[Article] “Advice on how to read our advice” by Benjamin Todd

The recording may not reflect the most recent changes to this article.

We’ve found that readers sometimes interpret or apply our advice inways we didn’t anticipate and wouldn’t exactly recommend. That’s hard to avoid when you’re writing for a range of people with different personalities and initial views.

To help get on the same page, here’s some advice about our advice, for those about to launch into reading our site.

We want our writing to inform people’s views, but only in proportion to the likelihood that we’re actually right. So we need to make sure you have a balanced perspective on how compelling the evidence is for the different claims we make on the site, and how much weight to put on our advice in your situation.

What follows is a list of points to bear in mind when reading our site, and some thoughts on how to avoid the communication problems we face.

Narrated by the author.

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First published:
November 10th, 2019

Source:
https://80000hours.org/articles/advice-on-how-to-read-our-advice