Smart, (young), ambitious and clueless -- what to do to maximize goodness?

If I were to try to give an ambitious young aspiring rationalist advice, I would say Step 1 is that it's important to be aware of how your mind works.

And since I'm advising you to be aware of how your mind works, I would say the first thing to be aware of is how your mind works when you are focusing on being aware of how your mind works. For instance, when you spend time thinking about how to do things, are you aware of the fact that while you do that you are training yourself to spend time thinking about things?

Depending on your circumstances, it's entirely possible this is a good thing (if you think you don't spend ENOUGH time thinking about things) or a bad thing (if you think you spend TOO MUCH time thinking about things). But either way, being aware that your mind is trainable feels like an exceptionally important fact to be aware of.

I would say Step 2 is that since you want to "maximize the positive impact your life has on others." I would try thinking of that as a procedure and doing it repeatedly to try training it. So today, go and positively impact someone else's life. Then tomorrow, go and positively impact someone ELSE's life, and try to do it a little better than you did the previous day. Or try to cause a positive impact on more people's lives. I do want to note that if you pick the same person every day, you'll may realize you've trained yourself to positively impact THEIR life, and not everyone's. This is fine, and if you do this, good for you, but this isn't what you said you wanted.

Now, at some point, you may find yourself stuck. After all, training for continual improvement is difficult. Maybe you've figured out how to make 100 different people happy at the soup kitchen every day, and you've done that for months and you think "You know, I feel like I could be EVEN MORE useful... but I'm not sure of how." Then that would be a good time to come back for advice. But right now I would recommend seizing the day and grabbing the low hanging positive impact fruit.

As a possible example of low hanging fruit if you need a sample idea for a task that might work for basic positive impact training 101, I recommend giving blood/plasma platelets. It works well as an introductory to helping people for several reasons.

1: It saves lives. 2: There are snacks. 3: Sometimes, there are prizes. 4: It can be added to almost any positive impact program. If for instance, you decide to work on raising millions of dollars for the SIAI... You can generally do that, and give blood/plasma/platelets as well. It just doesn't take much time or effort either, and you can even spend time in the donation center thinking about how you can boost your positive impact higher. In fact, if the center has Wi-fi, you could even be posting in this thread and continuing the discussion.

Well, I'm new here, but I thought I might as well just try it. As far as I can tell, a large segment of LessWrong readers are highly interested in philanthropy, especially existential risk reduction. Given this, there seems to have been surprisingly little discussion as to how to best lead ones life to maximize its positive impact.

Whilst there has been some discussion with regard to selecting between charities, I have seen almost no discussion on choosing between careers, or on how to structure ones life more generally. If the type of rationality taught on this site is to be widely applicable, then it should be able to be applied to such situations successfully.

Whilst obviously these choices are highly individual, I nevertheless think that a group effort should be able to shed some light on the problem. In particular, the standard to beat is quite low -- most people have only very limited knowledge of the careers they go into, and make their decision with only limited analysis. It is even rarer for people to seriously consider what actions they can do to maximise the impact they have on the world, although many people choose careers nominally in order to help people.

Whilst I don't want this post to be about myself, here are a few details about myself: I'm just about to enter university (the university is generally considered to be somewhere amongst the top 10 in the world, and is certainly in the top 4 in my country, the UK) to read Mathematics. I believe that, given my aptitudes, I am best able to make a positive impact on the world by attempting to maximize the money I earn, and donating that. I am undecided between existential risk reduction and more ordinary causes. I don't subscribe to any formal moral system, but my feelings are quite closely aligned with preference utilitarianism. I'm unsure on how much money I should donate, but feel that in the long term I should certainly aim to donate any money I earn whose consumption would not serve to further increase my happiness. If anyone wants more details about my personal situation, feel free to PM me.

IMHO, better question would be: how can dumb, unambitious and completely ordinary person help the world?

Imagine average person, with average intelligence (this means, by standards of this site, dumber then bag of hammers) and average ability, willpower and dedication. Someone who will not sacrifice or unnecessarily endanger his life, someone who will not spend the rest of his life in Africa helping the lepers, someone who will not live on bread and water to give everything to worthy cause, someone who will not give up even six pack of beer and bag of donuts to save life of starving African child :-(

But nevertheless someone who wants to make the world a better place. Any ideas?

On Marginal Revolution there was, about a year ago, similar discussion

Lots of concrete ideas, some of them even practical...

"Make as much money as possible" could probably use some unpacking.

For example, if you go for maximum possibility of a big win, you could also be increasing the odds of making little or nothing. Acceptable?

A more complex question is what's the most money you could make in some way which would have a high probability of making the world a better place?

I think you're on the right track, Caesium. I've arrived at 41 years with a dynamic 25-year plan ahead of me, and I would suggest that you spend some time spreading yourself among very different activities and causes for at least four years, then consolidate your time into what you enjoy most. You will find that not all charitable organizations are equal, and there will be some causes (whether charitable or not) that really grab you by the short hairs and demand your attention. Think of it rather like the second run at your school life - you start with as wide a net as possible, gradually close in on what you're good at or you enjoy, then focus on what works best for you. The benefit of your schooling will allow you the luxury of choosing your path in life, but make certain that you've at least taken a peek down the others before you go too far. Lastly, I believe the desire to make money for the purpose of donating it is fairly recent. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was created at Melinda's behest well after Bill had achieved more wealth than any nerd imagined. I'm definitely not knocking it, as I myself donate to PBS and am on the board of several charitable organizations. The goal of making money to donate money is a trend that I believe speaks very well of the future of humanity as a whole.

Me, I seriously have to make my brains a little more reliable before even considering a real career. To be honest, my concentration and willpower are so horrible, I failed two education routes after a year in each, and have now chosen the third (philosophy) pretty much because it sounds nice. Okay, well, I do feel some inclination for this field (and maybe even dream of cutting through some of the cognitive cobwebs stretching throughout it), but first I've got to find proper treatment and medication for my encephalopathy, as well as figure out techinques for dealing with its daily effects.

I keep telling myself that a more practical knowledge base, a well-paying job suiting my needs, and donating to SIAI on a regular basis would be the best for me, but that's just not what I'm like.

The use of "you" in this post is more than a little tiresome. It's not until your fourth paragraph that you use the word 'one,' and I find it somewhat amusing that's the sentence you switched during. Are you not willing to explicitly delegate others to service, or you think it sounds better if you passively include yourself?

Are you actually willing to work hard? Perhaps you could prove it by cleaning up the issue tracker.

What kind of bizarre religious thinking are you pushing here? I can't imagine why I would want to place others needs ahead of my desires. How is that rational? My advice is to maximize your positive impact on yourself and forget the world -- it will get along just fine without your help.