Request for input: how has 80,000 Hours influenced the direction of the EA community over the past 2 years?

The deprioritization of nonlongtermist issues, orgs and paths. To me this is unwarranted and didn’t necessarily reflect the views of the EA community. I suspect this lead to some division and feeling pushed around/devalued by people interested in global health, suffering, animals, etc. This may have driven the movement to be more longtermist dominated as the other people engage less.

Chris Leong @ 2022-10-30T08:07 (+10)

I agree with the increased focus on long-termism, but I would also like to 80,000 Hours minimise any feelings of division/devaluing as long as they can do so whilst remaining true to what they believe.

Ardenlk @ 2022-10-30T10:00 (+2)

Thanks David - it seems like an important harm to consider if we've caused people who'd otherwise be doing valuable work in global health / animal welfare / other issues to leave the EA community // not do as valuable work.

Karthik Tadepalli @ 2022-10-29T20:53 (+2)

I didn't know the job board did this! That is pretty terrible.

david_reinstein @ 2022-10-29T21:06 (+2)

Well the job board still lists the “neartermist” jobs but the top orgs and pressing problems does impose these two separate tiers.

Charles He @ 2022-10-29T21:21 (+25)

https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/

Animal welfare is not even in the first or second tier.

Like, literally nanotech is beating it out, as well as "malevolent actors", and "improving governance of public goods".

Charles He @ 2022-10-29T21:30 (+11)

*Opens "top recommended organizations"*

*Pauses* 

*Breathes deeply* 

A bit to unpack, but yeah, forecasting is beating out global health and wellbeing, for top priority.

The smells are large, e.g. shipping the org chart, etc.

Rebecca @ 2022-10-29T21:44 (+8)

This way of breaking things down is very confusing to me. It seems weird to have some of the listed areas be role types and some be cause areas. E.g. the grantmaker and EA org employee sections also include GiveWell

Ardenlk @ 2022-10-30T10:01 (+2)

Thanks Rebecca, I see how that's a confusing way to organise things -- will pass on this feedback.

IanDavidMoss @ 2022-10-30T20:23 (+3)

I was also going to say that it's pretty confusing that this list is not the same as either the top problem areas listed elsewhere on the site or the top-priority career paths, although it seems derived from the latter. Maybe there are some version control issues here?

1. The rise and fall of earning-to-give (although over a longer time period than the past two years)
2. Climate change being important but not a top priority (I know this view is held more generally but the 80k problem profile is always the linked-to source for it)
3. I would speculate the job board is probably very important for matching impactful orgs with EA job seekers, but I have no evidence of that

I'd suggest changing the first short answer question on the google form to a longer response. Right now I can only see part of the sentence I'm typing.

(I submitted this to your form, figured I could also write it here for further discussion):

I think 80k has provided a clear and easy-to-consume career guide, which has influenced the conversation. There are a set of careers/cause areas which are legibly high priority and thus approved by 80k. This has the effect of nudging people into the approved careers and discouraging them from everything else.

I suspect this has both positive and negative effects. The positive ones are the first-order effects: hopefully people actually make better career choices and this helps the world. I have some fears about the second-order effects though. Mainly, I worry that (mainly through social dynamics) some people are pushed out of careers where they would actually have more impact, by moving into careers where they can't thrive as well, and thus grow less and end up making less of a difference on the world. It's hard to judge this impact on those people's lives, since it shows up slowly and over time.