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The 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 bur

The 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 ago
I 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?
- keiferski 3y ago
  I was mostly making a reference to SBF, but sure, certainly there are large scale projects that require boring bureaucratic knowledge. But I am assuming that the audience of the post is not people that want to build a career in policy. Because if that’s the case, this advice is a little too obvious - of course you should become an expert in X thing if you want to build a career in X field. More generally though, my claim is just that solutions tend to be better when they are implemented locally and pragmatically, and not when thought of as abstract problems that can be solved by study and thought.
  - metalcrow 3y ago
    Ah, i see. That makes more sense, although the focus on abstract problems was not the lesson i gathered from the post. In fact, my impression was that this post was actually saying more of the opposite. Don't "dream up novel UN structures, spend time in abstract game theory", but instead get a job in some concrete and simple (i.e non-abstract) field that allows you to then be involved in policy making in some way, either as a policy making leader or an expert who can assist with making said policy. I mean, it's examples of Privacy / data protection laws and Biochemical supply chains are pretty concrete and encourage pragmatic solutions if it's literally your job.
  - Hermitian909 3y ago
    Probably not a good idea to judge all of EA but SBF. EA long predates SBF and had some huge wins by seriously asking the question "which charities save the most lives per dollar?" (technically: Quality Adjusted Years of Life, or QUALY). Really helped the world realize that things like mosquito nets in Africa were _grossly_ underfunded[0]. While I'm not an EA myself, accomplishments like Givewell[1] have really helped me keep respect for the movement - walking the walk is always orders of magnitude harder and more complex than talking the talk after all. [0] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-amf-rob-mather https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-am... [1] https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/
    - keiferski 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bambax 3y ago
Agreed. This first item is quite entertaining: "I’m especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards, e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism" Well, if that happens, it would seem legal liability is not the most important topic or the first line of business...? Fighting the pandemic would be a little more urgent? Is it possible we need more biologists than lawyers?

bordercases 3y ago

I 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?

keiferski 3y ago
I was mostly making a reference to SBF, but sure, certainly there are large scale projects that require boring bureaucratic knowledge. But I am assuming that the audience of the post is not people that want to build a career in policy. Because if that’s the case, this advice is a little too obvious - of course you should become an expert in X thing if you want to build a career in X field. More generally though, my claim is just that solutions tend to be better when they are implemented locally and pragmatically, and not when thought of as abstract problems that can be solved by study and thought.
- metalcrow 3y ago
  Ah, i see. That makes more sense, although the focus on abstract problems was not the lesson i gathered from the post. In fact, my impression was that this post was actually saying more of the opposite. Don't "dream up novel UN structures, spend time in abstract game theory", but instead get a job in some concrete and simple (i.e non-abstract) field that allows you to then be involved in policy making in some way, either as a policy making leader or an expert who can assist with making said policy. I mean, it's examples of Privacy / data protection laws and Biochemical supply chains are pretty concrete and encourage pragmatic solutions if it's literally your job.
- Hermitian909 3y ago
  Probably not a good idea to judge all of EA but SBF. EA long predates SBF and had some huge wins by seriously asking the question "which charities save the most lives per dollar?" (technically: Quality Adjusted Years of Life, or QUALY). Really helped the world realize that things like mosquito nets in Africa were _grossly_ underfunded[0]. While I'm not an EA myself, accomplishments like Givewell[1] have really helped me keep respect for the movement - walking the walk is always orders of magnitude harder and more complex than talking the talk after all. [0] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-amf-rob-mather https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-am... [1] https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/
  - keiferski 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bambax 3y ago

Agreed. This first item is quite entertaining: "I’m especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards, e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism" Well, if that happens, it would seem legal liability is not the most important topic or the first line of business...? Fighting the pandemic would be a little more urgent? Is it possible we need more biologists than lawyers?