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Comment by spoonjim | Hacker News Reader

I would suspect that almost zero people do this because working in an environment changes who you are as a person. If you spend a lot of time around cancer researchers you will think that cancer research is the most important thing in the world. You would need almost monastic mental compartmentalization to work at Jane Street for N years and remain singlemindedly focused on cancer research.

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I thought about that often. Why are highly intelligent, passionate young activists not working into the industries they despise to change the system from within. But you're right that the system you're in changes you, corrupts you. You'd have to sacrifice a lot to climb the corporate ladder, doing things you despise, just for the chance to blow things up years, decades later. Your idealists friends would distance themselves from you. You'd have to constantly remind yourself that you're doing wrong things but that it's ok, because it is part of a bigger plan. It would be very isolating. You'd probably sacrifice your sanity for a foolish plan.

Most people think that their values come from some immanent "Self" but in reality our values mostly come from our surroundings. The same baby with the same genetics raised in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma vs. Upper West Side New York will have extremely different values, go farther than that and the difference in values is almost unrecognizable. If you or I grew up in wealthy families in ancient Greece, we would think NOT owning slaves was weird and suspicious.

Tangentially related is the movement of Effective Altruism, which is basically espousing taking a high paying job and then using the rewards to make a change.

The existence of a "movement" makes it much more likely to succeed. If you are working at Goldman Sachs during the day, you need to be talking to Effective Altruism friends at night, or you will almost certainly be washed away in the current of Goldman Sachs value systems.

I'd temper the above statement a bit. The "get rich, then donate a lot" strategy is one of the paths popular in Effective Altruism.

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Nietzsche

Don't cut out the best part of the quote :-)

Or suffer a loss to cancer. That changes kinds quickly too

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