Ben’s been doing a bunch of research recently, and we thought it’d be interesting to hear about how he’s currently thinking about a couple of different topics – including different types of longtermism, and things 80,000 Hours might be getting wrong.
Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.
This is very off-the-cut compared to our regular episodes, and just 54 minutes long.
In the first half, Arden and Ben talk about varieties of longtermism:
• Patient longtermism
• Broad urgent longtermism
• Targeted urgent longtermism focused on existential risks
• Targeted urgent longtermism focused on other trajectory changes
• And their distinctive implications for people trying to do good with their careers.
In the second half, they move on to:
• How to trade-off transferable versus specialist career capital
• How much weight to put on personal fit
• Whether we might be highlighting the wrong problems and career paths.
Given that we’re in the same office, it’s relatively easy to record conversations between two 80k team members — so if you enjoy these types of bonus episodes, let us know at [email protected], and we might make them a more regular feature.
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Get this episode by subscribing: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Or read the linked transcript.
Producer: Keiran Harris.
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell.
Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq.
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📆 2020-07-28 00:07 / ⌛ 01:28:08