The Nonlinear Library EA - Should 80,000 Hours be more transparent about how they rank problems and careers? by Vasco Grilo
Dec 20, 2023
04:37
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Should 80,000 Hours be more transparent about how they rank problems and careers?, published by Vasco Grilo on December 20, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Question
I wonder whether 80,000 Hours should be more transparent about how they rank problems and careers. I think so:
I suspect 80,000 Hours' rankings play a major role in shaping the career choices of people who get involved in EA.
According to the 2022 EA Survey, 80,000 Hours was an important factor to get involved in EA for 58.0 % of the total 3.48 k respondents, and for 52 % of the people getting involved in 2022.
The rankings have changed a few times. 80,000 Hours briefly explained why in their newsletter, but I think having more detail about the whole process would be good.
Greater reasoning transparency facilitates constructive criticism.
I understand the rankings are informed by 80,000 Hours' research process and principles, but I would also like to have a mechanistic understanding of how the rankings are produced. For example, do the rankings result from aggregating the personal ratings of some people working at and advising 80,000 Hours? If so, who, and how much weight does each person have? May this type of information be an infohazard? If yes, why?
In any case, I am glad 80,000 Hours does have rankings. The current ones are presented as follows:
Problems:
5 ranked "most pressing world problems".
"These areas are ranked roughly by our guess at the expected impact of an additional person working on them, assuming your ability to contribute to solving each is similar (though there's a lot of variation in the impact of work within each issue as well)".
10 non-ranked "similarly pressing but less developed areas".
"We'd be equally excited to see some of our readers (say, 10-20%) pursue some of the issues below - both because you could do a lot of good, and because many of them are especially neglected or under-explored, so you might discover they are even more pressing than the issues in our top list".
"There are fewer high-impact opportunities working on these issues - so you need to have especially good personal fit and be more entrepreneurial to make progress".
10 "world problems we think are important and underinvested in". "We'd also love to see more people working on the following issues, even though given our worldview and our understanding of the individual issues, we'd guess many of our readers could do even more good by focusing on the problems listed above".
2 non-ranked "problems many of our readers prioritise". "Factory farming and global health are common focuses in the effective altruism community. These are important issues on which we could make a lot more progress".
8 non-ranked "underrated issues". "There are many more issues we think society at large doesn't prioritise enough, where more initiatives could have a substantial positive impact. But they seem either less neglected and tractable than factory farming or global health, or the expected scale of the impact seems smaller".
Careers:
10 ranked "highest-impact career paths our research has identified so far".
"These are guides to some more specific career paths that seem especially high impact. Most of these are difficult to enter, and it's common to start by investing years in building the skills above before pursuing them. But if any might be a good fit for you, we encourage you to seriously consider it".
"We've ranked these paths roughly in terms of our take on their expected impact, holding personal fit for each fixed and given our view of the world's most pressing problems. But your personal fit matters a lot for your impact, and there is a lot of variation within each path too - so the best opportunities in one lower on the list will often be better than most of the opportunities in a higher-ranked one".
14 non-ranked "hi...
Question
I wonder whether 80,000 Hours should be more transparent about how they rank problems and careers. I think so:
I suspect 80,000 Hours' rankings play a major role in shaping the career choices of people who get involved in EA.
According to the 2022 EA Survey, 80,000 Hours was an important factor to get involved in EA for 58.0 % of the total 3.48 k respondents, and for 52 % of the people getting involved in 2022.
The rankings have changed a few times. 80,000 Hours briefly explained why in their newsletter, but I think having more detail about the whole process would be good.
Greater reasoning transparency facilitates constructive criticism.
I understand the rankings are informed by 80,000 Hours' research process and principles, but I would also like to have a mechanistic understanding of how the rankings are produced. For example, do the rankings result from aggregating the personal ratings of some people working at and advising 80,000 Hours? If so, who, and how much weight does each person have? May this type of information be an infohazard? If yes, why?
In any case, I am glad 80,000 Hours does have rankings. The current ones are presented as follows:
Problems:
5 ranked "most pressing world problems".
"These areas are ranked roughly by our guess at the expected impact of an additional person working on them, assuming your ability to contribute to solving each is similar (though there's a lot of variation in the impact of work within each issue as well)".
10 non-ranked "similarly pressing but less developed areas".
"We'd be equally excited to see some of our readers (say, 10-20%) pursue some of the issues below - both because you could do a lot of good, and because many of them are especially neglected or under-explored, so you might discover they are even more pressing than the issues in our top list".
"There are fewer high-impact opportunities working on these issues - so you need to have especially good personal fit and be more entrepreneurial to make progress".
10 "world problems we think are important and underinvested in". "We'd also love to see more people working on the following issues, even though given our worldview and our understanding of the individual issues, we'd guess many of our readers could do even more good by focusing on the problems listed above".
2 non-ranked "problems many of our readers prioritise". "Factory farming and global health are common focuses in the effective altruism community. These are important issues on which we could make a lot more progress".
8 non-ranked "underrated issues". "There are many more issues we think society at large doesn't prioritise enough, where more initiatives could have a substantial positive impact. But they seem either less neglected and tractable than factory farming or global health, or the expected scale of the impact seems smaller".
Careers:
10 ranked "highest-impact career paths our research has identified so far".
"These are guides to some more specific career paths that seem especially high impact. Most of these are difficult to enter, and it's common to start by investing years in building the skills above before pursuing them. But if any might be a good fit for you, we encourage you to seriously consider it".
"We've ranked these paths roughly in terms of our take on their expected impact, holding personal fit for each fixed and given our view of the world's most pressing problems. But your personal fit matters a lot for your impact, and there is a lot of variation within each path too - so the best opportunities in one lower on the list will often be better than most of the opportunities in a higher-ranked one".
14 non-ranked "hi...