The kind of work that hurts the brain, that makes you feel stupid, the kind of work where you have to sit and think deeply with focus and intensity.
But it must also be noble! It has to be overwhelmingly good for the world. Not some Sora or Meta Vibe slop. Technology can be a double edged sword. You can work to build youtube Shorts or you can work to cure cancer. Don’t work on youtube shorts, work on curing cancer!
Don’t work for Ken Griffin, go cure cancer instead
Even if the technology is NEUTRAL it’s still bad! Think about all the brain power going into optimizing trading systems at quant firms. They are not doing anything harmful, but the opportunity cost is very real! In a capitalist system, resources (brain power) are incentivised to work on these things, but the incentives of the capitalist system are not always best aligned with humanity's wellbeing. Think about all those scientists & engineers that work on those trading systems instead focused on curing cancer.
IDK, I feel like this point has been made so many times, it’s not even worth writing about anymore.