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Become an expert in something specific and boring
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- VHRanger 3y agoThanks, effectivealtruism.org! I think I'll become an expert in running a retail cryptocurrency exchange and hedge fund. Maybe move the operation to the Bahamas as a tax optimization.
- ikt 3y agowhat's the link between sbf and effectivealtruism.org?
- boxed 3y agoSBF used effective altruism as cover for his fraud. People in the movement swallowed his bs. Like everyone else...
- TheNewsIsHere 3y agoMy opinion is that Effective Altruism is effectively a late-stage capitalist cult of convenience. Anything Sam Altman is near, I stay away from.
- whatshisface 3y agoI can write the following comment about basically anything: The community is a piece of work but the founding ideas are worth learning from.
- VHRanger 3y agoPeter Singers founding ideas, sure. Will MacAskill, nope.
- whatshisface 3y agoI had never heard of the latter.
- rrherr 3y agoPeter Singer, nope. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conv... https://archive.ph/OXXQb https://archive.ph/OXXQb
- whatshisface 3y agoIf saying some crazy things means everything they say is wrong then you'd have to be a Christian Atheist once you put the bible and the complete works of Thomas Paine together.
- ellrob88 3y agoCan you explain your opposition to Singer's views? I understand he argues in favor of legalising voluntary euthanasia, and increased abortion rights. As a non-religious person, his arguments generally seem quite rational to me, but I'm keen to understand more.
- boxed 3y agoIt's not clear she's not just trolling against abortion. Is that what the article is? Because I looked up the author and she was disabled her entire life to to a genetic disease. It seems pretty reasonable to allow abortion for cases like this. Which is why it IS legal and even recommended in most of the western world.
- chrisdirkis 3y agoI disagree with Harriet Johnson in at least a few cases, but the entire thrust of that piece and her argument within is "it's insane that people make judgements on my quality of life, without asking me, and say that I should not be born". You can make that argument and also believe that abortion is an appropriate tool for some cases.
- boxed 3y agoHe was also near to bread and water. Best stay away!
- brewdad 3y agoI’m gluten intolerant, so I’m halfway there.
- BobbyJo 3y agoI can do more good, long term, sitting on wealth at 7% until I'm old and tired, than if I spent it pulling kids out of the third world today. /s
- mtc010170 3y agoHN may not be the best forum to maximize your distance from Sam Altman, if that’s truly a goal.
- Utkarsh_Mood 3y agoSam isnt really a proponent of EA, for what its worth. https://twitter.com/sama/status/1593046526284410880?lang=en https://twitter.com/sama/status/1593046526284410880?lang=en
- ikt 3y agono, he ran a crypto exchange and behind the scenes his companies trading desk used it's own coin as leverage, nothing to do with ea
- boxed 3y agoYea exactly. He just said he did crypto stuff to get money for good things later. Those later things didn't materialize.
- ikt 3y agoJust reading this Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-ftx-sam-bankman-fried/672149/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/cryptocurr... > Yet this crisis also creates an opportunity. * Effective altruism, the movement, is not the same thing as effective altruism, the practice of financially maximalist and rigorously data-driven philanthropy. * Divorcing the latter from the former would benefit everyone on the planet. I've been wondering why you guys care about some guy who ran a crypto exchange and what that has to do the with the core philosophy of effective altruism but it seems like you've all linked the movement with the philosophy to my chagrin.
- yunwal 3y agoPersonally, I have a few issues with the philosophy of EA that I believe are reflected in the community. 1) I believe the thought leaders behind the philosophy severely downplay the downsides of making money amorally. It’s considered a completely legitimate approach to find the highest paying job you can and donate lots of your salary. High paying jobs that attract EA believers (finance in particular, many areas of tech as well) tend to destabilize the economy, oppress people, and contribute to unreasonable expectations about economic growth that kill our planet. 2) The movement is culturally weak, doesn’t really attempt to branch out of a few men with similar finance/tech backgrounds with huge egos and savior complexes. This, to me, is not how change occurs. Culture is a necessary part of change. Sure, you can provide mosquito nets to malaria-ridden areas of the world, but that doesn’t change a culture of corruption or encourage the next generation to solve the local systemic issues that only they’re capable of fixing. Real movements attempt to change hearts and minds and incorporate different types of people. In other words, movements are inseparable from their community. Any philosophy that doesn’t incorporate community building is not going to be the most effective way of creating positive change.
- karaokeyoga 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism#Approaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism#Approaches He is mentioned here (in "Donation"), FWIW.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jamestimmins 3y agoI'm curious if this is true as a general lesson for career growth. People who have been especially successful in their careers as e.g. software engineers, is this also a good path?
- diogenes4 3y agoHey they were just about to improve the world in ways nobody has ever dreamed of
- iteria 3y agoFor me, I haven't had a problem specialized in healthcare regulation. I have a favorite stack, but my preferred stack is the ship of theseus if we start from the beginning of my care. That said, I've worked in all sorts of stacks. The only throughline is healthcare regulation with the occasion side steps into other highly regulated fields. I've spent my career automating bureaucracy. Employers just like that they don't have to explain their situation to me. As everyone knows tech stack is fast to pick up, but domain takes much later. I'm coming up on 15 years doing this. It's working for me thus far.
