Travel diary, day 7
Apr. 12th, 2010 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xuenayBriefly spoke with Anna about figuring out what, exactly, I should do here. She too recommended talking with Justin about getting some kind of co-writing done, with me helping Justin introduce some concreteness to his writing. In exchange, Justin might help improve my "analytical sharpness" I think the term was, though I wasn't entirely sure of what was meant by that. I was pointed to a book on critical thinking that apparently has some stuff relating to that, though Anna couldn't find the exact chapters about it. Huh. Well, I'll skim it through. She also said we should talk about that Platzer planning project more at some point, but didn't think me simply taking charge of it would be a good idea at this point. Fair enough, we'll see if anything comes out of that. In any case, Justin and I agreed to talk about things today, maybe get some of that co-writing stuff started. (Edit: Justin said he's taking a day off today, so I guess that'll have to wait.)
That still doesn't entirely answer the question of "what should I be doing here", though. I need some kind of overarching vision of the overall purpose of me being here should be, otherwise I'll feel that I'm just doing various disconnected stuff without any greater purpose.
This is kind of related to me in general not knowing what I'd want to do with my life. The free "everyone does whatever" sort of thing here is great when you've already decided on the best way you personally can contribute to avoiding existential risks, but less so when you have no idea. On the other hand, the positive thing about this is that it's kinda forcing me to decide on what I want. I've been worrying about this before, but the workload from college courses has also been filling part of my attention so I've been able to kinda drown the issue under those. Just do school work and only worry about what I actually want later on.
So, what lifepaths do seem viable? Here are the ones I've been thinking about:
POLITICS. I may have a non-neglible possibility of getting elected to the Parliament of Finland, either during the 2011 or the 2015 election. I'm estimating the chance of this to be around a couple of percent if I do nothing more than what I've been doing now, uppable to say 25% if I were to really dedicate myself to that during this autumn and the beginning of next year. This would allow me to popularize rationality and awareness of existential risks and affect country-level issues which I feel strongly about. The pay also isn't bad, so I could donate relatively large sums to x-risk prevention.
However, I have a strong suspicion I wouldn't actually like doing politics much.
ACADEMIA. There are two variants of this: try to do academic work concentrating on Singularity/AI issues, or try to do academic work concentrating more on something else. These are naturally not mutually exclusive, it being more of a question of emphasis. For the Singularity/AI issues - well, unlike some people at SIAI, I'm no genius so I'm not sure whether this is really where my comparative advantage lies. There are probably some low-hanging fruit in the form of stuff that hasn't yet been explored in depth or converted into academic papers, which I could do.
Academic work concentrating on something else would be interesting - I've got some ambitions about studying societies and large-scale human behavior from some grand interdisciplinary point of view combining cognitive science, economics, sociology, computer science et cetera. Pay in academia is often poor, however, and the work uncertain. I'm not sure I could deal with the stress of only knowing I or my team has project funding for the next six months.
INDUSTRY RESEARCH. As above, but doing something of interest for the private sector. I don't really know very much about this side of things. I'm figuring it'd have better pay and job security, but could spend less time doing genuinely interesting things and more time doing things optimized for making the biggest $$$ for The Corporation. Which might be okay or not, depending on how interesting that stuff would end up being.
WRITING. I've written three books now, the latest of which got a bunch of positive reviews, including a fourteen-paragraph one in Finland's biggest newspaper. It was also briefly on the list of most sold books in the webstore of Suomalainen kirjakauppa, the biggest bookstore chain in Finland, though I don't know how many sales they get through their webstore and how those stats were calculated. This is something I'd probably enjoy doing, though again the pay is poor and even more uncertain in academia. If I could break into the English-speaking market, the earnings potential would go up considerably. Most Finnish authors make the majority of their income via grants given out by various private foundations as well as the state, but there's again some degree of uncertainty involved in getting those.
