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Vaniver comments on Less Wrong mentoring thread - Less Wrong Discussion

31 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 29 December 2011 12:10AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 29 December 2011 04:39:51PM 1 point [-]

I've skimmed a few books on career choice but they all just spout platitudes.

Talk to your high school's guidance counselor. They should have a few aptitude tests that you might find useful (like this short one).

It's pretty obvious that most people have no idea what they're doing when they choose a career. So what should I base a career choice on?

Think of a career as the way in which you provide value to others. The most important word in that sentence is 'you, then 'others'. Figuring out what your personality is and what your mental skills are is the best springboard. (And mental skills are way more than "g"- there's a lot of variation in mental architecture among people.)

Comment author: D_Malik 06 January 2012 09:56:34PM 0 points [-]

I've taken tests like that in the past. They seem useful for narrowing things down, but what frustrates me is that they make recommendations based on things you shouldn't be using to make long-term recommendations. For instance, the test you linked to asks about level of interest in art, business, law, computers, etc.. I don't want to spend the next 50 years of my life in neuroscience because I happened to have a crush on biology in high-school.

I mentioned g because it's important for career choice and it seems unlikely to change much, unlike other things like social skills, programming skill, or self-control, which can be learned (and should be learned if some brief learning is needed for a long-term better career).