Thank you for the report! Excited about your coming plans and wish good luck to all the great new hires :)
I have noticed that the impact model and most of the summary of your impact and future plans seem to focus on research that directly maps into results usable by foundations and organizations working on these problems (even if one or two steps removed). A different model might be something like improving some collective understanding of prioritization within a given research field, research that leads to improved understanding of prioritization generally or cause-specific among other researchers (potentially even only within RP) working on cause-prioritization without a clear immediate “client”.
Some of the items on your plans for next year seem more like the second type, although they seem like a minority. Is that true? I’m interested in how you think about the value of prioritization research that doesn’t seem to have a direct interested client or concrete actions that result from the research results.
I think the short answer is this what we think of doing projects in the improving the collective understanding space depends on a number of factors including the nature of the project, and the probability of that general change in perspective leading to actions changed in the future, and how important it would be if that change occurred.
One very simplistic model you can use to think about possible research projects in this area is:
Big considerations (classically “crucial considerations”, i.e. moral weight, invertebrate sentience)
New charities/interventions (presenting new ideas or possibilities that can be taken up)
Immediate influence (analysis to shift ongoing or pending projects, donations, or interventions)
It’s far easier to tie work in categories (2) or (3) into behavior changed. By contrast, projects or possible research that falls into the (1) can be very difficult to map to specific plausible changes ahead of time and, sometimes, even after the completion of the work. These projects can also be more likely to be boom or bust, in that the results of investigating them could have huge effects if we or others shift our beliefs but it can be fairly unlikely to change beliefs at all. That said, I think these types of projects can be very valuable and we try to dedicate some of our time to doing them.
I think it’s fair to say these types of “improving some collective understanding of prioritization” projects have been a minority of the types of projects we’ve done and that are listed for the coming year. However, there are many caveats here including but not limited to:
The nature of the project, our fit, and what others are working on has a big impact on which projects we take on. So even if, in theory, we thought a particular research idea was really worth pursuing there are many factors that go into whether we take on a particular project.
These types of projects have historically taken longer to complete, so they may be smaller in number but a larger share of our overall work hours than counting projects would suggest at first glance.
Great list of posts! I’ve collected some general notes and sources on research methodology and related matters, I’ve written myself a TODO to add some of it as suggestions to your doc :)
Thank you for the report! Excited about your coming plans and wish good luck to all the great new hires :)
I have noticed that the impact model and most of the summary of your impact and future plans seem to focus on research that directly maps into results usable by foundations and organizations working on these problems (even if one or two steps removed). A different model might be something like improving some collective understanding of prioritization within a given research field, research that leads to improved understanding of prioritization generally or cause-specific among other researchers (potentially even only within RP) working on cause-prioritization without a clear immediate “client”.
Some of the items on your plans for next year seem more like the second type, although they seem like a minority. Is that true? I’m interested in how you think about the value of prioritization research that doesn’t seem to have a direct interested client or concrete actions that result from the research results.
Thanks for the question!
I think the short answer is this what we think of doing projects in the improving the collective understanding space depends on a number of factors including the nature of the project, and the probability of that general change in perspective leading to actions changed in the future, and how important it would be if that change occurred.
One very simplistic model you can use to think about possible research projects in this area is:
Big considerations (classically “crucial considerations”, i.e. moral weight, invertebrate sentience)
New charities/interventions (presenting new ideas or possibilities that can be taken up)
Immediate influence (analysis to shift ongoing or pending projects, donations, or interventions)
It’s far easier to tie work in categories (2) or (3) into behavior changed. By contrast, projects or possible research that falls into the (1) can be very difficult to map to specific plausible changes ahead of time and, sometimes, even after the completion of the work. These projects can also be more likely to be boom or bust, in that the results of investigating them could have huge effects if we or others shift our beliefs but it can be fairly unlikely to change beliefs at all. That said, I think these types of projects can be very valuable and we try to dedicate some of our time to doing them.
I think it’s fair to say these types of “improving some collective understanding of prioritization” projects have been a minority of the types of projects we’ve done and that are listed for the coming year. However, there are many caveats here including but not limited to:
The nature of the project, our fit, and what others are working on has a big impact on which projects we take on. So even if, in theory, we thought a particular research idea was really worth pursuing there are many factors that go into whether we take on a particular project.
These types of projects have historically taken longer to complete, so they may be smaller in number but a larger share of our overall work hours than counting projects would suggest at first glance.
Thanks! This makes a lot of sense.
[Just my personal views] I think this is a great question/topic. I also like Marcus’ answer.
In thinking about this sort of question this year—in general, not just as applied to Rethink—here are some things I found useful:
Do research organisations make theory of change diagrams? Should they?
Here I mean I found the comments from other people useful.
The comments from me contain my own as-of-July stance on a topic somewhat similar to what you raise
Can we intentionally improve the world? Planners vs. Hayekians
Ingredients for creating disruptive research teams
AI Governance: Opportunity and Theory of Impact
Some of the other things linked to from here
Great list of posts! I’ve collected some general notes and sources on research methodology and related matters, I’ve written myself a TODO to add some of it as suggestions to your doc :)