Louie Helm wrote for his own online magazine Rockstar Research that a very popular post he wrote a few years ago, Optimal Employment, has directly led to dozens of rationalists find happy work in Australia, one of whom even started a business based upon Louie’s model. I was thinking of using it as an example of a positive externality of Less Wrong, via flow-through effects, for a post I was researching. However, my friend user amcknight pointed out in the comments of the original post that several questions and concerns were raised in the comments that Louie, nor anyone else, answer to the satisfaction of the incredulous. For example, if Louie got his math wrong in his Fermi estimates, chain of conjunctive calculations, etc.
I’m having trouble figuring it out for myself, so: what do you think? Were Louie’s recommendations sound back then? If they were, are they still sound now? Has the information, or the environment, changed so much that neither the post, nor its recommendations, are still relevant to, e.g., the rationalist community, or average young Americans?
The prediction that it would become a popular thing certainly hasn’t come to pass, and at least one of his factual claims at the time was false; I live in the UK and while there were and are people who spent a year or two in Australia, they didn’t spend it bartending in the outback and didn’t save money.
I think many LW-cluster people, myself included a) are much better at following a plan than being creative b) undervalue themselves. The idea that dozens of LW-cluster people could be given an explicit plan for how to earn above-average discretionary income, follow it, and earn above-average discretionary income, does not surprise me. But I don’t think that plan has to be optimal or even above-average for this to work.
And FWIW in my particular field of employment, I’ve received substantially higher offers when applying for “subfield I have 5 years’ experience in” rather than “subfield closely related to the subfield I have 5 years’ experience in”. I don’t know if this continues forever, but I do think that in my early twenties I vastly underestimated the (economic) value of experience. The straight-up career path is alive and well in at least some cases.
In addition to the mixed reaction to Louie’s post in the comments section, and your response above, this seems sufficient for me to change how I would include Louie’s post. It’s popular enough that since it launched a business I will include it as an example of a positive externality of Less Wrong, but it’s not an example that will dominate the others. I might contact the business Louie’s article inspired directly to ask them what they think of this. I figure this would return information at least as reliable as Louie’s estimates, assuming the company in question will be honest.
Louie Helm wrote for his own online magazine Rockstar Research that a very popular post he wrote a few years ago, Optimal Employment, has directly led to dozens of rationalists find happy work in Australia, one of whom even started a business based upon Louie’s model. I was thinking of using it as an example of a positive externality of Less Wrong, via flow-through effects, for a post I was researching. However, my friend user amcknight pointed out in the comments of the original post that several questions and concerns were raised in the comments that Louie, nor anyone else, answer to the satisfaction of the incredulous. For example, if Louie got his math wrong in his Fermi estimates, chain of conjunctive calculations, etc.
I’m having trouble figuring it out for myself, so: what do you think? Were Louie’s recommendations sound back then? If they were, are they still sound now? Has the information, or the environment, changed so much that neither the post, nor its recommendations, are still relevant to, e.g., the rationalist community, or average young Americans?
The prediction that it would become a popular thing certainly hasn’t come to pass, and at least one of his factual claims at the time was false; I live in the UK and while there were and are people who spent a year or two in Australia, they didn’t spend it bartending in the outback and didn’t save money.
I think many LW-cluster people, myself included a) are much better at following a plan than being creative b) undervalue themselves. The idea that dozens of LW-cluster people could be given an explicit plan for how to earn above-average discretionary income, follow it, and earn above-average discretionary income, does not surprise me. But I don’t think that plan has to be optimal or even above-average for this to work.
And FWIW in my particular field of employment, I’ve received substantially higher offers when applying for “subfield I have 5 years’ experience in” rather than “subfield closely related to the subfield I have 5 years’ experience in”. I don’t know if this continues forever, but I do think that in my early twenties I vastly underestimated the (economic) value of experience. The straight-up career path is alive and well in at least some cases.
In addition to the mixed reaction to Louie’s post in the comments section, and your response above, this seems sufficient for me to change how I would include Louie’s post. It’s popular enough that since it launched a business I will include it as an example of a positive externality of Less Wrong, but it’s not an example that will dominate the others. I might contact the business Louie’s article inspired directly to ask them what they think of this. I figure this would return information at least as reliable as Louie’s estimates, assuming the company in question will be honest.