Search for:

Start here
Career guide
Research
- Problem profiles Find out about the world's biggest and most neglected problems.
  See all →
  Top areas to work on
  Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
  Catastrophic pandemics
  Nuclear weapons
  Great power war
  Factory farming
  Global priorities research
  Building effective altruism
  Improving decision making
  Emerging challenges
  The moral status of digital minds
  Risks of stable totalitarianism
  S-risks
  Space governance
  Civilisation resilience
  Wild animal suffering
  Other pressing problems
  Global health
  Climate change
  See all problem profiles →
- Skills The most useful skills for making a difference.
  See all →
  Top skills to build early in your career
  Policy and politics
  Organisation-building
  Research
  Communicating ideas
  Software and tech
  Engineering
  Experience with an emerging power
  Expertise relevant to a top problem
  See all our skills pages →
- Career reviews Learn about high-impact career paths.
  See all →
  Our list of top high-impact career paths
  AI governance and policy
  AI safety technical research
  Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
  Information security in high-impact areas
  Expert in AI hardware
  China-related AI safety and governance
  Grantmaker
  Helping build the effective altruism community
  Nuclear weapons safety and security
  Operations in high-impact organisations
  Research into global priorities
  More promising paths
  Be a founder
  Software engineering
  Journalism
  See more →
  How to build great career capital
  See our top recommendations →
  See all career reviews →
- Advanced series Our most important research findings.
  Read the full series →
  Introduction
  Your most important decision
  Foundations
  A definition of impact
  Longtermism
  Harmful jobs
  Global priorities
  Problem selection
  Existential risks
  Top problems list
  Contribution
  How to think about your contribution
  Effective solutions
  List of high-impact careers
  Personal fit
  Gut instinct
  Differences in productivity
  Comparative advantage
  Strategy
  Ambition
  Coordination
  Exploration
  Impact and satisfaction
  Accidental harm
  Read the full series →
- Browse all our content Pick a topic to explore or check out our most popular pieces.
  Career planning and decision making
  How to make your career plan
  All our other planning resources
  Selected topics
  Moral philosophy
  Career capital
  Job satisfaction
  Anonymous advice
  Unconventional advice
  Advocacy
  Existential risk
  Top-recommended careers
  See all topics →
  Top articles from outside our guides
  Best charities to donate to
  Misconceptions about effective altruism
  High-impact research questions
  What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
  How many lives does a doctor save?
  What's the impact of voting?
  Advice for undergraduates
  All articles →
See all →
Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear weapons
Great power war
Factory farming
Global priorities research
Building effective altruism
Improving decision making
Emerging challenges
The moral status of digital minds
Risks of stable totalitarianism
S-risks
Space governance
Civilisation resilience
Wild animal suffering
Other pressing problems
Global health
Climate change
See all problem profiles →
See all →
Top skills to build early in your career
Policy and politics
Organisation-building
Research
Communicating ideas
Software and tech
Engineering
Experience with an emerging power
Expertise relevant to a top problem
See all our skills pages →
See all →
Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI governance and policy
AI safety technical research
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Helping build the effective altruism community
Nuclear weapons safety and security
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
See more →
How to build great career capital
See our top recommendations →
See all career reviews →
Read the full series →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
Harmful jobs
Global priorities
Problem selection
Existential risks
Top problems list
Contribution
How to think about your contribution
Effective solutions
List of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Gut instinct
Differences in productivity
Comparative advantage
Strategy
Ambition
Coordination
Exploration
Impact and satisfaction
Accidental harm
Read the full series →
Career planning and decision making
How to make your career plan
All our other planning resources
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Career capital
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
Advocacy
Existential risk
Top-recommended careers
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
All articles →
Job board
Podcasts
- The 80,000 Hours Podcast
- 80k After Hours
- The 80,000 Hours Career Guide
- Effective Altruism: An Introduction
- Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems
- On Artificial Intelligence
Get 1-1 advice
Get 1-1 advice
Newsletter

New releases
All articles
Give feedback
About

Home Topics Foundations Reasoning well Epistemics

Search for:

New releases
All articles
Give feedback
About

Explore our archive by topic...

