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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?

#31

Post by ozgooen »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #17
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 ch…

Strongly thirded. I'm not sure I agree with absolutely everything they say, but overall I think they have a far more pragmatic and honest set of answers than any competing advice I hear. For disclosure, I worked there for a year.

The EA worldview takes some getting used to though.

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

#32

Post by pieterhg »

I think you can't really consciously decide what you want to do with your life. Life happens to you:

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever." - Steve Jobs

You can however increase the odds of things coming on your path that you'll be passionate about:

- Pursue a wide range of interests, jobs in different industries

- Fearlessly trying lots of different stuff, for ex. go skydiving, go rock climbing, go travel if you can, go from the beaten path of life

- Socialize and stay open and curious to different people, so you hear different viewpoints and get different interests

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

#34

Post by johan_larson »

make3 wrote: post #24
johan_larson wrote: post #18

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.

this is true for applied healthcare, but not so for research in healthcare. Research jobs in healthcare aren't anywhere close to as prestigious and don't pay anywhere close to as well, yet we would all benefit very much from top talent dedicating their lives to them

Science isn't short of brains. It's short of money. There's an overabundance of clever and highly trained people chasing too little funding, which is why you find so many young scientists in their thirties grinding through second and third postdocs for crap money.

I suspect you could do more good for science by working a lifetime in some well-paid career and donating a hefty portion of your profit to some science-funding organization than by trying to do science yourself.

Science needs your money far more than it needs your brains.

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

#35

Post by nnd »

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…

My biggest issue with 80,000 hours is that it's a rational, but radically uninspiring advice in the end. It is a framework for those who buy into "don't follow your passion advice", and try to maximize their utility function instead.

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

#36

Post by atemerev »

Why not both? I am a software engineering consultant working in many fields (mostly in finance, but occasionally in such exotic fields as nuclear security or epidemic modeling).

The entire notion of a “career” is outdated. It ended back in 1980s.

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

#37

Post by staunch »

You should contribute to humanity in whatever method or quantity you're able, and not sweat it too much. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try hard. It just means you shouldn't get too stressed out about it.

Some people are fortunate enough to make huge contributions, other people make small contributions, and both are totally fine. You're doing great if you're contributing positively at all.

We're all humans trying to make the world better. Even the ones that make it worse aren't to be blamed, they were simply unlucky genetically or environmentally.

It has always been on the shoulders of the most fortunate to do the most important work. It's not any different today, except that a growing percentage of society is so fortunate.

At the end of the day, we're all one human family and it's totally unimportant who did what to get us to the promise land. All humans can take rightful pride and ownership over the results of our collective effort.

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

#38

Post by shanev »

May I ask why you want to work on energy? If it’s because of climate change, it may surprise you that the #1 thing you can do to reduce total CO2 is to educate women and girls, and family planning:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions

Update: Yes I know these aren’t the same, but they’re related.

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

#39

Post by imhoguy »

> It's a short life, so I want to be careful with this decision, to avoid any future regrets. Because I can't decide on this, I end up not getting anything done. Time continues to march on, while I'm still stuck with not knowing what to do.

Your situation reminds me this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

Start small! Make any move, even not ideal one. Just leave your comfort bubble and try each idea.

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

#40

Post by harias »

d--b wrote: post #15

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 he…

Why do you think Hedge Funds are useless or evil?
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