Hi all,

Mostly lurker, I very rarely post, mostly  just read the excellent posts here.

I'm a Filipino, which means I am a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines.  My annual salary, before taxes, is about $20,000 (USA dollars).  I work at an IC development company (12 years at this company), developing the logic parts of LCD display drivers.  My understanding is that the median US salary for this kind of job is about $80,000 -> $100,000 a year.  This is a fucking worthless third world country, so the government eats up about ~30% of my salary and converts it to lousy service, rich government officials, bad roadworks, long commute times, and a (tiny) chance of being falsely accused of involvement in the drug trade and shot without trial.  Thus my take-home pay amounts to about $15,000 a year.  China is also murmuring vague threats about war because of the South China Sea (which the local intelligentsia insist on calling the West Philippine Sea); as we all know, the best way to survive a war is not be in one.

This has lead to my deep dissatisfaction with my current job.

I'm also a programmer as a hobby, and have been programming for 23 years (I started at 10 years old on Atari LOGO; I know a bunch of languages from low-level X86 assembly to C to C++ to ECMAScript to Haskell, and am co-author of SRFI-105 and SRFI-110).  My understanding is that a USA programmer would *start* at the $20,000-a-year level (?), and that someone with experience can probably get twice that, and a senior one can get $100,000/year.

As we all know, once a third world citizen starts having first world skill level, he starts demanding first world renumeration also.

I've been offered a senior software developer job at a software company, offering approximately $22,000/year; because of various attempts at tax reform it offers a flat 15% income tax, so I can expect about $18,000/year take home pay.  I've turned it down with a heavy heart, because seriously, $22,000/year at 15% tax for a senior software developer?

Leaving my current job is something I've been planning on doing, and I intend to do so early next year.  The increasing stress (constant overtime, management responsibilities (I'm a tech geek with passable social skills, and exercising my social skills drains me), 1.5-hour commutes) and the low renumeration makes me want to consider my alternate options.

My options are:

1.  Get myself to the USA, Europe, or other first-world country somehow, and look for a job there.  High risk, high reward, much higher probability of surviving to the singularity (can get cryonics there, can't get it here).  Complications: I have a family: a wife, a 4-year-old daughter, and a son on the way.  My wife wants to be near me, so it's difficult to live for long apart.  I have no work visa for any first-world country.  I'm from a third-world country that is sometimes put on terrorist watch lists, and prejudice is always high in first-world countries.

2.  Do freelance programming work.  Closer to free market ideal, so presumably I can get nearer to the USA levels of renumeration.  Lets me stay with my family.  Complications: I need to handle a lot of the human resources work myself (healthcare provider, social security, tax computations, time and task management - the last is something I do now in my current job position, but I dislike it).

3.  Become a landowning farmer.  My paternal grandparents have quite a few parcels of land (some of which have been transferred to my father, who is willing to pass it on to me), admittedly somewhere in the boondocks of the provinces of this country, but as any Georgian knows, landowners can sit in a corner staring at the sky, blocking the occasional land reform bill, and earn money.  Complications: I have no idea about farming.  I'd actually love to advocate a land value tax, which would undercut my position as a landowner.

For now, my basic current plan is some combination of #2 and #3 above: go sit in a corner of our clan's land and do freelance programming work.  This keeps me with my family, may reduce my level of stress, may increase my renumeration to nearer the USA levels.

My current job has a retirement pay, and since I've worked for 12 years, I've already triggered it, and they'll give me about $16,000 or so when I leave.  This seems reasonably comfortable to live on (note that this is what I take home in a year, and I've supported a family on that, remember this is a lousy third-world country).

Is my basic plan sound?  I'm trying to become more optimal, which seems to me to point me away from my current job and towards either #1 or #2, with #3 as a fallback.  I'd love to get cryonics and will start to convince my wife of its sensibility if I had a chance to actually get it, but that will require me either leaving the country (option #1 above) or running a cryonics company in a third-world country myself.

--

I got introduced to Less Wrong when I first read on Reddit about some weirdo who was betting he could pretend he was a computer in a box and convince someone to let him out of the box, and started lurking on Overcoming Bias.  When that weirdo moved over to Less Wrong, I followed and lurked there also.  So here I am ^^.  I'm probably very atypical even for Less Wrong; I highly suspect I am the only Filipino here (I'll have to check the diaspora survey results in detail).

Looking back, my big mistake was being arrogant and thinking "meh, I already know programming, so I should go for a challenge, why don't I take up electronics engineering instead because I don't know about it" back when I was choosing a college course.  Now I'm an IC developer.  Two of my cousins (who I can beat the pants off in a programming task) went with software engineering and pull in more money than I do.  Still, maybe I can correct that, even if it's over a decade late.  I really need to apply more of what I learn on Less Wrong.

