80,000 Hours recently ranked “Judgement and decision making” as the most employable skill.
I think they’ve simplified too much and ended up with possibly harmful conclusions. To illustrate one problem with their methodology, imagine that they had looked at medieval England instead. Their methods would have found kings and nobles having highest pay and satisfaction, and judgment heavily associated with those jobs. The conclusion? “Peasants, practiceth thy judgment!”
What do you think? If there was a twin study where the other twin pursued programming, and the other judgment, who would end up with higher satisfaction and pay? If you think it’s not the programmer, why?
Also germane is that if a high-schooler asked me how to practice judgement and decision making, I’m not entirely sure how I’d suggest learning that. (Maybe play lots of games like poker or Magic? Read the sequences? Be a treasurer in high school clubs?) If someone asked how to practice programming, I can think of lots of ways to practice that and get better.
Confounder- I make my living by programming and suspending my judgement and decision making.
We can’t really well practice or even measure most of the recommended skills, such as judgment, critical thinking, time management, monitoring performance, complex problem solving, active learning. This is one of the reasons why I disagree with the article, and think its conclusions are not useful.
They’re a bit like saying that high intelligence is associated with better pay and job satisfaction.
I think “can’t practice” is a bit strong. CFAR would be a practice that trains a bunch of those skills. The problem is that there’s no 3 year CFAR bachelor where the student does that kind of training all the time but CFAR does 4 day workshops.
I do not mean that it is impossible to practice, just that it’s not a well-defined skill you can measuredly improve like programming. I believe it’s not a skill you can realistically practice in order to improve your employability.
I have been following CFAR from their beginning. If anything, the existence and current state of CFAR demonstrates how judgment is a difficult skill to practice, and difficult to measure. There’s no evidence of CFAR’s effectiveness available on their website (or it is well hidden).
80,000 Hours recently ranked “Judgement and decision making” as the most employable skill.
I think they’ve simplified too much and ended up with possibly harmful conclusions. To illustrate one problem with their methodology, imagine that they had looked at medieval England instead. Their methods would have found kings and nobles having highest pay and satisfaction, and judgment heavily associated with those jobs. The conclusion? “Peasants, practiceth thy judgment!”
What do you think? If there was a twin study where the other twin pursued programming, and the other judgment, who would end up with higher satisfaction and pay? If you think it’s not the programmer, why?
Also germane is that if a high-schooler asked me how to practice judgement and decision making, I’m not entirely sure how I’d suggest learning that. (Maybe play lots of games like poker or Magic? Read the sequences? Be a treasurer in high school clubs?) If someone asked how to practice programming, I can think of lots of ways to practice that and get better.
Confounder- I make my living by programming and suspending my judgement and decision making.
Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgement.
Experience alone might not be enough, it’s good when the experience has feedback loops.
I’m not sure what pursuing “judgement and decision making” would look like in practice.
We can’t really well practice or even measure most of the recommended skills, such as judgment, critical thinking, time management, monitoring performance, complex problem solving, active learning. This is one of the reasons why I disagree with the article, and think its conclusions are not useful.
They’re a bit like saying that high intelligence is associated with better pay and job satisfaction.
I think “can’t practice” is a bit strong. CFAR would be a practice that trains a bunch of those skills. The problem is that there’s no 3 year CFAR bachelor where the student does that kind of training all the time but CFAR does 4 day workshops.
I do not mean that it is impossible to practice, just that it’s not a well-defined skill you can measuredly improve like programming. I believe it’s not a skill you can realistically practice in order to improve your employability.
I have been following CFAR from their beginning. If anything, the existence and current state of CFAR demonstrates how judgment is a difficult skill to practice, and difficult to measure. There’s no evidence of CFAR’s effectiveness available on their website (or it is well hidden).