Meta-college-advice-advice: Treat college advice, whether online or in person, as a literary genre. Deconstruct it.
What are the probable motives of the advice-giver? Might they be trying to enlist Effective Altruists, future FAI researchers, political allies, or future low-wage employees, graduate students, code monkeys, CAD monkeys, or foot soldiers? Might they be misrepresenting the opportunities for promotion out of said entry level grunt positions? Basically, are they trying to manipulate labor out of you, or are they offering you friendly advice out of the kindness of their generous hearts? If they obviously do have an agenda, can that be okay, and why?
Does the advice-giver seem to share your values? Related to but distinct from the first bullet point, you will have a deluge of advice aimed at convincing you to make the “best” choice, from fifty different perspectives, rarely with any of the advice-givers pausing to reflect that when they say “best” they of course mean “best” according to their own complex criteria.
Does the advice-giver seem to be inextricably trapped in a doldrums of hindsight bias and/or anchoring? For example, do
they seem to think that it’s patently, blindingly obvious that everyone should specialize in plant cell membrane chemistry, and maybe if you want to take a risk you could specialize in animal cell membrane chemistry, but you would have to be an utter fool to do something like engineering? I find this attitude to be incredibly common even in extremely intelligent people. I think from the inside it feels like, “I wouldn’t be doing quantum spectroscopy if quantum spectroscopy weren’t the correct choice.”
As far as I can tell there is now literally a giant machine somewhere pumping out propaganda aimed at convincing young people to do start-ups. Rather than saying my opinion on this, I will simply urge that you apply the same level of scrutiny to this breathless, manic material as you apply to your dad’s pitch to go to law school.
As far as I can tell there is now literally a giant machine somewhere pumping out propaganda aimed at convincing young people to do start-ups. Rather than saying my opinion on this, I will simply urge that you apply the same level of scrutiny to this breathless, manic material as you apply to your dad’s pitch to go to law school.
Lol, this is so true. There are so many “wantrepreneurs” at my University.
This overlaps the third point, but does the person giving you advice have current information? Are they thinking about ways the future is likely to be different from the present?
Meta-college-advice-advice: Treat college advice, whether online or in person, as a literary genre. Deconstruct it.
What are the probable motives of the advice-giver? Might they be trying to enlist Effective Altruists, future FAI researchers, political allies, or future low-wage employees, graduate students, code monkeys, CAD monkeys, or foot soldiers? Might they be misrepresenting the opportunities for promotion out of said entry level grunt positions? Basically, are they trying to manipulate labor out of you, or are they offering you friendly advice out of the kindness of their generous hearts? If they obviously do have an agenda, can that be okay, and why?
Does the advice-giver seem to share your values? Related to but distinct from the first bullet point, you will have a deluge of advice aimed at convincing you to make the “best” choice, from fifty different perspectives, rarely with any of the advice-givers pausing to reflect that when they say “best” they of course mean “best” according to their own complex criteria.
Does the advice-giver seem to be inextricably trapped in a doldrums of hindsight bias and/or anchoring? For example, do they seem to think that it’s patently, blindingly obvious that everyone should specialize in plant cell membrane chemistry, and maybe if you want to take a risk you could specialize in animal cell membrane chemistry, but you would have to be an utter fool to do something like engineering? I find this attitude to be incredibly common even in extremely intelligent people. I think from the inside it feels like, “I wouldn’t be doing quantum spectroscopy if quantum spectroscopy weren’t the correct choice.”
As far as I can tell there is now literally a giant machine somewhere pumping out propaganda aimed at convincing young people to do start-ups. Rather than saying my opinion on this, I will simply urge that you apply the same level of scrutiny to this breathless, manic material as you apply to your dad’s pitch to go to law school.
Lol, this is so true. There are so many “wantrepreneurs” at my University.
This overlaps the third point, but does the person giving you advice have current information? Are they thinking about ways the future is likely to be different from the present?