Some years ago I applied for a CFAR class, but couldn't afford it, sigh.  Even today it's a few month's worth of salary for me.  So I guess I'll just have to settle for Less Wrong and Rationality from AI to Zombies.

Many firms require job applicants to tell them either how much money they're making at their current jobs, or how much they want to make at the job they're interviewing for. This is becoming more common, as more companies use web application forms that refuse to accept an application until the "current salary" or "salary requirements" box is filled in with a number.

The Arguments

I've spoken with HR people about this, and they always say that they're just trying to save time by avoiding interviewing people who want more money than they can afford.

Background

A few years ago I (was forced to) left grad school (halfway into it) because of complications related to a set of anxiety disorders (a typical comorbidity in Autism Spectrum Disorders; I now have a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. I'm also planning to return to grad school next year).

I have a family (2 children). Around the same time I left grad school, we received my daughter's diagnosis (she has more of a classical form of autism), followed by my own diagnosis.

With regards to my professional record, after approx. 2.5 years in grad school and 2.5 years completely out of the job market, I finally began to work at a small consulting firm. They are aware of my daughter's autism, but they don't know of my own diagnosis.

NGO

I'm also vice-president of a local, small, autism-related NGO who is now trying to convince me to disclose my being on the autism spectrum (for publicity and awareness reasons). They are planning to arrange an interview for me at a TV channel. In fact, the decision was already made, as I'm effectively coming out of the closet on December 9th, by means of an interview on a local radio station.

I'm enthusiasticaly in favour of such a move (for both egoistic and altruistic reasons), but am also afraid of potential consequences on my future professional prospects. Also consider that it's likely that I will need a new work position very soon.

In summary, I'm only worried with the fact of also having a track record of being out of the job market for quite some time, so that I'm afraid some hiring manager could be tempted to negatively associate the gap in my resume to my condition.

I wrote this post up and circulated it among my rationalist friends. I've copied it verbatim. I figure the more rationally inclined people that can critique my plan the better.

--

TL;DR:

* I'm going to commit to biomedical engineering for a very specific set of reasons related to career flexibility and intrinsic interest.
* I still want to have computer science and design arts skills, but biomedical engineering seems like a better university investment.
* I would like to have my cake and eat it too by doing biomedical engineering, while practicing computer science and design on the side.
* There are potential tradeoffs, weaknesses and assumptions in this decision that are relevant and possibly critical. This includes time management, ease of learning, development of problem solving solving abilities and working conditions.

I am posting this here because everyone is pretty clever and likes decisions. I am looking for feedback on my reasoning and the facts in my assumptions so that I can do what's best. This was me mostly thinking out loud, and given the timeframe I'm on I couldn't learn and apply any real formal method other than just thinking it through. So it's long, but I hope that everyone can benefit by me putting this here.

--
So currently I'm weighing going into biomedical engineering as my major over a major in computer science, or the [human-computer interaction/media studies/gaming/ industrial design grab bag] major, at Simon Fraser University. Other than the fact that engineering biology is so damn cool, the relevant decision factors include reasons like:

1. medical science is booming with opportunities at all levels in the system, meaning that there might be a lot of financial opportunity in more exploratory economies like in SV;
2. the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical engineering means that I have skills with greater transferability as well as insight into a wide range of technologies and processes instead of a narrow few;
3. aside from molecular biology, biomedical engineering is the field that appears closest to cognitive enhancement and making cyborgs for a living;
4. compared to most kinds of engineering, it is more easy to self-teach computer science and other forms of digital value-making (web design or graphical modelling) due to the availability of educational resources; the approaching-free cost of computing power; established communities based around development; and clear measurements of feedback. By contrast, biomedical engineering may require labs to be educated on biological principles, which are increasingly available but scarce for hobbyists; basic science textbooks are strongly variant in quality; and there isn't the equivalent of a Github for biology making non-school collaborative learning difficult.

The two implications here are that even if I am still interested in computer science, which I am, and although biomedical engineering is less upwind than programming and math, it makes more sense to blow a lot of money on a more specialized education to get domain knowledge while doing computer science on the side, than to spend money on an option whose potential cost is so low because of self study. This conjecture, and the assumptions therein, is critical to my strategy.

