Here’s my preliminary conclusion: I’ve been pursuing a profession that has (from what I’ve been able to tell) about a 1% chance of making a living at it. These are horrible odds, but since there’s nothing I’d really rather do, it’s like choosing between $5 and a 1% chance of getting $500, except that even if I don’t get the $500, I still get the $5 ($5 representing, in my case, a job I’m not really interested in).
Does this sound rational? :\
EDIT: In a way, it’s like the “just lose hope already” thing, but hopefully I’m avoiding that pitfall since I’m going to be adjusting my goals and strategy.
I’d like you to drill down a bit on what you mean when you talk about these probabilities, because I think you may be glossing over the information that really answers your question.
It seems that there are at least three different reasons why people would say following a given career path leads to a low probability of a desired outcome.
The first is that the supplied probability information is giving an incomplete picture of the situation. If 0.001% of people attempting this path succeed and it just so happens that this 0.001% happen to be the only ones whose parents run multinational corporations, then the problem isn’t that “the probability of success is low,” the problem is that “the probability of success for you is zero.” If this is the case, just lose hope already.
The second possibility is that success only happens to 0.001% of the participants because there are only a discrete number of pots of gold and way too many people chasing rainbows. This only implies that the probability of a randomly selected individual, with no prior information, would be 0.001%. This does not imply that the probability of you finding a pot of gold is 0.001%, if you happen to know that you have some advantage or disadvantage relative to your peers. If you know what types of things you could be doing to increase your odds of finding a pot of gold, then do those things and ignore the naysayers. However, it sounds like the problem is that your field of choice involves either a lot of inherent uncertainty about what qualities lead to success, or a total glut of maximally-qualified peers, so this may not help or may not apply
The third possibility is that there really is a dominant effectively-random aspect to the situation, something which you literally cannot usefully engage with. I am honestly having a hard time thinking of things in the real world other than actual lotteries where this is strictly the case.
My point, in sum, is that talking about the probability of success can be misleading. It is often intentionally used to mislead people when making career choices—sayin “Your probability of making over $100k/yr with this degree is 10%!” when in reality your probability of making over $100k/yr is actually 80% if you went to an Ivy League school and 2% if you didn’t.
Right, yes, those factors definitely do affect people’s odds in my field. The facts that my parents aren’t major players and that I didn’t go to the right schools definitely hurts my chances. However, those aren’t the only determining factors. Many people who did go to the “right” schools have not succeeded and many people who did not, have.
One major factor, however, is my age. Some say that it doesn’t matter, that I’m still young, but the majority of people who succeed in this business get their first significant job in their 20s. Having just turned 30, I failed to achieve that milestone, which I would imagine lowers my chances significantly.
Supposedly, from what I’ve heard from multiple people in the business, if someone creates a great product, no matter who they are, they will be noticed, but I guess it’s the very odds that I’m even capable of creating a great product on par with my maximally-qualified peers that worries me. I’ve had some indications of ability (e.g. getting into one of the top grad schools), but constant rejection has made me question that. This is why reading about deliberate practice, as I mentioned above, has given me a smidgin of hope.
However, the third possibility (pure luck) is indeed true as to some extent well. There’s just no predicting what will “hit” and what won’t. And typically those things are sort of mindless or trendy or otherwise somehow seize the popular zeitgeist, and unfortunately I tend not to think in that way. Although I’m thinking of basically training myself to do so...
As a post on 80000hours said about entrepreneurship, it’s a game of poker, not roulette. In that case, I can’t say I’ve been dealt the best hand, but I can try to play it right.
Anyhow, those are the reasons I estimate that my personal chances—not just those of the general public—are about 1%. But who knows, they may be much lower.
How confident are you about this? (And how well-calibrated do you think your confidence levels are?) Seems like it would be worth your time to verify this.
The short answer is that I’m fairly confident about it and I’m fairly confident in the calibration of my confidence levels.
The long answer relies on my clarifying, I think, what I mean by “would rather do.” I’ll define it as “interesting enough to me to want to spend a significant number of years of my life on.” I actually started getting really burned out on my current pursuit, so if you’d asked me this question about a week ago, I would have answered that I’d rather just get some dumb job and play video games in my free time for the rest of my life, but now I feel much more invigorated about it (primarily due to reading about deliberate practice), and when it comes to actually applying myself to something, this is the thing I’m most interested in.
The only runner-up, as I mentioned in the linked post, is something involved in charity work, ideally something a bit analytical and strategic. I’ve also toyed with the idea of doing something more math-related, but math has always been a weakness for me, though I enjoy it, so I doubt it would be best to pursue that professionally.
Through 80000hours.org, I learned that I could have just been suffering from familiarity bias—i.e. that I’m only considering types of jobs I’m aware of when there could be something I’m not aware of that I would love—so I looked through the descriptions of a bunch of careers, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of them. From what I gather about human psychology, I’m sure if I chose, at random, a career that I’d be likely to be good at, I’d come to like it and be happy, and that’s pretty much what I’ll do once it’s clear that I’ve failed at my current pursuit, but there’s no strong argument for jumping to that stage prematurely. I’ll be a few more years behind in that case than if I quit and jumped to something else now, but since I don’t currently value succeeding in other fields anyway, it seems as though I may as well continue rolling the dice for a while.
