The bittersweetness of replaceability

Abstract

When I first became interested in effective altruist ideas, I was inspired by the power of one person to make a difference: “the life you can save”, as Peter Singer puts it. I planned to save lives by becoming an infectious disease researcher. So the first time I read about replaceability was a gut punch, when I realized that it would be futile for me to pursue a highly competitive biomedical research position, especially given that I was mediocre at wet lab research. In the best case, I would obtain a research position but would merely be replacing other applicants who were roughly as good as me. I became deeply depressed for a time, as I finished a degree that was no longer useful to me. After I graduated, I embarked on the frustrating, counterintuitive challenge of making a difference in a world in which everybody’s replaceable.