So the best option combination that I figure that I should take is this:

1. To get the value from Biomedical Engineering, I will do the biomedical engineering curriculum formally at SFU for the rest of my time there as my main focus.
2. To get the value from computer science, I will make like a hacker and educate myself with available textbooks and look for working gigs in my spare time.
3. To get the value from the media and design major, I will talk to the faculty directly about what I can do to take their courses on human computer interaction and industrial design, and otherwise be mentored. As a result I could seize all the real interesting knowledge while ignoring the crap.

Tradeoffs exist, of course. These are a few that I can think of:

• I don't expect to be making as much as an entry level biomedical engineer as I would as a programmer in Silicon Valley, if that was ever possible; nor do I believe that my income would grow at the same rate. As a counterpoint, my range of potential competencies will be greater than the typical programmer, due to an exposure to physical, chemical, and biological systems, their experimentation, and product development. I feel that this greater flexibility could help with companies or startups that are oriented towards health or technological forecasting, but this is just a guess. In any case that makes me feel more comfortable, having that broader knowledge, but one could argue that programming being so popular and upwind makes it the more stable choice anyway. Don't know.
• It's difficult to make money as an undergraduate with any of the skills I would pick up in biomedical engineering for at least a few years. This is important to me because I want to have more-than-minimum wages jobs as a way of completing my education on a debit. While web and graphic designers can start forming their own employment almost immediately, and while programmers can walk into a business or a bank and hustle; doing so with physics, chemistry or biology seems a bit more difficult. This is somewhat countered by co-op and work placement, and the fact that it doesn't seem to take too much programming or web design theory and practice before being able to start selling your skills (i.e. on the order of months).
• Biomedical Engineering has few aesthetic and artistic aspects, the two of which I value. This is what attracted me to the media and design program in the first place. Instead I get to work with technologies which I know will have measurable and practical use, improving the quality of life for the sick and dying. Expressing myself with art and more free-wheeling design is not super urgent, so I'm willing to make this trade. I still hope to be able to orient myself for developing beautiful and useful data visualizations in practical applications, like this guy, and to experiment with maker hacking.

There is still the issue of assuring more-than-dilettante expertise in computer science and design stuff (see Expert Beginner syndrome: http://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-expert-beginner). I am semi-confident in my ability to network myself into mentorships with members of faculty [at SFU] that are not my own, and if I'm not good at it now I still believe that it's possible. In addition, my dad has recently become a software consultant and is willing to apprentice me, giving a direct education about software engineering (although not necessarily a good one, at least it's somewhat real).

There are potential weaknesses in my analysis and strategy.

• The time investment in the biomedical engineering faculty as SFU is very high. The requirements are similar to those of being a grad student, complete with a 3.00 minimum GPA and research project. The faculty does everything in its power to allay the burden while still maintaining the standard. However, this crowding out of time reduces the amount of potential time spent learning computer science. This makes the probability of efficient self-teaching go down. (that GPA standard might lead to scholarship access which is good, but more of an externality in this case.)
• While we're on the conscientiousness load: conscientiousness is considered to be an invariant personality trait, but I'm not buying it. The typical person may experience on average no change in their conscientiousness, but typical people don't commit to interventions that affect the workload they can take on either by strengthening willpower, increasing energy, changing thought patterns (see "The Motivation Hacker") or improving organization through external aids. Still, my baseline level of conscientiousness has historically been quite low. This raises the up front cost of learning novel material I'm not familiar with, unlike computing, of which I have a stronger familiarity due to lifelong exposure; this lets me cruise by in computing courses but not necessarily ace them. Nevertheless, that's a lower downside risk.
• Although medical problems are interesting and I have a lot of intrinsic interest in the domain knowledge, there are components of research that interest me while others that I don't currently enjoy as much as evidenced from my current exposure. I can seem myself getting into the data processing and visualization, drafting ergonomic wearable tech, and circuit design especially wrt EEGs. Brute force labwork would be less engaging and takes more out of me, despite systems biology principles being tough but engaging. So there's the possibility that I would only enjoy a limited scope of biomedical engineering work, making the major not worth it or unpleasant.
• Due to the less steep learning curve and more coherent structure of the computer science field, it seems easier to approach the "career satisfaction" or "work passion" threshold with CS than for BME. Feeling satisfied with your career depends on many factors, but Cal Newport argues that the largest factor is essentially mastery, which leads to involvement. Mastery seems more difficult to guage with the noisy and prolonged feedback of the engineering sciences, so the motivations with the greatest relative importance might be the satisfaction of turning out product, satisfying factual curiosity or curiosity about established/canon models (as opposed to curiosity which is more local to your own circumstances or you figuring things out), and in the case of biomed, saving lives by design. With mathematics and programming the problem space is such that you can do math and programming for their own sakes.
• Most instances of biomedical engineering majors around the world are mainly graduate studies. The most often reported experience is that when you have someone getting a PhD in biomedical engineering, it's in addition to their undergraduate experience as a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer or a computer scientist. The story goes that these problem solving skills are applied to the biology after being developed - once again a case of some fields being more upwind than others. By contrast, an undergradute in bioengineering would be taking courses where they are not developing these skills, as our current understanding of biology is not strongly predictive. After talking to one of the faculty heads, the person who designed the program, he is very much aware of problems such as these in engineers as they are currently educated. This includes overdoing specialization and under-emphasizing the entire product development process, or a principle of "first, do no harm". He has been working on the curriculum for thirty years as opposed to the seven years of cases like MIT - I consider this moderate evidence that I will not be missing out on the necessary mental toolkit over other engineers.
• In the case where biomedical engineering is less flexible than I believed, I would essentially have a "jack of all trades" education meaning engineering firms in general would pass over me in favor of a more specialized candidate. This is partially hedged against by learning the computer science as an "out", but in the end it points to the possibility that the way I'm perceiving this major's value is incorrect.