CODE MONKEY. Catch-all term for "whatever doesn't sound too unpleasant but nets money". Currently most likely way of doing this seems to be by obtaining more programming experience and skill and then finding work in the IT sector, hence the name. The couple of instructors I've done CS programming project courses for said I have talent, and I realized that I actually liked doing practical programming projects a lot, more than many of the more theoretical courses I've had. This would also pay at least moderately well.
If I manage to pick one of these and decide I'll want to concentrate on it, I can leverage my time here to improve my chances of making it through to that field.
Considering those various options, I find that the thing that's most emotionally important for me right now is job security. Ideally I'd prefer a job I can just do and be at least moderately sure I'm doing a good job, without needing to worry about whether or not I'm doing a good enough job to pay my rent in a month or six months or whether the job'll exist at all at that point. That means that I'm currently rather strongly drawn towards the code monkey career heading, ideally at some big company that isn't likely to go out of business any time soon. It'll also allow me to do stuff falling under the other headings at the side.
(EDIT: I've also been playing the around with the idea of some kind of a consultancy thing, as I tend to have at least moderate talent in figuring out [1] [2] reasons for disagreement and a generic consultancy gig gives a nice excuse for studying a bit of everything in the hopes of it might be applicable.)
Considering my insecurities, it might also be a good thing if I didn't have an intellectually challenging job that had my re-evaluating my self-image all the time...
That still doesn't entirely answer the question of "what should I be doing here", though. I need some kind of overarching vision of the overall purpose of me being here should be, otherwise I'll feel that I'm just doing various disconnected stuff without any greater purpose.
This is kind of related to me in general not knowing what I'd want to do with my life. The free "everyone does whatever" sort of thing here is great when you've already decided on the best way you personally can contribute to avoiding existential risks, but less so when you have no idea. On the other hand, the positive thing about this is that it's kinda forcing me to decide on what I want. I've been worrying about this before, but the workload from college courses has also been filling part of my attention so I've been able to kinda drown the issue under those. Just do school work and only worry about what I actually want later on.
So, what lifepaths do seem viable? Here are the ones I've been thinking about:
POLITICS. I may have a non-neglible possibility of getting elected to the Parliament of Finland, either during the 2011 or the 2015 election. I'm estimating the chance of this to be around a couple of percent if I do nothing more than what I've been doing now, uppable to say 25% if I were to really dedicate myself to that during this autumn and the beginning of next year. This would allow me to popularize rationality and awareness of existential risks and affect country-level issues which I feel strongly about. The pay also isn't bad, so I could donate relatively large sums to x-risk prevention.
However, I have a strong suspicion I wouldn't actually like doing politics much.
ACADEMIA. There are two variants of this: try to do academic work concentrating on Singularity/AI issues, or try to do academic work concentrating more on something else. These are naturally not mutually exclusive, it being more of a question of emphasis. For the Singularity/AI issues - well, unlike some people at SIAI, I'm no genius so I'm not sure whether this is really where my comparative advantage lies. There are probably some low-hanging fruit in the form of stuff that hasn't yet been explored in depth or converted into academic papers, which I could do.
Academic work concentrating on something else would be interesting - I've got some ambitions about studying societies and large-scale human behavior from some grand interdisciplinary point of view combining cognitive science, economics, sociology, computer science et cetera. Pay in academia is often poor, however, and the work uncertain. I'm not sure I could deal with the stress of only knowing I or my team has project funding for the next six months.
INDUSTRY RESEARCH. As above, but doing something of interest for the private sector. I don't really know very much about this side of things. I'm figuring it'd have better pay and job security, but could spend less time doing genuinely interesting things and more time doing things optimized for making the biggest $$$ for The Corporation. Which might be okay or not, depending on how interesting that stuff would end up being.