- tiffanyg 3y agoOk, I'm racking my brain (and tried a couple of searches) ... but, I don't know that space almost at all, and I just can't come up with a way to "un-Mad Lib" "ship of theseus". Unless you're being more metaphorical ...?
- smashed 3y agoHe's saying the tech stack changes over time and gets updated. Probably going from on-prem to cloud with some saas sprinkled in, as many other industry. What does not change as rapidly is the strict regulations and particular needs of the healthcare domain.
- iteria 3y agoYes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Thank you for clarifying on my behalf
- ghaff 3y agoIt depends. I've known people who were arguably the world experts in things no one really cared about any longer (e.g. legacy computer architecture performance optimizations)--and certainly weren't willing to pay to optimize. There are also boring business software systems that hang around a long time.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI’ve been doing unsexy IT stuff as a volunteer, for decades. I’m still at it. Seems to work for me (and thousands of others, around the world).
- totallywrong 3y agoI don't think many people deliberately choose to get into something boring, it's usually because the job requires it. Then suddenly you become an expert and don't find it boring anymore, because at that point you see the inner layers and the opportunities. So the better advice is to get into a field (in this case politics) you find interesting and keep an open mind.
- eru 3y ago> Then suddenly you become an expert and don't find it boring anymore, because at that point you see the inner layers and the opportunities. The opposite can also happen. A friend of mine is a pilot for commercial airliners. Nowadays he compares his job to being a bus driver in the sky.
- makeitdouble 3y agoTBF bus drivers are underrated. There is a severe lack of qualified driver in many places, and the drivers that continue doing their job even as the pay is low and their clients aren't all pleasing to serve. I think they're more often than not the quiet heroes of their communities.
- eru 3y agoWell, I didn't mean to make a comment on bus drivers. My friend doesn't really know what bus drivers do (at least not anymore than anyone else).
- makeitdouble 3y agoNo offense, your friend is also handling dozens/hu dreds of people's lives, day in day out, and merits all the respect he can get.
- AlbertCory 3y agoHis point is, if you're the expert on something that comes up in legislation or litigation, you'll be called on to opine on it.
- keiferski 3y agoThe title of the article doesn’t really line up with what you probably think it contains. It’s more about learning a highly specific regulatory framework or bureaucratic process. Here’s an example: The specifics of congressional appropriations, federal funding, and procurement: what sorts of things does the government purchase, how does this relate to biotech or AI (software)? Related to this, becoming an expert on the Strategic National Stockpile and understanding the mechanisms of how a vendor managed inventory could work. I guess it depends on the context, but I think if your goal is to “make the world a better place” (which is ostensibly what EA is aiming at) this is probably bad advice. The attitude here is a very technocratic one, in which the solution to problems is to understand them abstractly and then manipulate societal machinery to solve them. I don’t think this actually works in reality, as many EA examples have shown. Instead, if you interpret the title to be a little more straightforward, I do think it’s actually good advice. Just make that “something” be something useful in-itself. Become an expert at building computers from scratch, or hydroponics, or repairing diesel engines, or installing solar panels. A world full of people that know how to do stuff is almost certainly better than one full of “experts” that have only abstract knowledge, especially when it comes to things like 3D printing or the security of voting machines. (Mentioned as examples in the article.)
- bordercases 3y agoI would agree with you if that knowledge wasn't the stuff industrial organization was made of. That is expertise many countries currently lack and have experts come in from overseas to deploy.
- metalcrow 3y ago> I don’t think this actually works in reality, as many EA examples have shown. Can you give some examples of this failing? Naively many examples of things improving that i know of were either very boring bureaucratic endeavors or required heavily involvement in bureaucracy. The Clean Air and Water Act, the FDA, the Civil Rights Act, all required people at the level of government or some other large social group to organize and plan things and make them happen. And thus you need people with the specific area knowledge and group connections in that area to make those things happen. Or is this a mis-reading of your claim?
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoAs someone who learns quickly and gets bored this has been true. I went very deep into a few products used by the Enterprises and Open source community. So deep as to read their source, their associated library source, and talk to their SMEs and partners. If you can do beyond Tier 2 or 3 without being employed, you can leverage that knowledge to adjacent realms. Now my questions require "that one person" on the internal product design teams to answer. I have never been "known at the city's gates" but for one or two products I am.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI did some work for a civil engineer with a professional engineer credential. He worked as an expert witness and on the interpretation of ASME code for boilers and pressure vessels. He could turn around a report on a code interpretation in hours to a day or two for around $50k USD. He had/has about a $15M home and never hurt for coin.
- wanderingmind 3y agoMost PhDs fit these category and yet they are miserable financially, physically, emotionally. At the core, we need to be doing something that is useful to a significant number of people in atleast one way be it physically, financially, cognitively or emotionally. Yet most of these expertise demonstrated in thick jacketed thesis books just collects dust with no tangible use. So, no don't become an expert in something specific and boring unless it has the potential to be useful for a significant number of people.
