Building aptitudes & kicking ass | Holden Karnofsky (2021)

Описание: Originally released August 2021. Holden Karnofsky helped create two of the most influential organisations in the effective philanthropy world. So when he outlines a different perspective on career advice than the one we present at 80,000 Hours — we take it seriously.

Holden disagrees with us on a few specifics, but it’s more than that: he prefers a different vibe when making career choices, especially early in one’s career. While he might ultimately recommend similar jobs to those we recommend at 80,000 Hours, the reasons are often different.

At 80,000 Hours we often talk about ‘paths’ to working on what we currently think of as the most pressing problems in the world. That’s partially because people seem to prefer the most concrete advice possible.

But Holden thinks a problem with that kind of advice is that it’s hard to take actions based on it if your job options don’t match well with your plan, and it’s hard to get a reliable signal about whether you’re making the right choices. How can you know you’ve chosen the right cause? How can you know the future job you’re aiming for will still be helpful to that cause? And what if you can’t get a job in this area at all?

Holden prefers to focus on ‘aptitudes’ that you can build in all sorts of different roles and cause areas, which can later be applied more directly.

Learn more and see the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episod...

Chapters:
• Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
• Holden’s current impressions on career choice for longtermists (00:02:34)
• Aptitude-first vs. career path-first approaches (00:08:46)
• How to tell if you’re on track (00:16:24)
• Just try to kick ass in whatever (00:26:00)
• When not to take the thing you're excited about (00:36:54)
• Ways to be helpful to longtermism outside of careers (00:41:36)
• Things 80,000 Hours might be doing wrong (00:44:31)
• The state of longtermism (00:51:50)
• Money pits (01:02:10)
• Broad longtermism (01:06:56)
• Cause X (01:21:33)
• Open Philanthropy (01:24:23)
• COVID and the biorisk portfolio (01:35:09)
• Has the world gotten better? (01:51:16)
• Historical events that deserve more attention (01:55:11)
• Applied epistemology (02:10:55)
• What Holden has learned from COVID (02:20:55)
• What Holden has gotten wrong recently (02:32:59)
• Having a kid (02:39:50)

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The 80,000 Hours Podcast features unusually in-depth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.