So for this "have cake and eat it to" plan to work there are a larger string of case exceptions in the biomedical option than the computing options, and definitely the media and design option. The reward would be that the larger amount of domain specific knowledge in a field that has held my curiosity for several years now, while hitting on. I would also be playing to one of SFU's comparative advantages: the quality of the biomedical faculty here is high relative to other institutions if the exceptions hold, and potentially the relative quality of the computer science and design faculties as well. (This could be an argument for switching institutions if those two skillsets are a "better fit". However, my intuition is that the cost for such is very high and probably wouldn't be worth it.)

Possible points of investigation:

• What is hooking me most strongly to biomedical engineering were the potentials of cognitive enhancement research and molecular design (like what they have going on at the bio-nano group at Autodesk: http://www.autodeskresearch.com/groups/nano). If these were the careers I was optimizing towards as an ends, it might make more sense to actual model what skills and people will actually be needed to develop these technologies and take advantage of them. After writing this I feel less strongly about these exact fields or careers. Industry research still seems like a good exercise.
• I will have to be honest that after my experience doing lab work for chemistry at school, I was frustrated by how exhausted I am at the end of each session, physically and mentally. This doesn't necessarily reflect on how all lab work will be, especially if it's more intimately tied with something else I want to achieve. And granted, the labs are three hours long of standing. It does make me question how I would be like in this work environment, however, and that is worth collecting more information for.
• To get actual evidence of flexibility in skillset it would be worth polling actual alumni from the program, to see if any of the convictions about the program are true.

--

Thoughts, anyone?

As I mentioned in my strategic plan, I have 10 months and 28 days until I graduate from Denison University and hopefully will be transitioning to a career.  Careers are important because having one will not only mean that I won't starve, but that I'll have an opportunity to change the world.  As the career advice organization 80,000 Hours notes you'll be spending about 80,000 hours in a career, so you might as well use it to make as big of a difference as you can?  But what career should I pick?

Here are my starting thoughts and strategy...

Basic Philosophy and Strategy

My aim is to choose a career that will, taken as a whole, contribute the most to the world with regard to my utilitarian goals to increase total well-being.  "Taken as a whole" means that I'm not just considering the direct good of the first career itself, but also it's interaction with the rest of my life, it's indirect good, and how it might set me up to have an even better second career.

However, there is one catch: I furthermore want the job to be at least moderately enjoyable.  I would very much not like to be depressed or burnt out, and I suspect that would be bad for my utilitarian goals too.  If I think I would be miserable at my chosen job even if somehow it were to maximize total well-being, I still would not take it (despite this being immoral from a utilitarian standpoint).

I also would like to have a plan in place rather soon, so I can actually act upon preparing for it.  The earlier I pick a career plan, the more options will remain open.  Right now, I'm stuck, for better or for worse, with a psychology and political science major and unless I do something drastic, I won't be able to take any classes outside of those two majors for the rest of my time at Denison.

As a political science and psychology double major, I think I could be very well qualified for a job that involves research and/or statistics.  To get more of an idea of what I can do, feel free to look at my résumé and at my personal website.  I'll speculate a bit more about my qualifications later on in this essay.

The Scope of High-Impact Careers

The way I've been categorizing it, there are essentially only two different kinds of careers that promise to do lots of good -- funneling money to effective organizations and working for effective organizations, though some opportunities allow for some combination of both.

