“Working with ALLFED was greatly influenced by effective thesis, as it allowed me to contact them in the first place. I might have come across ALLFED without effective thesis, but I am relatively sure that I would not have contacted them.”
I’m glad Effective Thesis had this impact. But that quote also gave me the feeling that we also need to simply more strongly push the message to just reach out to people. Similar to the message just apply for things. There are costs to reaching out to people and applying (a bit of time from both parties), but they’re usually quite small, really. And the upsides can be huge—it seems it can often meaningfully improve one’s research or career plans, and perhaps even sometimes more than double the lifetime impact one will have. (I don’t have any data on this, but it seems very plausible.)
It seems like there might be many EAs waiting for “permission” or “validation”, or self-selecting out of reaching out to people, applying to things, doing cheap tests of fit, etc. I don’t know how to resolve that issue at scale, but hopefully harping on about the value of just going for it can help a bit.
I’m glad Effective Thesis had this impact. But that quote also gave me the feeling that we also need to simply more strongly push the message to just reach out to people. Similar to the message just apply for things. There are costs to reaching out to people and applying (a bit of time from both parties), but they’re usually quite small, really. And the upsides can be huge—it seems it can often meaningfully improve one’s research or career plans, and perhaps even sometimes more than double the lifetime impact one will have. (I don’t have any data on this, but it seems very plausible.)
It seems like there might be many EAs waiting for “permission” or “validation”, or self-selecting out of reaching out to people, applying to things, doing cheap tests of fit, etc. I don’t know how to resolve that issue at scale, but hopefully harping on about the value of just going for it can help a bit.