This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.
Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert.
I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country.
Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong.
So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential).
A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year. Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome!
You know it's funny, I've never thought about this before, but I actually would like for the earth to stay beautiful, even if there are no humans around to enjoy it. Feeling such a strong attachment to the earth makes me think that I empathize a bit too much with Kaczynski... which got me thinking about psychopathic tendencies, and after looking them up, I realized I borderline have many of them. I'm not really too worried about myself, but this got me back to morality again. Psychopaths are probably quite rational about pursuing their own personal terminal goals. You can't say they're doing anything wrong, can you? Is there anything you can really say to convince a rational psychopath who is smart enough to get away unpunished for his actions to act in a way that is better for society?
Anyway, yeah, I think you're right that I could maintain my happiness. I'll probably continue in this "phase" of life another 2-3 years at least, enjoy my free time, do a lot of reading, and start thinking harder about what to do with the rest of my life. My back-up plan is to become a cop/detective in the Bay Area, which would be somewhat physically and mentally engaging, offer great hours and benefits, allow me to retire on pension after 25 years, and pay enough that I would probably end up donating more than 10%... a fun, comfortable, guilt-free life, but definitely not something that would change the world or leave me filling immensely fulfilled. So, I'll take your suggestion and try to work out the pieces to the puzzle for a few more ambitious ideas.
A distinction between being ambitious and having ambition? Wow, I think I'm going to love that book.
Yes!! Haha I did the same thing, when it came to final exams, some people would calculate the score they needed to bump their grades up one notch, but for me, every year, every class, even in college, my question was "What's the lowest score I can get and still get an A in the class?" If I knew I would get a C without studying, or I could do a quick 15 minute review and get an A, I wouldn't even do it. The effort I put into classes also correlated with how harsh a grader the teacher was. I actually had one teacher who believed in grading students according to their effort rather than according to their ability/final product compared to the rest of the class. I hated it, but in hindsight, I would have gotten a lot more out of school if all teachers had done that.
You're right about the probability of success being an ugh field. I like your idea about solving puzzles and high probabilities of success. I'll try breaking some ideas down, someday. Obviously higher P(success) correlates with a stronger desire to do something ambitious, but even if it were >50%, I would still be selfish enough to consider doing my own thing.
Either that or...well, you know. Maybe this is why it's an ugh field. I'm too happy living my leisurely life and subconsciously fear that if I find a high probability of success, I won't change anything, but will feel a more substantial amount of guilt.
Anyway, I found Scott's post about comparative advantage interesting and relevant. It was the first SSC post I read, which made me read tons of the archived posts, which eventually led me here. I know my strengths and weaknesses, but I really wish I knew my comparative advantage. Even if I did know, though, what if it wasn't nearly as fun as nannying? The post ends:
God is definitely convenient here.
Oh, yeah! Not dying would be cool! I haven't read much about it yet, but I'm encouraged by the fact that people here are so hopeful. Right now, when I think about people dying and turning to dust, I think it sounds great, but really that's only relative to thinking about people dying and going to hell. Edit: I read the AI article you linked, and the part 2 afterwards, and it made the whole AI idea seem a lot more concrete/probable/exciting. Thanks! It makes me wonder, though, is it selfish to work on AI? The people working on it will die if they don't succeed, so personally they have nothing to lose even if they accidentally cause an early extinction of the human race. Then again, if we assume our eventual extinction is inevitable without AI, the overall risk-reward ratio favors research. Maybe I should consider giving some/all of my donations to MIRI. Thanks for bringing this all to my attention. Figuring out what I consider to be the probability of immortality should probably be more urgent than figuring out the probability of success in pursuing ambition, and like you mention, there will probably be some relation between the two.
Yeah, this is intuitive. But I think we should be careful here not to look at an idea and ask, "What % of people who believe this are smart?" because the real question is, "Out of all the smart people who have seriously considered this idea, what % believe it?" It may be that some ideas are considered mainly by smart people, which would explain why a high percentage of people believing them are smart.
I doubt it. In my experience, the average person is quite stupid. My thought is that the fact that they're a sociopath means that they have different goals, but not necessarily that they're more instrumentally rational (better at achieving your goals, whatever they are).
No, but I can say that I don't like them :)
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