I doubt that becoming a psychiatrist is the way for you to do the most good. Some thoughts:
Influencing a single young utilitarian-inclined person to become a psychiatrist in the immediate future who would not otherwise have would have the same expected impact as you yourself becoming one. (The situation would be different if you had already gone through the schooling and were deciding whether or not to keep doing it or to do something else).
I think (but am not sure) that there’s plausibly enough low-hanging opportunity for utilitarian networking and activism so that you could have at least the impact described in the above point by focusing on networking and activism. I have some ideas about this; PM me for more if you’d like.
As Carl Shulman alluded to, there’s the possibility of working at a foundation moving more money than you would make for the rest of your life. I have little sense for what qualifications are required to get such a position, but I would guess that they’d be significantly less than what it would take to become a psychiatrist. On the other hand you wouldn’t have arbitrary flexibility over where the money went and so couldn’t use it optimally; so there’s some sort of trade off that would need to be made.
My observation is that when utilitarian types (including myself) consider going through an unpleasant experience for a good cause, they tend to massively underestimate the probability that they’ll burn out and underestimate the severity of burnout. See the second and third paragraphs of Carl’s comment here. I don’t completely identify with the framing but (sadly) have found that in my own experience making large personal sacrifices massively undermines my (ordinarily high) utilitarian motivations. Things can get very ugly when this happens (in the sense that it destroys my self-image and leads to long periods of self-loathing during which I doubt whether I was ever a good person).
When causes vary in effectiveness by orders of magnitude, it’s almost always more important to pin down the correct cause than it is to maximize one’s donated income. If job related stress were to lead you to miss the best cause by an order of magnitude then your effort would have been in vain.
I doubt that becoming a psychiatrist is the way for you to do the most good. Some thoughts:
Influencing a single young utilitarian-inclined person to become a psychiatrist in the immediate future who would not otherwise have would have the same expected impact as you yourself becoming one. (The situation would be different if you had already gone through the schooling and were deciding whether or not to keep doing it or to do something else).
I think (but am not sure) that there’s plausibly enough low-hanging opportunity for utilitarian networking and activism so that you could have at least the impact described in the above point by focusing on networking and activism. I have some ideas about this; PM me for more if you’d like.
As Carl Shulman alluded to, there’s the possibility of working at a foundation moving more money than you would make for the rest of your life. I have little sense for what qualifications are required to get such a position, but I would guess that they’d be significantly less than what it would take to become a psychiatrist. On the other hand you wouldn’t have arbitrary flexibility over where the money went and so couldn’t use it optimally; so there’s some sort of trade off that would need to be made.
My observation is that when utilitarian types (including myself) consider going through an unpleasant experience for a good cause, they tend to massively underestimate the probability that they’ll burn out and underestimate the severity of burnout. See the second and third paragraphs of Carl’s comment here. I don’t completely identify with the framing but (sadly) have found that in my own experience making large personal sacrifices massively undermines my (ordinarily high) utilitarian motivations. Things can get very ugly when this happens (in the sense that it destroys my self-image and leads to long periods of self-loathing during which I doubt whether I was ever a good person).
When causes vary in effectiveness by orders of magnitude, it’s almost always more important to pin down the correct cause than it is to maximize one’s donated income. If job related stress were to lead you to miss the best cause by an order of magnitude then your effort would have been in vain.