By effective organizations, I mean orgs like Giving What We Can, 80K Hours, Effective Animal Activism, The Life You Can Save, Center for Applied Rationality, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Future of Humanity Institute, Leverage Research, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GiveWell, Against Malaria Foundation, Vegan Outreach, etc.  (Of course, the actual choice of organization would matter a great deal, and some of these organizations might actually not be effective for one reason or another, but I won't look at those arguments here.) 

Funneling money to effective organizations, in this case, involves only one opportunity -- earning to give, which I've summarized before. The basic idea is that you aim to pick a high income job and then donate as much as you can to an effective organization.

Working for effective organizations involves four other opportunities -- research, influence, fundraising, and/or direct work.  I say "and/or" because you could end up employed at a effective organization that allows you to so some combination of the four.  Research might involve working for a university working on an important question.  Direct work might involve assisting in the day-to-day opportunities of the organization.

Notably, research, influence, and perhaps even fundraising, could be carried out in one's free time, such as what I do through this blog.

My Perceived Opportunities in Earning to Give

I think earning to give is a great baseline for me to evaluate other opportunities from, even though I'm moderately confident I can do more impact through a different line of work.  What opportunities await?  Here are my guesses:

• Investment Banking: My guess is this is the highest earning career, when considering probability of achieving certain incomes multiplied by the quantity of income, and high incomes right out of college.  However, I'm only moderately qualified for it -- I think I have a good analytic mindset and have taken some economics and finance classes, but I'm not an economics major, and I've never done any finance internships.  Moreover, I don't think this job would be particularly enjoyable.  I see a high chance of failure to get a job and burnout once I get a job here.

• Law: Law seems like a high-earning career if you can make it big, but there's a low chance of making it big.  I've heard anecdotally that you basically need to get into a top law school or you won't be having a good time, assuming you can pay for that law school.  I think this would be moderately enjoyable and with Moot Court, a Constitutional law class, and a Political Science major, I'm as prepared for law as anyone can be in a liberal arts school.

• Consulting: Consulting offers high incomes right out of college, though the incomes might not be as high as other opportunities overall.  I'd say I'm as prepared for consulting as anyone can be in a liberal arts school, though I'm not an economics major.  Unfortunately, however, I'd guess that I'd really hate regular travel, so consulting might not be a good career path for me.

• Computer Programming: Computer programming also offers high incomes right out of college, provided you're talented at it.  I think I have the raw aptitude, but I don't have the formal training.  My guess is that if I wanted to go into programming, I'd have to pursue some additional education after Denison.

• Market Research: I think market research would also offer decently high incomes right out of college, and I'd be well qualified for it and I'd enjoy it.  This has always been one of my favorite choices.

• Engineering: Engineering would provide high incomes right out of college, but I have no experience with engineering.

• Medicine:  Doctors earn a lot, though they have high expenses with medical school.  Doctors seem to be like lawyers who have a more smooth earnings curve -- you'll earn a bit less overall, but you have a higher chance of success.  However, I don't think this is worth pursuing as I have no interest for it and I have never taken a single college-level biology course.

My Perceived Opportunities in Research

I've done really, really well in political science and think I'd have lots of aptitude as a political science Ph.D.  However, I don't think political science offers much opportunities to actually make an impact with one's research.  Psychology research, on the other hand, I do think has a wide variety of high impact questions to study, but I've only been moderately good at psychology and I'm unsure I'd get into a top Ph.D. program.  I also imagine I might have the general skills to survive in other social science programs, like economics research.

I thought about doing philosophy research, since most of the biggest questions seem to lie in the realm of philosophy right now.  However, I'm nearly certain I can do just as well or even better at philosophy research by just writing things on the internet.

My Perceived Opportunities in Influence/Fundraising

I don't know if there's much I could do in influence beyond what I'm already doing.  I suspect my only options are to either retire early and blog full-time (it's not that hard to retire permanently by age 30 with a high enough income and savings rate).  That seems unlikely to be my best choice.

I could go work on behalf of an effective organization, which seems promising.

Or I could always retire early and then work for an effective organization, as well, which would have the added benefit of not needing them to pay me.

A career in politics is unlikely to be high impact as a first career, and I've probably already burned myself from running for higher office with public statements of outside-the-mainstream views.

My Perceived Opportunities in Direct Work

I think this is the same as the above.  I think I'd enjoy working for an effective organization directly.

One interesting idea is to be a personal assistant to someone who is high-impact to boost their impact.  I'm not sure how good I am at this, however, and I'd feel like I could do better.  I'm also not sure if this would be fun, though it could be.  I suppose it depends on the person I'd work with.

Conclusion

This essay is good in making my career plans a lot less vague.  But it's full of guesses and I'm definitely missing a lot.  What do I plan on doing from here?

