How honest should you be when applying for high-impact roles?

By JDLC @ 2025-02-26T13:11 (+5)

Key Question: Should I be acting differently, when I apply to an 'EA role', compared to applying for 'standard' roles?

Here are my thoughts:

• When I'm applying to certain job roles, I (should) care more about the overall best outcome (counterfactual impact), than the personally best outcome.
  • The personally best outcome is that I get hired for the role.
  • The overall best outcome is that the best person gets hired for the role, whether or not that is me.
  • Sometimes these will overlap (when I'm the best candidate). Often they will not.
• There are roughly 3 categories of job that I might apply to:
  1. 'Standard Jobs': a role where there is no significant positive impact expected.
     1. Example: Getting a job working at my local supermarket.
     2. I only care about the personal outcome.
     3. I expect all applicants to only care about the personal outcome.
  2. 'Do-Good Jobs': a role where I expect to have a positive impact, but don't expect to be competing against other EA-aligned people (on average).
     1. Example: Working in a government role where I can influence policy in an important domain (AI Policy, Animal Welfare, etc).
     2. I care about the overall outcome. I want the best person hired.
     3. I expect most applicants to be mostly/exclusively concerned with the personal outcome.
  3. 'EA Jobs': a role at an EA org or similar, where I expect a high proportion of the applicants to be EA-aligned in their thinking and principles.
     1. Example: Working at OpenPhil or GWWC.
     2. I care more about the overall outcome than the personal outcome.
     3. I also expect that most applicants care likewise, more about the overall outcome than their personal outcome.
  4. NOTE: In reality, I think this is a spectrum rather than a tertiary division. The categories are more like useful placeholders.
• For 'standard jobs', your best plan is just do your best, be competitive, and get the job!
• For 'do-good jobs', it seems that I should probably adopt the instrumental goal of getting hired myself, and therefore defer to the same methods as 'standard jobs'.
  • This will make more sense in comparison with 'EA jobs' below.
  • It's likely that the best overall outcome aligns with the best personal outcome, (ie. that I am the best person for the job).
    • This assumes a bunch of implausible stuff about my abilities and having 'the one true good worldview', but I'm glossing over that for now.
    • The dynamic I'm going for is "Here's a tech policy role. AI alignment is the way to do the overall most good. Most people won't care much about AI alignment. So the way to do the overall most good is for me to get the role and do AI alignment stuff".
  • It's plausible that the best overall outcome is for another person to get hired. But I should probably ignore this.
    • There are a small proportion of applicants who are 'better'.
    • By decreasing my own chances of getting hired, I'm boosting everyone else's chance, so increasing the likelihood of a more negative outcome.
• For 'EA jobs', I should probably not be completely competitive. Pursuing the personal best is unlikely to be the way to get the overall best.
  • It's likely that the best overall outcome is for someone else to be hired (ie. that someone else is better for the role).
  • If I pursue the best personal outcome, this might result in a worse overall outcome.
• In practice, this might look like being much more epistemically honest about my own capabilities and lack thereof.
  • This decreases the chance of the best personal outcome.
  • This increases the chance of the best overall outcome.#
  • Example 1: The application lists many requirements, including 'excellent time management'. I could talk about how I fit the requirements. I could say "I fit all the requirements, {...}, but my time management is pretty poor. If this is really key to the role, you should probably go for someone else".
    • If I'm in a standard process, I should do the first.
    • If I'm in an 'EA process', I should say the second, to increase the chance of the best overall outcome.
  • Example 2: The application asks for programming experience. I could say "I've had experience with Python, building an ML app". I could say "I've done about 10 hours of programming, I copied a couple of templates, made a few minor UI changes, and linked the two templates".
    • If I'm in a standard process, I should say Sentence 1 to give me the best chance of a good personal outcome.
    • If I'm in an 'EA process', I should say Sentence 2, to give the most information to the decision maker, and increase the chance of the best overall outcome.
• There are Game Theory dynamics going on here.
  • If everyone in the hiring process cares about the overall outcome, and everyone is epistemically honest, then the best decision gets made.
  • If most people care overall and are honest, but some people care about personal outcomes and aren't, then those people probably get hired.
  • There is probably a certain point, at which the proportion of people driven by personal outcome is low enough, than the expected value of epistemic honesty is still high.
• Conclusion - when I'm doing EA Job applications, I should plausibly be epistemically honest to the point of the examples above, even though this gives me a lower chance of getting hired.

Here are a bunch of sub-questions about this:

• Do some 'EA roles' meet the above conditions, whereby enough people care about the overall outcome, such that extra epistemic honestly is high EV?
  • If so, which ones? How can you tell?
  • If so, how should you act differently practically? What types of epistemic honesty are good, and what is 'too far' (if anything)?
  • If so, can we change hiring the overall hiring process for these roles, to account for the fact that many people care about the overall goals?
• How if at all can we deal with the likelihood of people who come in with pure interest in personal goals?
• Are any of the suggested changes better than the standard 'just be competitive' advice?

NOTE: I don't hugely endorse the terminology of 'EA role' and 'EA people' but am using it for Draft Amnesty speedrun reasons.