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Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#11

Post by MrGLaDOS »

These fokes devoted quite some time into thinking about your problem: https://80000hours.org/

From their homepage: "You have 80,000 hours in your career. Make the right career choices, and you can help solve the world’s most pressing problems, as well as have a more rewarding, interesting life. We’re here to give you the information you need to find that fulfilling, high-impact career. Our advice is all free, tailored for talented graduates & young professionals, and based on five years of research alongside academics at Oxford."

The 80000 hours podcast can be long winded but is at times also quite interesting.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#12

Post by anonu »

When you work on something you love, it isn't work anymore. You'll be more passionate about the subject and more productive around getting things done... Not to mention orders of magnitude more creative.

So I think you're asking the right questions but you need to look at it from a slightly different angle.

I'd also agree with you that life is short... But it's also long. You can always switch fields, learn new things, reinvent yourself. There are no rules...

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#14

Post by tw1010 »

I'm all for egalitarianism in the public sphere, but in private I still believe that there's such a thing as natural born talent.

Anyone can probably reach the top 5% in most non-athletic areas given enough time. But if your goal is to maximize your output having already accepted that your time on earth is limited, then the wise thing is to probably steer in directions that have high impact but for you feel disproportionately easy (compared to the general population).

Thus, I'm a big fan of Peter Theils advice to work on things that satisfy the property that: "if you weren't working on it, this problem would not get solved".

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#15

Post by d--b »

You’ll never regret choosing something you want to work on. Especially when what you want to work also makes money like energy or AI.

Also, these fields are not evil or useless like weapon design or hedge funds. They are actually useful to society, so you feel like contributing to the general good.

Don’t worry about healthcare, there are thousands of people who work on healthcare.

And, if I may, if you did work on healthcare, your very own contribution to solving this problem would most likely be very small. Unless you somehow become the Elon Musk of healthcare... which you know, may or may not happen.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#16

Post by yason »

It's a short life indeed and narrowing it down to a few specific, namely goals is a good way to make yours miserable. If in doubt, don't.

Find one thing that you do want to do: something that is silently but persistently pulling you in. Ideally, something you just couldn't not do.

I'm not a religious person but I really like the tone of the "$god works in mysterious ways". You never know what your choices and path will expand into: it might be something that's related to all three energy, AI, and healthcare but you never would've guessed in the start.

You can always out-smart yourself and convince yourself to do the thing that makes sense but the sensible thing often doesn't mean something that truly fulfills you.

Because future is extremely hard to know, or even predict, all you can do is follow your light.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#17

Post by atlasunshrugged »

MrGLaDOS wrote: post #11

These fokes devoted quite some time into thinking about your problem: https://80000hours.org/ From their homepage: "You have 80,000 hours in your career. Make the right career choices, and you can help solve the world’s most pressing problems, as well as have a more rewarding, interesting life. We’re here to give you the information you need to find that fulfilling, high-impact career. Our advice is all free, tailore…

I'll strongly second this, 80k hours and the Effective Altruism community in general isn't for everyone, but they have great data driven insights into high impact careers and really good resources to help you make decisions (and a really welcoming community). They've got a good quiz that helps direct you but I also recommend you just go through their career guide and if it speaks to you just look on FB for a local chapter and talk to the leader of it, in my experience they're quite helpful about giving you specific advice for your situation

https://80000hours.org/career-planning-tool/

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#18

Post by johan_larson »

The world is not short of people who want to work in healthcare. Because of high barriers to entry, professionals in the field are very well paid and young people are desperate to enter it. Given this vast army of the aspiring, you can be confident that nothing that really needed doing went undone because you chose to do something else with your life.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#20

Post by nsomaru »

The focus should not be on "what," but on "why." I just got this advice the other day and it's liberated my thinking. I was (am) stuck in a rut believing that if I just find something I am passionate about it would alleviate the sense of purposelessness that pervades. Not so.

Some people can work just for material benefit to themselves and their families. However, eventually that juice runs out because money is just not useful beyond a point. Depression is a first world problem, generally. Why is it that people who are materially better off than most of their peers in the last century become depressed?

The key, it seems, is to find a goal that is higher than immediate selfish interests of the individual or family. This might even mean staying in your current situation but just realigning "why" you are doing it to something higher. It is very hard to find an unselfish person who is depressed, unsure about what to do or unhappy in general.

The goal makes all the difference.

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