• Get a significant amount of advice on this draft.  I'll be visiting England this summer and hope to stop by 80K and get advice from a bunch of cool people in person.  I'll sign up for another 80k coaching session (my first one got a bit derailed).  I also plan on talking to people not affiliated with 80K.  Just by passing this draft around, I hope to get more advice on how to modify it.  (Hint: You should give me advice on careers or advice on how to find good advice.)

• Do more personal research.  80K has a lot of research, but they might not be going fast enough for me to make it in time, and I might need to pick up some of what they don't have, to the best of my ability.  Finding salary information for my favorite jobs would be a good start.

• Choose a few paths to pursue and build toward them.  I can apply to jobs and graduate programs simultaneously while still figuring things out.

• Work on the LSAT and GRE.  I need to take these two tests for law school and Ph.D. programs respectively.  I also might need graduate school for non-Ph.D. career advancement.  I'll get the practice tests ready.

• Keep writing about this.  I'd imagine there's a lot of benefit for both me and others in creating more documentation and discussion around career choice for making the world a better place.

I am considering trying to get a job teaching statistics from a Bayesian perspective at the university or community college level, and I figured I should get some advice, both on whether or not that's a good idea and how to go about it.

Some background on myself: I just got my Masters in computational biology, to go along with a double Bachelors in Computer Science and Cell/Molecular Biology.  I was in a PhD program but between enjoying teaching more than research and grad school making me unhappy, I decided to get the Masters instead.  I've accumulated a bunch of experience as a teaching assistant (about six semesters) and I'm currently working as a Teaching Specialist (which is a fancy title for a full time TA).  I'm now in my fourth semester of TAing biostatistics, which is pretty much just introductory statistics with biology examples.  However, it's taught from a frequentist perspective. 

I like learning, optimizing, teaching, and doing a good job of things I see people doing badly. I also seem to do dramatically better in highly structured environments.  So, I've been thinking about trying to find a lecturer position teaching statistics from a Bayesian perspective.  All of the really smart professors I know personally who have an opinion on the topic are Bayesians, Less Wrong as a community prefers Bayesianism, and I prefer it.  This seems like a good way to get paid to do something I would enjoy and raise the rationality waterline while I'm at it. 

So, the first question is whether this is the most efficient way to get paid to promote rationality.  I did send in an application to the Center for Modern Rationality but I haven't heard back, so I'm guessing that isn't an option.  Teaching Bayesian statistics seems like the second best bet, but there are probably other options I haven't thought of.  I could teach biology or programming classes, but I think those would be less optimal uses of my skills.

Next, is this even a viable option for me, given my qualifications?  I haven't taken any education classes to speak of (the class on how to be a TA might count but it was a joke).  My job searches suggest that community colleges do hire people with Masters to teach, but universities mostly do not.  I don't know what it takes to actually get hired in the current economic climate.

I'm also trying to figure out if this is the best career option given my skillset (or at least estimate the opportunity cost in terms of ease of finding jobs and compensation).  I have a number of other potential options available:  I could try to find a research position in bioinformatics or computational biology, or look for programming positions.  Bioinformatics really makes "analyzing sequence data" and that's something I've barely touched since undergrad; my thesis used existing gene alignments.  I could probably brush up and learn the current tools if I wanted, but I have hardly any experience in that area.  Computational biology might be a better bet, but it's a ridiculously varied field and so far I have not much enjoyed doing research.

I could probably look for programming jobs, but they would mostly not leverage my biology skills; while I am a very good programmer for a biologist, and a very good biologist for a programmer, I'm not amazing at either.  I can actually program: my thesis project involved lots of Ruby scripts to generate and manipulate data prior to statistical analysis, and I've also written things like a flocking implementation and a simple vector graphics drawing program.  Everything I've written has been just enough to do what I needed it to do. I did not teach myself to program in general, but I did teach myself Ruby, if that helps estimate my level of programming talent.  Yudkowsky did just point out that programming potentially pays REALLY well, possibly better than any of my other career options, but that may be limited to very high talent and/or very experienced programmers.

Assuming it is a good idea for me to try to teach statistics, and assuming I have a reasonable shot at finding such a job, is it realistic to try to teach statistics from a Bayesian perspective to undergrads?  Frequentist approaches are still pretty common, so the class would almost certainly have to cover them as well, which means there's a LOT of material to cover. Bayesian methods generally involve some amount of calculus, although I have found an introductory textbook which uses minimal calculus.  That might be a bit much to cram into a single semester, especially depending on the quality of the students (physics majors can probably handle a lot more than community college Communications majors).

