Relatedly, I’m tracking that the term “research” itself is broad and fuzzy, and I’ve seen it leading to non-constructive confusion. E.g. the skill and role of “working out what strategies and interventions to pursue amongst the innumerable possibilities”* is often referred to as research within EA, but can in practice look very different what we commonly understand academic research to look like. (And in fact, I also think optimizing for one or the other can look fairly different.)
Is this a “subgroup” of people you have in mind here? I think it might be worth clarifying this, though I acknowledge you do gesture at this a bit in (4) and maybe that’s enough
I do think that research borders on many other things, that “researchers” tend to also do other things, and that some other types of people also do some research-y things
But I’m focused in this sequence on activities and roles that are quite clearly primarily “research” or “researchers”, rather than using broader senses of those terms
That said, much of my analysis of the problem and the possible interventions would probably also apply somewhat to other types of activities and roles
And more so the closer they are to being EA-aligned research activities and roles
But I wasn’t writing with that in mind, and would’ve written at least somewhat different things if I was
The commenter also said:
My reactions:
I do think that research borders on many other things, that “researchers” tend to also do other things, and that some other types of people also do some research-y things
But I’m focused in this sequence on activities and roles that are quite clearly primarily “research” or “researchers”, rather than using broader senses of those terms
That said, much of my analysis of the problem and the possible interventions would probably also apply somewhat to other types of activities and roles
And more so the closer they are to being EA-aligned research activities and roles
But I wasn’t writing with that in mind, and would’ve written at least somewhat different things if I was