I posted my current conundrum on the mentoring thread (http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/929/less_wrong_mentoring_thread/89c2), but since that’s a pretty old thread, I figured I’d post a shortened version here, if you don’t mind…
Here’s my preliminary conclusion: I’ve been pursuing a profession that has (from what I’ve been able to tell) about a 1% chance of making a living at it. These are horrible odds, but since there’s nothing I’d really rather do, it’s like choosing between $5 and a 1% chance of getting $500, except that even if I don’t get the $500, I still get the $5 ($5 representing, in my case, a job I’m not really interested in).
Does this sound rational? :\
EDIT: In a way, it’s like the “just lose hope already” thing, but hopefully I’m avoiding that pitfall since I’m going to be adjusting my goals and strategy.
I’d like you to drill down a bit on what you mean when you talk about these probabilities, because I think you may be glossing over the information that really answers your question.
It seems that there are at least three different reasons why people would say following a given career path leads to a low probability of a desired outcome.
The first is that the supplied probability information is giving an incomplete picture of the situation. If 0.001% of people attempting this path succeed and it just so happens that this 0.001% happen to be the only ones whose parents run multinational corporations, then the problem isn’t that “the probability of success is low,” the problem is that “the probability of success for you is zero.” If this is the case, just lose hope already.
The second possibility is that success only happens to 0.001% of the participants because there are only a discrete number of pots of gold and way too many people chasing rainbows. This only implies that the probability of a randomly selected individual, with no prior information, would be 0.001%. This does not imply that the probability of you finding a pot of gold is 0.001%, if you happen to know that you have some advantage or disadvantage relative to your peers. If you know what types of things you could be doing to increase your odds of finding a pot of gold, then do those things and ignore the naysayers. However, it sounds like the problem is that your field of choice involves either a lot of inherent uncertainty about what qualities lead to success, or a total glut of maximally-qualified peers, so this may not help or may not apply
The third possibility is that there really is a dominant effectively-random aspect to the situation, something which you literally cannot usefully engage with. I am honestly having a hard time thinking of things in the real world other than actual lotteries where this is strictly the case.
My point, in sum, is that talking about the probability of success can be misleading. It is often intentionally used to mislead people when making career choices—sayin “Your probability of making over $100k/yr with this degree is 10%!” when in reality your probability of making over $100k/yr is actually 80% if you went to an Ivy League school and 2% if you didn’t.
Hope this helped in some way.
Right, yes, those factors definitely do affect people’s odds in my field. The facts that my parents aren’t major players and that I didn’t go to the right schools definitely hurts my chances. However, those aren’t the only determining factors. Many people who did go to the “right” schools have not succeeded and many people who did not, have.
One major factor, however, is my age. Some say that it doesn’t matter, that I’m still young, but the majority of people who succeed in this business get their first significant job in their 20s. Having just turned 30, I failed to achieve that milestone, which I would imagine lowers my chances significantly.
Supposedly, from what I’ve heard from multiple people in the business, if someone creates a great product, no matter who they are, they will be noticed, but I guess it’s the very odds that I’m even capable of creating a great product on par with my maximally-qualified peers that worries me. I’ve had some indications of ability (e.g. getting into one of the top grad schools), but constant rejection has made me question that. This is why reading about deliberate practice, as I mentioned above, has given me a smidgin of hope.
However, the third possibility (pure luck) is indeed true as to some extent well. There’s just no predicting what will “hit” and what won’t. And typically those things are sort of mindless or trendy or otherwise somehow seize the popular zeitgeist, and unfortunately I tend not to think in that way. Although I’m thinking of basically training myself to do so...
As a post on 80000hours said about entrepreneurship, it’s a game of poker, not roulette. In that case, I can’t say I’ve been dealt the best hand, but I can try to play it right.
Anyhow, those are the reasons I estimate that my personal chances—not just those of the general public—are about 1%. But who knows, they may be much lower.
How confident are you about this? (And how well-calibrated do you think your confidence levels are?) Seems like it would be worth your time to verify this.
The short answer is that I’m fairly confident about it and I’m fairly confident in the calibration of my confidence levels.
The long answer relies on my clarifying, I think, what I mean by “would rather do.” I’ll define it as “interesting enough to me to want to spend a significant number of years of my life on.” I actually started getting really burned out on my current pursuit, so if you’d asked me this question about a week ago, I would have answered that I’d rather just get some dumb job and play video games in my free time for the rest of my life, but now I feel much more invigorated about it (primarily due to reading about deliberate practice), and when it comes to actually applying myself to something, this is the thing I’m most interested in.
The only runner-up, as I mentioned in the linked post, is something involved in charity work, ideally something a bit analytical and strategic. I’ve also toyed with the idea of doing something more math-related, but math has always been a weakness for me, though I enjoy it, so I doubt it would be best to pursue that professionally.
Through 80000hours.org, I learned that I could have just been suffering from familiarity bias—i.e. that I’m only considering types of jobs I’m aware of when there could be something I’m not aware of that I would love—so I looked through the descriptions of a bunch of careers, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of them. From what I gather about human psychology, I’m sure if I chose, at random, a career that I’d be likely to be good at, I’d come to like it and be happy, and that’s pretty much what I’ll do once it’s clear that I’ve failed at my current pursuit, but there’s no strong argument for jumping to that stage prematurely. I’ll be a few more years behind in that case than if I quit and jumped to something else now, but since I don’t currently value succeeding in other fields anyway, it seems as though I may as well continue rolling the dice for a while.