- sublinear 3y agoI don't agree. Committing to deeply technical work to the point of mastery absolutely transfers to many other disciplines, even non-technical ones. You really want to know what's causing the talent shortage? The attitude that being behind the scenes is worthless toil.
- intelVISA 3y agoThere's no talent shortage, only a shortage of talent willing to accept being lowballed on TC.
- Madmallard 3y agoYeah it was weird reading that comment There's hundreds of applicants for every position even lowballed ones.
- jakobnissen 3y agoI don't agree. PhDs are misable yes, but this is due to the way PhDs work in isolation, to the fact that many PhDs do it because they need the PhD not because they want to do it (and, in some countries, poor working conditions and salaries). Also, surely the author would agree you should become an expert in something that is useful for many people, boring as it is. I mean, that's his whole point.
- jszymborski 3y ago> Most PhDs fit these category and yet they are miserable financially, physically, emotionally Do you mean prior to, or after they graduate? Getting a PhD is a miserable slog, especially if your tuition fees are exorbitant, but if you are able to afford the unjustly steep mental and financial cost, it has been shown to lead to enjoyable and gainful employment on average [0]. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02696-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02696-6
- lolbert3 3y ago[dead]
- dools 3y agoI know a great real world example of this. A friend of mine is an expert in economics, specifically Georgism and Modern Monetary Theory (although he has orthodox economics training as well). He's worked in policy in a range of institutions, and now works at the Australian Federal Treasury on policy. It's taken something like 8 years for that to happen. He's not a radical revolutionary, he's not a sleeper cell or a Trojan horse for some ideology, and he hasn't made any secret of the schools of economics in which he's trained when applying for any of his roles. The more people working in government who understand what money is and how it works, the better off society will be. Where as many in the MMT or heterodox economics community generally seek to make as much noise as possible outside the building, I have a hunch that quietly and dilligently doing work inside the building is much more effective even though it's less cathartic (and there is documentary evidence that this has been the approach by libertarian economics adherents for quite some time![1]). [1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Democracy-Chains-Nancy-MacLean/dp/1101980966 https://www.amazon.com.au/Democracy-Chains-Nancy-MacLean/dp/...
- TapWaterBandit 3y agoYou can't be serious referencing that hack, MacLean. Too much nonsense in her "QANON conspiracy for the Left" writing but this paragraph from the Amazon page is illustrative: > Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. What planet is this lady on that she looks at the Republican Party of the last 8 years and sees the effective culmination of a libertarian plot? Trump's presidency can be called a lot of things but presenting it as a "triumph for libertarian ideals" is absolutely absurd. I almost feel bad for her, she published that dross in mid-2017 and probably started working on it 5 years earlier when it could at least plausibly have been claimed to be accurate but then Trump got elected and showed her claim that libertarianism was any sort of dominant belief system in the Republican party is an absolute farce. Trump was pure statist protectionism in his economics and Pence did diddly squat overall. Libertarianism is utterly dead in the Western World, both the left and right are completely onboard with the government controlling or regulating as much of the economy as possible. In regards to Australia, the govt literally banned Qatar airlines recently from opening routes to Aus because the pollies are in bed with Qantas.....how is that remotely libertarian? May as well blame Catholic fundamentalism for the world we live in as Libertarianism, both are completely dead ideologies with no support at any level of power.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoThis strategy is rare ex ante because it's irrational for most young people to follow. Explore/exploit advises us to start out with a vast swath of interests, and then to home in ever deeper on whatever seems to provide the most bang for our buck -- the problem is, being inherently interesting is its own reward, and a terribly powerful attractor for the youth in particular. Just because you know that e.g. there are only maybe 50 IAM architects worth their salt in the entire Northern European area doesn't mean you can capitalize on it if you think AuthN and AuthZ are dull as dirt. (Which I don't! But I'm also not willing, or even really sure of how to go about acquiring the necessary years of practice to get there. That's part of what the problem feels like on the ground!) Nevertheless, I love getting into the weeds of boring niche topics. From a business perspective they're a pretty good deal once you start to get older and have dealt with the surfaces of some of them out of necessity.
- j7ake 3y agoBoring is maybe a term for outsiders, but those experts would call it “nuance” or “technical”.
- nickdothutton 3y agoI much prefer to toil away in secret. I'd rather be a king-maker than a king. The lack of scrutiny affords me greater latitude and latitude is very valuable. Begrudgingly I had to open a social media account a few years ago to do some in-public stuff, but I'd rather not have.
- benzin 3y agoIt might be the narrative bias of revisionist history but it seems like there’s a trend of bombastic good-for-nothing leaders against get-stuff-done lackeys and quiet leaders. I almost despair at hearing what i want to hear now because it probably means what i want isn’t actually being done.
- vikramkr 3y agoI don't think experts in specific things think their field is boring. You're not going to get far if the reason you're trying to become an expert is because a blog said so instead of because you love the field
- keiferwiseman 3y agoEA means effective altruist… like our boy Sam Bankrun-Fraud
- spicyusername 3y agoEA just means do what you can do to help the most number of people. Obviously our boy SBF was not doing that, so he probably doesn't count, regardless of what he said he was doing.