x-risk-themed

Sometimes, a friend who works around here, at an x-risk-themed organisation, will think about leaving their job. They’ll ask a group of people “what should I do instead?”. And everyone will chime in with ideas for other x-risk-themed orgs that they could join. A lot of the conversation will be about who’s hiring, what the pay is, what the work-life balance is like, or how qualified the person is for the role. Sometimes the conversation focuses on what will help with x-risk, and where people are dropping the ball. But often, that's not the focus. In those conversations, people seem mostly worried about where they'll thrive. And I think that's often the correct concern.Most people aren’t in crunch mode, in super short timelines mode; even if their models would license that, I think they don’t know how to do it without throwing their minds away or Pascal’s mugging themselves. And if they're playing a longer time horizon game, the plan can't be to run unsustainably forever. People probably make better plans if they’re honest about their limits.But, given that they're willing to trade off so much impact for fit, I’m surprised that basically no one mentions working for or starting a non-x-risk org. And when it is brought up, it’s very perfunctory: “you could work at a non-x-risk place”, “maybe you could just do a startup?”. It's not as near-mode as the discussions above. There's no discussion of fit or even of specific ideas.It seems like people don't really entertain their outside options. And I think that’s pretty bad. People are focused on staying x-risk-themed even when it doesn’t make x-risk-sense.But, if you don’t get an x-risk-themed job, if you go and work for Google rather than Anthropic, you can’t go to Constellation, you can’t get an office at Lighthaven, you are judged by some, you’re somewhat less connected to your social scene, invited to fewer things, and maybe that snowballs into more isolation.Listen, it makes a lot of sense to want to be around people wh