On “become a specialist on Russia or India”: I’ve sometimes wondered if there might be a case for focusing on countries that could become great powers, or otherwise geopolitically important, on somewhat longer timescales, say 2-5 decades.
[ETA: It occurred to me that the reasoning below also suggests that EA community building in these countries might be valuable. See also here, here, here, and here for relevant discussion.]
One example could be Indonesia: it is the 4th most populous country, its economy is the 16th largest by nominal GDP but has consistently grown faster than those of high-income countries. It’s also located in an area that many think will become increasingly geopolitically important, e.g. Obama’s foreign policy is sometimes described as a ‘pivot to the Pacific’. (Caveat: I’ve spent less than 10 minutes looking into Indonesia.)
More generally, we could ask: if we naively extrapolated current trends forward by a couple of decades, which countries will emerge as, say, “top 10 countries” on relevant metrics by 2050.
Some arguments in favor:
Many EAs are in their twenties, and in the relevant kind of social science disciplines and professional careers my impression is that people tend to have most of their impact in their 40s to 50s. (There is a literature on scientific productivity by age, see e.g. Simonton, 1997, for a theoretical model that also surveys empirical findings. I haven’t checked how consistent or convincing these findings are.) Focusing on countries that become important in a couple of decades would align well with this schedule.
It’s plausible to me that due to ‘short-term biases’ in traditional foreign policy, scholarship etc., these countries will be overly neglected by the ‘academic and policy markets’ relative to their knowable expected value for longtermists.
For this reason, it might also be easier to have an outsized influence. E.g. in all major foreign policy establishments, there already are countless people specializing on Russia. However, there may be the opportunity to be one of the very few, say, ‘Indonesia specialists’ by the time there is demand for them (and also to have an influence on the whole field of Indonesia specialists due to founder effects).
Some arguments against:
The whole case is just armchair speculation. I have no experience in any of the relevant areas, don’t understand how they work etc.
If it’s true that, say, Indonesia isn’t widely viewed as important today, this also means there will be few opportunities (e.g. jobs, funding, …) to focus on it.
Even if the basic case was sound, I expect it would be an attractive option only for very few people. For example, I’d guess this path would involve living in, say, Indonesia for months to years, which is not something many people will be prepared to do.
Hm—interesting suggestion! The basic case here seems pretty compelling to me. One question I don’t know the answer to is how predicable countries trajectories are—like how much would a niave extrapolation have predicted the current balance of power 50 years ago? If very unpredictable it might not be worth it in terms of EV to bet on the extrapolation. But
I feel more intuitievely excited about trying to foster home grown EA communities in a range of such countries, since many of the people working on it would probably have reasons to be in and focus on those countries anyway because they’re from there.
On “become a specialist on Russia or India”: I’ve sometimes wondered if there might be a case for focusing on countries that could become great powers, or otherwise geopolitically important, on somewhat longer timescales, say 2-5 decades.
[ETA: It occurred to me that the reasoning below also suggests that EA community building in these countries might be valuable. See also here, here, here, and here for relevant discussion.]
One example could be Indonesia: it is the 4th most populous country, its economy is the 16th largest by nominal GDP but has consistently grown faster than those of high-income countries. It’s also located in an area that many think will become increasingly geopolitically important, e.g. Obama’s foreign policy is sometimes described as a ‘pivot to the Pacific’. (Caveat: I’ve spent less than 10 minutes looking into Indonesia.)
More generally, we could ask: if we naively extrapolated current trends forward by a couple of decades, which countries will emerge as, say, “top 10 countries” on relevant metrics by 2050.
Some arguments in favor:
Many EAs are in their twenties, and in the relevant kind of social science disciplines and professional careers my impression is that people tend to have most of their impact in their 40s to 50s. (There is a literature on scientific productivity by age, see e.g. Simonton, 1997, for a theoretical model that also surveys empirical findings. I haven’t checked how consistent or convincing these findings are.) Focusing on countries that become important in a couple of decades would align well with this schedule.
It’s plausible to me that due to ‘short-term biases’ in traditional foreign policy, scholarship etc., these countries will be overly neglected by the ‘academic and policy markets’ relative to their knowable expected value for longtermists.
For this reason, it might also be easier to have an outsized influence. E.g. in all major foreign policy establishments, there already are countless people specializing on Russia. However, there may be the opportunity to be one of the very few, say, ‘Indonesia specialists’ by the time there is demand for them (and also to have an influence on the whole field of Indonesia specialists due to founder effects).
Some arguments against:
The whole case is just armchair speculation. I have no experience in any of the relevant areas, don’t understand how they work etc.
If it’s true that, say, Indonesia isn’t widely viewed as important today, this also means there will be few opportunities (e.g. jobs, funding, …) to focus on it.
Even if the basic case was sound, I expect it would be an attractive option only for very few people. For example, I’d guess this path would involve living in, say, Indonesia for months to years, which is not something many people will be prepared to do.
Hm—interesting suggestion! The basic case here seems pretty compelling to me. One question I don’t know the answer to is how predicable countries trajectories are—like how much would a niave extrapolation have predicted the current balance of power 50 years ago? If very unpredictable it might not be worth it in terms of EV to bet on the extrapolation. But
I feel more intuitievely excited about trying to foster home grown EA communities in a range of such countries, since many of the people working on it would probably have reasons to be in and focus on those countries anyway because they’re from there.