Speaking of books, what books would be good to teach from, and what books should I read to have enough background?  I attempted Jaynes' Probability Theory: The Logic of Science but it was a bit too high level for me to fully understand.  I have been working my way through Bolstad's Introduction to Bayesian Statistics which is what I would probably teach the course from.  Are there any topics that Less Wrong thinks would be essential to cover in an introductory Bayesian statistics course?

Thanks in advance for all advice and suggestions!

problem: I've read arguments for WBE, but I can't find any against. 

Most people agree that WBE is the first step to FAI (EDIT: I mean to say that if we were going to try to build AGI in the safest way possible, WBE would be the first step. I did not mean to imply that I thought WBE would come before AGI). I've read a significant portion of Bostrom's WBE roadmap. My question is, are there any good arguments against the feasibility of WBE? A quick google search did not turn up anything other than 

 This video. Given that many people consider the scenario in which WBE comes before AGI, to be safer than the converse, shouldn't we be talking about this more? What probability do you guys assign to the likelihood that WBE comes before AGI?

Bostrom's WBE roadmap details what technological advancement is needed to get towards WBE:

Different required technologies have different support and drivers for development. Computers are developed independently of any emulation goal, driven by mass market forces and the need for special high performance hardware. Moore’s law and related exponential trends appear likely to continue some distance into the future, and the feedback loops powering them are unlikely to rapidly disappear (see further discussion in Appendix B: Computer Performance Development). There is independent (and often sizeable) investment into computer games, virtual reality, physics simulation and medical simulations. Like computers, these fields produce their own revenue streams and do not require WBE‐specific or scientific encouragement.

A large number of the other technologies, such as microscopy, image processing, and computational neuroscience are driven by research and niche applications. This means less funding, more variability of the funding, and dependence on smaller groups developing them. Scanning technologies are tied to how much money there is in research (including brain emulation research) unless medical or other applications can be found. Validation techniques are not widely used in neuroscience yet, but could (and should) become standard as systems biology becomes more common and widely applied.  

 

Finally there are a few areas relatively specific to WBE: large‐scale neuroscience, physical handling of large amounts of tissue blocks, achieving high scanning volumes, measuring functional information from the images, automated identification of cell types, synapses, connectivity and parameters. These areas are the ones that need most support in order to enable WBE.  The latter group is also the hardest to forecast, since it has weak drivers and a small number of researchers. The first group is easier to extrapolate by using current trends, with the assumption that they remain unbroken sufficiently far into the future. 

Implications for those trying to accelerate the future:

Because much of the technological requirements are going to be driven by business-as-usual funding and standard application, anybody who wants to help bring about WBE faster (and hence FAI) should focus on either donating towards the niche applications that won't receive a lot of funding otherwise, or try to become a researcher in those areas (but what good would becoming a researcher be if there's no funding?). Also, how probable is it that once the business-as-usual technologies become more advanced, more government/corporate funding will go towards the niche applications? 

I've recently been thinking about future job prospects and ways that I might alter my preferences to increase the likelihood that I'll be happy with my future career. I have read some of the LessWrong resources about this issue, but they don't seem to address my particular concerns. I think there is a high relative importance for selecting a career with a high capacity for making me happy. It will consume at least 8 prime daylight hours of my work days and in many cases also some of the weekend. In all likelihood I will also be forced to sit in front of a computer for extended periods of time. The tasks I am assigned may have nothing to do with the things that I happen to find intellectually interesting or of ethical importance. And the work will likely zap me of most of the energy that I could use to pursue hobbies or other more "intrinsically worthwhile endeavors" (intrinsic to my personal preference ordering). Given that I believe these factors will largely determine whether I feel happy in many future situations and also whether I feel generically happy about the content of my life as a whole, I think it is worthwhile to seek advice from other rationalists in how to choose an appropriate career goal and take steps to pursue it.

What I have found on LessWrong, however, is that ambiguous and open-ended pleas for advice generally steer off course, even if the tangential issues are very interesting and insightful. Rather than query everyone for open advice about preference hacking, vague goal achievement, and wisdom for properly assigning value to some of the factors I have listed above, I propose a simpler informal job survey.

If you are interested, please briefly list the job you have or the job of someone you know very well (well enough that you feel you know relevant details about the job, details that may be hard to gather in less than 1 hour of internet searching). You don't have to reveal the location or name of the employer or anything like that, just the type of job. Optionally, please also include a sentence stating whether you (or your friend, etc.) seem to enjoy the job and why. For example, my entry would be like this:

I am a graduate student studying applied mathematics. I enjoy the access to educational resources and the flexible schedule that my current job offers, but I think my personal displeasure with computer programming and my perception that future jobs doing mathematical theory are scarce cause me to dislike the job overall.

