Advice for high schoolers

And everyone else

A high schooler asked for advice on how to get involved in Effective Altruism¹. My response (here) got a high score when posted and several people got in touch to say they liked it. I reproduce it below, slightly edited.

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Attempt to bequeath your future self a kinder, more joyful, more competent person. This might involve:

• Learning new skills - eg coding, managing some contractors, research, event organisation

• Getting into the practise of doing things - build a website that you think should exist, run an event you would attend

• Spend a portion of current resources effectively - set aside some resources, do some research, tell others what you did

• Learn what you like - what makes you smile? What do you really strongly endorse? what do you look back fondly on?

• Get some mentors - write to people you respect asking them for tips on how you could improve. People often particularly like helping younger people

• Get a good sleep and exercise schedule - many people struggle with this later so it's good to get it locked down early

• Get on top of your emails, and social media time - I know several people weaning themselves off email burnout or social media addition. You could get ahead of that

• Look into different project management systems - often these help people get more done, ask 5 people who you respect how they manage their time

• Take time to empathise with people in different worlds to you - you could watch youtube videos of people in poorer nations talking about their situation. GiveDirectly has a load of these

• Gather resources - your future self may have projects they want to work on. Earning money and putting it aside will give you more options

• Build a close network of like minded ambitious people - I find even a questions a week from a friend on my progress helps me achieve my goals²

• Learn how you learn - you can probably get much more done at high school than you are. I wasted lots of time not realising this

• Introspect about who you want to be - what are your key goals? how would you know if you were closer to them

• Consider not being involved - often the first community one becomes involved in can be an unhealthy relationship. It's good to spend some time considering the alternative. You could work hard and have lots of nice things. And that would be okay. I don't say this to say EA is bad, but to say that if I were your friend I would want you to do things out of joy, rather than obligation³

You are probably right that it's hard to make concrete improvements to the world right now⁴, but you can give a gift to your future self of a better situation. Of a wiser person. The key is for that to be something that that person will endorse. Increasing their competence, joy, kindness and optionality seems likely to be good⁵.

1. My preferred introduction to Effective Altruism is here. I like it because I wrote it, it is short and anyone can edit it. If you see an error, please fix it.

2. Goals need not be altruistic. Have 2 great social events a week is a goal.

3. Unless you become a billionaire in which case I want a bit of obligation, sorry. I have some notion that the really powerful do have an obligation to others. I am unsure where this obligation starts - the 1%? all westerners? all humans? - but a billionaire is very likely past my line.

4. I chatted about this with

Katja Grace

. It seems a common vibe/assumption that because children can’t work for companies they can’t impact the world much. But this is false - they can impact their future selves.

Similarly, if I am climbing a cliff, it is worth training at a climbing gym, even though climbing at the gym doesn’t affect my position on the cliff - it affects my skills and my muscles, which matter for the cliff.

5. A lot of my thoughts here are informed by thinking about

Joe Carlsmith

’s essays on AI and control, especially this one. My future self is in some sense another person, who I can control or free. I could cut off my hand and he will likely not have the use of a hand. I can earn $1mn and future Nathan will have more resources for his goals. Many problems that Carlsmith discusses in his essay seem to apply to my treatment of future me. How do I provide that person with joy and options? How do I encourage him to care about my preferences? I try to summarise some of my thoughts of the whole series here.