I agree. It's remarkable - and rather depressing - that a well-meaning article aiming to help people improve their lives, and mostly offering decent advice, is attracting such intense dislike.
Most commenters also seem to not know the context. 80000hours is not just some random blog, and this is not a random self-help article. This is the site that does very in-depth analysis aimed for people who want to optimize their career to make maximum positive impact in the world.
Oh, absolutely - I'm not talking about the comments debating the level of evidence in the article. Those seem like absolutely fair comments, and the author of the article is responding to them well.
I almost always assume on forums, discussion threads, and social media, that no one has made an honest attempt to understand the thing that they are disparaging.
It is true though; the number of comments I see on HN directly responding to just the title of an article - even when their response has been rebutted by the article itself - is very high.