WRITING. I've written three books now, the latest of which got a bunch of positive reviews, including a fourteen-paragraph one in Finland's biggest newspaper. It was also briefly on the list of most sold books in the webstore of Suomalainen kirjakauppa, the biggest bookstore chain in Finland, though I don't know how many sales they get through their webstore and how those stats were calculated. This is something I'd probably enjoy doing, though again the pay is poor and even more uncertain in academia. If I could break into the English-speaking market, the earnings potential would go up considerably. Most Finnish authors make the majority of their income via grants given out by various private foundations as well as the state, but there's again some degree of uncertainty involved in getting those.
CODE MONKEY. Catch-all term for "whatever doesn't sound too unpleasant but nets money". Currently most likely way of doing this seems to be by obtaining more programming experience and skill and then finding work in the IT sector, hence the name. The couple of instructors I've done CS programming project courses for said I have talent, and I realized that I actually liked doing practical programming projects a lot, more than many of the more theoretical courses I've had. This would also pay at least moderately well.
If I manage to pick one of these and decide I'll want to concentrate on it, I can leverage my time here to improve my chances of making it through to that field.
Considering those various options, I find that the thing that's most emotionally important for me right now is job security. Ideally I'd prefer a job I can just do and be at least moderately sure I'm doing a good job, without needing to worry about whether or not I'm doing a good enough job to pay my rent in a month or six months or whether the job'll exist at all at that point. That means that I'm currently rather strongly drawn towards the code monkey career heading, ideally at some big company that isn't likely to go out of business any time soon. It'll also allow me to do stuff falling under the other headings at the side.
(EDIT: I've also been playing the around with the idea of some kind of a consultancy thing, as I tend to have at least moderate talent in figuring out [1] [2] reasons for disagreement and a generic consultancy gig gives a nice excuse for studying a bit of everything in the hopes of it might be applicable.)
Considering my insecurities, it might also be a good thing if I didn't have an intellectually challenging job that had my re-evaluating my self-image all the time...
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 05:08 am (UTC)I assume a Finnish MP from a minority party has much more power to get things done than an American congressperson? In America, the system is messed up enough that no one really accomplishes anything and the new congresspeople find this incredibly disheartening. I think the trick to enjoying your job as an MP would be to not take your job too seriously.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 06:26 am (UTC)If I had a very high certainty of getting in, I'd probably do it just to try it out. But with only an estimated 25% subjective probability of getting in even given a lot of effort... I'm not sure if I'm ready to invest all that effort given chances that "bad", especially since I could also be investing that effort in graduating faster.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 07:35 am (UTC)I have became this cynical when I have seen the situation with highly educated friends of mine. I have seen chemist loading ships for living (now he has a really nice job in pharmaceutical industry). When I myself studied during the last great depression I couldn't get the summer job in local food factory, there were almost graduated doctors doing the sausage packing.
I myself got thrown out of security after ten years career. But because of that I found my recent job, which is fantastic. Of course the money is much smaller and I only have it for maybe one year at the time, but it helps me a lot for my future career, whatever it is. And it is fun and independent.
This uncertainty is the reason we have decided to put a lot of time and energy of our family for those studies of my husband. It might sound weird for eletronical engineer to study "lower class" profession as an electrician but we assume that from now on he can always find _something_.
That is enough security for me. When you have worked that first 10 months and paid the membership for the union, you get much higher support during unenmployment periods. It is not so bad. You can pay rent, downshif a little and think, what you want to do next.
I myself have worked for 12 years now after graduation (in the age of 23). Actually I could already calculate 4 different professions plus motherhood. Now I am planning the next one, hope I could find some extra time to study something new and become maybe politician and/or author some day :) Uncertainty and willingness to control your career is something which is mostly inside your head. It is possible to manipulate that.
By the way, I have never seen a single person who is really happy, if he works just for the money. On the other hand I have seen my good friend in hospital after the long working period with only passion, cola and pain killers. I prefer the third way.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 12:20 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA
Anyway, spending your time there mostly on leveling up your programming etc. skills is not a bad option either. I've got something from the code monkey category as my own primary plan, though not literal programming or CS stuff.