If enough people are willing to participate, my hope is that the stream of small anecdotal remarks will serve as a brainstorming session. I hope to hear about jobs I may never have thought of, and also reasons for liking or disliking a job that I may never have thought of. The goal is to spark additional search on my own and also to gauge my current preferences in light of preferences that others have experienced with specific jobs. Such a survey would be a very helpful resource allowing me to synthesize data about job directions where the initial search will have a higher probability of being helpful for me.  

I’m a utilitarian contemplating a career change.  I currently give all my income to international development (which is possible because my husband supports us both financially).  I don’t have any special gift for science, etc. that would help save the world, so I think donations are the best way I can help.

I’m 26 and halfway through social work school.  I enjoy social work and am reasonably good at it, but the most I’ll ever earn is probably $80K/year.  I’m now thinking more about the moral imperative to earn more and thus give more.

Most high-earning careers are not ones I think I would enjoy.  That means I would be fighting burnout for the rest of my career.  (I'm open to suggestions if you think otherwise.)  The exception is psychiatry, which I do think I would enjoy and be moderately good at.  But I would need about nine years of school and residency to become a psychiatrist.

If I go to medical school and become an average psychiatrist, I’d double my expected lifetime earnings compared to social work (even after paying for school).  I could give about 2 million dollars more, which GiveWell thinks turns into about 2,500 lives saved.  No amount of inconvenience on my part compares with that many lives.

So what I want to do is figure out whether I could be productive as a psychiatrist or some other profession, or whether there’s a good reason I should stay on my current course.

Some considerations:

I’m fairly smart but not competitive-natured.  I think this would make me bad at a lot of careers that pay well but don’t require extra school, because there’s more competition for those jobs.

I’m not sure about my academic capabilities.  I haven’t taken a real science course since high school.  It’s also been a long time since I had to do the kind of rote memorization that I believe is needed in law or medical school.  I’m worried that I would get into one of these and then find I wasn’t up to the work.

I have no interest in chemistry.  Also, I don’t do well when sleep-deprived.  Both of these might make me a terrible med student.

I’ve had bouts of depression in the past, but never ones that crippled my ability to study/work.  If I were busier, they might cripple me more.

I would need at least a year of postbac science classes before I could go to medical school.  This would bring the time to become a psychiatrist to nine years, plus at least a year to apply.  That seems like forever, though I know when I’m older it won’t seem as long as it does now.

Investing that time in more school has an opportunity cost.  If I stick with social work, I could start donating again in one year.  If I become a psychiatrist, it would be more like twelve years before I could donate again.  I don’t know what effect that delay would have.  Psychiatry earnings would overtake social work earnings about 18 years from now.

I know I should count my useless undergraduate major and one year of social work school as sunk costs.  But adding a lot more school on top of the eighteen years I’ve already done feels exhausting, and I think I’m more likely to fail now than I would have been if I’d started planning earlier.

Medical school would mean nine years of giving up many of the things I enjoy – spending time with my husband, cooking, gardening, reading.  This gives me an incentive to burn out, because it would mean I could do those things again.

I’m married.  I don’t want to believe it applies to us, but statistically, me going to medical school would increase our risk of divorce.  This study says 51% of married psychiatry students divorce during or after medical school (about double our current statistical risk).  I don’t think my marriage is more important than 2,500 people’s lives. But I do think seeing it die would make me much worse at school.  Even if we didn’t actually divorce, I would expect our relationship to be significantly stressed because I would be gone or busy so much of the time. 

If I quit or fail out of medical school, I’ve wasted a lot of time and money.

If my coworkers are high earners, convincing any of them to donate effectively would have a larger impact than convincing social workers to do the same.  However, I’ve had zero luck persuading anyone I know (except my husband), so this may be irrelevant.

The questions

Do you have advice on powering through an unpleasant experience for a good cause?  Is nine years too long to power through?  Are there other careers I should be considering?

Update, May 2012: I decided not to try medical school, because I thought I would hate it.  I finished social work school and am looking for jobs in psychiatric social work, which I was doing this last year and really enjoyed.

I'm in the process of searching for a new job. I'm currently employed, but I'm dissatisfied with my salary and career growth options. I've done a couple of phone interviews and one face-to-face interview already, with several others lined up next week. The face-to-face interview went well, and I'm anticipating an offer from them next week. However, while considering how I would evaluate that offer, I caught myself awarding them points in reciprocation for their implicit praise in singling me out as a worthy candidate. Now I'm wondering what other biases I might be falling prey to in this process. Thoughts?