less research flexibility than academia, FHI, or most independent research/blogging
low interest in publishing papers/academia
I’m not sure if this was meant to reflect only the long-termist team than RP or RP as a whole. I think these points are possibly too strongly stated.
In the Google doc you had some caveats to this. There are people at RP, and people joining RP who are moderately to very active in academic publication. Of course we don’t place a great deal of importance on “hitting publication targets as points” as academia does. However, my impression is that we do place a high value on some of the gains from the peer review and “publication” process such as:
Credibility and prestige for our work and our employees
and the influence generated by this.
Feedback and suggestions that improve our work
Visibility of our work to key audiences
Attracting academics and scholars to RP and to the issues and topics we care about
(This is why I’m looking for/pursuing a solution that allows us to have these gains without the wasteful and tedious parts of the academic publication process)
In terms of the ‘research flexibility’ point it is arguably less in one dimension, but more flexible in another dimension. There are some types of research (and ‘impact of research) that you can do at RP that you cannot really do in academia, or at least you will be doing ‘on your own time and at your own risk’.
In academia you may be constrained to produce ‘research that academics think adds to the theoretical model’ or that is ‘trendy and will publish well’. You cannot necessarily survive in academia if you pursue
research where you apply an existing model and technique without making it more complicated in an ‘interesting way’
meta-analysis, Fermi estimates, dissemination and translation of existing research
continuing to build and improve your model and estimates in ways that practically inform the policy goals of interest
applying research to the world’s most important problems
new initiatives, programs, and policy ideas that are ‘doing something’ rather than ‘asking a deeply interesting question within an academic paradigm’
It might be more possible to do the above sorts of research and research-adjacent work at RP than in academia.
Speaking just about the publishing point, when I was trying to leverage my old network to help recruit for our past global health & development hiring rounds, it was definitely the case that developmental economists (who have a robust pre-existing non-EA academic field) viewed not being as incentivized in the org to publish academic papers as a noticeable negative.
It’s possible this is not as relevant for the longtermist roles, as a) I expect our candidate pool to on average be more EA and b) the academic fields for longtermist topics, outside of a few narrow subniches in existing disciplines, are noticeably less robust.
One plus I forgot to mention for academic applicants is that in addition to the minimal bureaucracy, we (obviously) have no mandatory teaching load. Researchers who want to “teach” can have interns or do mentorship calls with junior applicants.
I see that you and MichaelA both see low academic incentives or inclinations as a plus, rather than a cost to be paid. For me personally, this is all a moot point as I’m reasonably confident (especially now) that I can perform at the level of e.g. PhDs at top universities at doing RP-style work, whereas I think I will not be able to perform at that level in academia.
Yeah, fwiw, I personally feel I’ve had a lot of flexibility at Rethink (though I’ll probably have somewhat less going forward, partly because I myself think that that’d be better), and I personally see “low interest in publishing papers/academia” as either irrelevant or mildly a pro for me personally. Though I do expect both of those things would vary between people.
This has inspired me to write another comment with my own personal list of pros and cons of working at RP.
Speaking just about the publishing point, when I was trying to leverage my old network to help recruit for our past global health & development hiring rounds, it was definitely the case that development[] economists (who have a robust pre-existing non-EA academic field) viewed not being as incentivized in the org to publish academic papers as a noticeable negative.
Less internal incentive, true. But I’m not sure that they have so much less residual time to engage in the important parts of research that could lead to academic publications (or academic-quality work) vis a vis academia itself.
Academics tend to work round the clock, and have important teaching and administrative responsibilities that can also be very distracting from research. I think you probably could pursue an academic-level publication agenda at RP, at least as well as in many university academic jobs.
I wanted to push back a bit on the “cons” part
You wrote:
I’m not sure if this was meant to reflect only the long-termist team than RP or RP as a whole. I think these points are possibly too strongly stated.
In the Google doc you had some caveats to this. There are people at RP, and people joining RP who are moderately to very active in academic publication. Of course we don’t place a great deal of importance on “hitting publication targets as points” as academia does. However, my impression is that we do place a high value on some of the gains from the peer review and “publication” process such as:
Credibility and prestige for our work and our employees
and the influence generated by this.
Feedback and suggestions that improve our work
Visibility of our work to key audiences
Attracting academics and scholars to RP and to the issues and topics we care about
(This is why I’m looking for/pursuing a solution that allows us to have these gains without the wasteful and tedious parts of the academic publication process)
In terms of the ‘research flexibility’ point it is arguably less in one dimension, but more flexible in another dimension. There are some types of research (and ‘impact of research) that you can do at RP that you cannot really do in academia, or at least you will be doing ‘on your own time and at your own risk’.
In academia you may be constrained to produce ‘research that academics think adds to the theoretical model’ or that is ‘trendy and will publish well’. You cannot necessarily survive in academia if you pursue
research where you apply an existing model and technique without making it more complicated in an ‘interesting way’
meta-analysis, Fermi estimates, dissemination and translation of existing research
continuing to build and improve your model and estimates in ways that practically inform the policy goals of interest
applying research to the world’s most important problems
new initiatives, programs, and policy ideas that are ‘doing something’ rather than ‘asking a deeply interesting question within an academic paradigm’
It might be more possible to do the above sorts of research and research-adjacent work at RP than in academia.
FYI—the link looking for/pursuing a solution goes to https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/bit.ly/unjournal which gives me a 404 Not Found
Ah, EA forum appends itself to the beginning of Urls if you don’t put the HTTP thing.
It’s https://bit.ly/unjournal
But I’m trying to move the project into an ‘action space’ gitbook wiki HERE: https://app.gitbook.com/o/-MfFk4CTSGwVOPkwnRgx/s/-MkORcaM5xGxmrnczq25/
to start to get this in motion
Speaking just about the publishing point, when I was trying to leverage my old network to help recruit for our past global health & development hiring rounds, it was definitely the case that developmental economists (who have a robust pre-existing non-EA academic field) viewed not being as incentivized in the org to publish academic papers as a noticeable negative.
It’s possible this is not as relevant for the longtermist roles, as a) I expect our candidate pool to on average be more EA and b) the academic fields for longtermist topics, outside of a few narrow subniches in existing disciplines, are noticeably less robust.
One plus I forgot to mention for academic applicants is that in addition to the minimal bureaucracy, we (obviously) have no mandatory teaching load. Researchers who want to “teach” can have interns or do mentorship calls with junior applicants.
I see that you and MichaelA both see low academic incentives or inclinations as a plus, rather than a cost to be paid. For me personally, this is all a moot point as I’m reasonably confident (especially now) that I can perform at the level of e.g. PhDs at top universities at doing RP-style work, whereas I think I will not be able to perform at that level in academia.
Yeah, fwiw, I personally feel I’ve had a lot of flexibility at Rethink (though I’ll probably have somewhat less going forward, partly because I myself think that that’d be better), and I personally see “low interest in publishing papers/academia” as either irrelevant or mildly a pro for me personally. Though I do expect both of those things would vary between people.
This has inspired me to write another comment with my own personal list of pros and cons of working at RP.
Less internal incentive, true. But I’m not sure that they have so much less residual time to engage in the important parts of research that could lead to academic publications (or academic-quality work) vis a vis academia itself.
Academics tend to work round the clock, and have important teaching and administrative responsibilities that can also be very distracting from research. I think you probably could pursue an academic-level publication agenda at RP, at least as well as in many university academic jobs.