaria. Sometimes it’s the suffering humans cause each other that it feels like we should be able to avoid causing each other, like cutting apart families on the US border. Sometimes it’s suffering that particularly resonates with me, like the lack of adequate health care for pregnancy complications and losses. I so much wish we were in a world where we could solve all of these, rather than needing to triage.
I’m glad that Probably Good exists to try out a different approach from us, and add capacity more generally to the space of people trying to figure out how to use their career to help the world most. You’re right that Probably Good currently has far lower reach than 80,000 Hours. But it’s far earlier in its journey than 80,000 Hours is, and is ramping up pretty swiftly.
Thanks Michelle - great to see 80,000 hours staff respond!
"I’m always sad to hear about taking away the impression that 80,000 Hours doesn’t care about helping present sentient creatures." - This is a bit of a side issue to the points I raised, but I think any passer by could easily get this impression from your website. I don't think its mainly about the prioritisation issue, just slightly cold and calculated presentation. A bit more warmth, kindness and acknowledgement of the pains of prioritisation could make the website feel more compassionate.
Even jus... (read more)