Foundations (324)
- Effective Altruism (127)
- Existential risk (93)
- Future generations & longtermism (80)
- Moral philosophy (74)
  - Moral patients (11)
  - Moral uncertainty (10)
- Reasoning well (125)
  - Decision making (43)
  - Epistemics (6)
  - Forecasting (8)
World problems (376)
- Emerging challenges (40)
  - Artificial sentience (10)
  - Civilisational resilience (10)
  - Risks of stable totalitarianism (11)
  - S-risks (4)
  - Space governance (4)
  - Wild animal suffering (10)
- Most pressing problems (279)
  - Artificial Intelligence (86)
  - Building effective altruism (66)
  - Catastrophic pandemics (42)
  - Factory Farming (23)
  - Global priorities research (51)
  - Great power conflict (21)
  - Institutional decision making (47)
  - Nuclear war (28)
- Other pressing problems (129)
  - Atomically precise manufacturing (3)
  - Charter cities (3)
  - Climate change (19)
    - Geoengineering (3)
  - Economic growth (12)
  - Ending Ageing (5)
  - False ideas on social media (10)
  - Global Health (29)
  - Global public goods (11)
  - Gun Control (3)
  - Harmful restrictions on migration (5)
  - Improving values (4)
  - Individual reasoning & cognition (21)
  - Mental health (problem area) (5)
  - Risks from malevolent actors (13)
  - Science policy & infrastructure (22)
  - Voting reform (7)
  - Whole brain emulation (5)
- Problem prioritisation (25)
Careers (528)
- Careers to build career capital (30)
  - Congressional staffer (4)
  - Early-stage startup employee (3)
  - Economics PhD (16)
  - Machine learning PhD (6)
- Categories of impactful careers (261)
  - Applying an unusual skill to a needed niche (6)
  - Communication (28)
  - Earning to Give (63)
    - EtG advice (6)
    - EtG pros and cons (15)
  - Government & policy (86)
    - Party Politics (12)
  - Organisation-building at effective nonprofits (41)
    - Foundation Program Management (10)
    - Fundraising (9)
    - Philanthropic Advising (11)
  - Research in relevant areas (87)
    - Biomedical Research (24)
    - Scientific research (21)
- Other careers (173)
  - Art & Entertainment (7)
  - Biomedical Research (16)
  - Computer Science PhD (15)
  - Consulting (10)
  - Data science (28)
  - Design (2)
  - Education (7)
  - Finance (19)
    - Asset Management (7)
      - Quantitative hedge funds (4)
    - Investment Banking (6)
  - Lawyer (9)
  - Marketing (3)
  - Medicine (28)
    - Doctor (13)
    - Medical Researcher (7)
  - Nursing (1)
  - Philosophy academia (10)
  - Politics (52)
    - Civil Service (10)
    - Party Politics (20)
  - Web designer (1)
- Sometimes-recommended careers (242)
  - Academic Research (107)
  - China-Western coordination (10)
  - Data collection for AI alignment (1)
  - Earning to give in quant trading (6)
  - Effective climate change interventions (10)
  - Engineering (9)
  - Expert in AI hardware (8)
  - Found a tech startup (30)
  - High impact executive assistant (3)
  - Historian of large societal trends (7)
  - Information security (12)
  - Investigate new problems (5)
  - Journalism (26)
    - Journalist (11)
  - Longtermist philanthropy (2)
  - Non-technical roles in leading AI labs (7)
  - Organise an effective altruism group (1)
  - Policy careers (11)
  - Public intellectual (14)
  - Research management (7)
  - Software Engineering (32)
  - Specialist in emerging global powers (6)
  - Think tank research (3)
- Top-recommended careers (229)
  - AI safety technical research (45)
  - Biorisk strategy & policy (35)
  - Building the effective altruism community (19)
  - China-related AI safety & governance (10)
  - Forecasting research & implementation (24)
  - Founder of new projects (44)
  - Grantmaker (22)
  - Long-term AI policy (47)
  - Operations at high impact organisations (12)
  - Research into global priorities (43)
Skills (8)
Career advice & strategy (320)
- Accidental harm (19)
- Advice for undergraduates (15)
- Being ambitious (18)
- Career capital (55)
- Career planning (27)
- Community & coordination (11)
- Exploration (19)
- Graduate school (22)
  - PhDs (13)
- How to get a job (24)
- Leverage (7)
- Mental health (25)
- Now vs. Later (17)
- Personal fit (78)
  - Ability (19)
  - Job satisfaction (29)
- Risk (14)
- Unconventional advice (111)
Fields (137)
- Computer science (24)
- Economics (43)
- History (11)
- Law (9)
- Machine learning (27)
- Philosophy (23)
- Physics (4)
- Psychology (18)
- Statistics (7)
Other topics (206)
- About 80,000 Hours (67)
  - Updates (43)
- Anonymous advice (19)
- COVID-19 (23)
- Doing good in your current job (95)
  - Advocacy (32)
  - Donating effectively (27)
  - Income (30)
  - Volunteering (8)
- Promoting effective altruism (2)
- User stories (3)

Topic archive: Epistemics

Filter by content type:
All6
Podcasts5
Problem profiles1

Remove the "problem profiles" filter to see all 6 items on this topic.

All problem profiles tagged "Epistemics"

2023

March

Improving decision making (especially in important institutions) (Updated)
Problem profile

2017

September

Improving decision making (especially in important institutions) (First published)
Problem profile

Join our newsletter

Get weekly updates on our research, plus jobs and other opportunities to get involved.

Get 1-1 advice

Want to tackle a pressing global problem with your career?

Speak to an advisor

Our research

Start here
Career guide
List of world problems
List of top skills
List of careers
Advanced series
New releases
All our research

Future generations
Artificial intelligence
Anonymous advice
College advice

Take action

Find a job
Get 1-1 advice
Make a career plan

About us

Why 80,000 Hours?
Meet the team
Our impact and credibility
Our mistakes
Our donors
Contact us
Support us

Translations of our content

80,000 Hours is an Effective Ventures project. Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) is a charity in England and Wales (with registered charity number 1149828, registered company number 07962181, and is also a Netherlands registered tax-deductible entity ANBI 825776867). Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US) is a section 501(c)(3) organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398). EV UK and EV US are separate charities that collaborate closely under the “Effective Ventures” name.

Please contact us to suggest ideas, improvements, or corrections.

We do our best to provide useful information, but how you use the information is up to you. We don’t take responsibility for any loss that results from the use of information on the site. Please consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy. See also our cookie notice and adjust your .