I’m excited to see this! One thing I’d mention on the historian path and its competitiveness is you could probably do a lot of this sort of work as an economic historian with a PhD in economics. Economic historians study everything from gender roles to religion and do ambitious if controversial quantitative analyses of long-term trends. While economists broadly may give little consideration to historical context, the field of economic history prides itself on actually caring about history for its own sake as well, so you can spend time doing traditional historian things, like working with archival documents (see the Preface to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History for a discussion of the field’s norms).
The good thing here is it probably allows for greater outside options and potentially less competitiveness than a history PhD given the upsides of an economics PhD. You could also probably do similar work in political science.
>> Our impression is that although many of these topics have received attention from historians (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), some are comparatively neglected within the subject, especially from a more quantitative or impact-focused perspective.
I’d also note that some of these cites I don’t think are history—2 and 4 are written by anthropologists. (I think in the former case he’s sometimes classified as a biologist, psychologist, or economist too.)
I really do hope we have EAs studying history and fully support it, and I just wanted to give some closely related options!
This comment isn’t really a reply, but is about the same career idea, so I figured it might make sense to put it here.
At EAGx, I talked with someone interested in history, so I made some notes about topics I’d be excited to see historians explore (or at least to see non-historians explore in a similar style), as well as some relevant resources. I’ll share those notes here, in case they’re helpful to others.
Disclaimer: These are quick thoughts from someone (me) who’s only ~6 months into doing longtermist research, and who has no background in academic history. Also, this list of topics is neither comprehensive nor prioritised.
History of economic, technological, moral, etc. growth and progress (this post already mentioned this topic)
Historical scenarios of movements growing, having influence, collapsing, etc. (this post already mentioned this one) (some relevant sources)
This could provide evidence relevant to what might happen to EA or related movements and how to steer things well.
History of proliferation and nonproliferation efforts in the case of nuclear weapons or other military technologies/weapons
History of efforts to regulate technology (or otherwise influence the direction or applications of technological development)
See Grace and Grace for works I haven’t actually read but that seem relevant to this topic or the above topic.
History of predictions, predictions of things like extinction or collapse, millenarianism, and how often people have been right vs wrong about these and other things
Knowing more about this would help us know how much to trust predictions of various kinds, which is relevant to things like whether we’re at the Hinge of History and how high existential risk is. We currently seem to know very little about this. See e.g. Muehlhauser, me, and me again.
History of legal and other efforts to represent future generations or other neglected populations (animals, slaves, etc.)
Counterfactual history related to what factors might’ve led the Nazi regime, Soviet Union, etc. to last, and how long it would’ve lasted if those factors had been present.
This could inform how high the risk from dystopias/totalitarianism is, etc.
I’d guess that the question of what factors might have led those regimes to last wouldn’t be neglected by mainstream historians, but that the question of just how long they might have lasted is probably neglected. But this is purely a guess.
It seems to me that a recurring theme is that EAs without a background in history have done relatively brief analyses of these topics, and then other people have been very interested and maybe made big decisions based on it, but there’s been no deeper or more rigorous follow-up. I’d therefore be quite excited to see more historians (or similar types) in/interacting with EA. (That said, I have no specific reason to believe this is a more valuable career path that then others mentioned in this post; I think it might just be the lack of EAs on this career path happens to be more noticeable to me as I do my current work. Also, I’m not saying the existing analyses were bad—I’ve very much appreciated many of them.)
A potential counterexample to that “recurring theme” is AI Impacts’ research into “historic cases of discontinuously fast technological progress”. My understanding is that that research has indeed been done by EAs without a background in history, but it also seem quite thorough and rigorous, and possibly more useful for informing key decisions about than work on that topic by most academic historians would’ve been. (I hold that view very tentatively.) I’m not sure if that’s evidence for or against the value of EAs becoming historians.
By the way, I’ve added this comment to A central directory for open research questions. So if anyone reading this thinks of other topics worth mentioning, or knows of other collections of topics it would be high-priority from an EA perspective for historians to look into, please comment about that below.
Semi-relevant update: I’ve now created a History tag, and listed some posts there. Posts with this tag might be useful for EAs considering this career idea, as they might provide some ideas about the sorts of topics from history EAs are interested in, and about how historical research methods can be useful for EA.
Thanks (as often) for this list! I’m wondering, might you be up for putting it into a slightly more fomal standalone post or google doc that we could potentially link to from the blurb?
Really love how you’re collecting resources on so many different important topics!
(I also encourage people in that post to suggest additional topics they think it’d be good to explore, so hopefully the post can become something of a “hub” for that.)
I’m excited to see this! One thing I’d mention on the historian path and its competitiveness is you could probably do a lot of this sort of work as an economic historian with a PhD in economics. Economic historians study everything from gender roles to religion and do ambitious if controversial quantitative analyses of long-term trends. While economists broadly may give little consideration to historical context, the field of economic history prides itself on actually caring about history for its own sake as well, so you can spend time doing traditional historian things, like working with archival documents (see the Preface to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History for a discussion of the field’s norms).
The good thing here is it probably allows for greater outside options and potentially less competitiveness than a history PhD given the upsides of an economics PhD. You could also probably do similar work in political science.
>> Our impression is that although many of these topics have received attention from historians (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), some are comparatively neglected within the subject, especially from a more quantitative or impact-focused perspective.
I’d also note that some of these cites I don’t think are history—2 and 4 are written by anthropologists. (I think in the former case he’s sometimes classified as a biologist, psychologist, or economist too.)
I really do hope we have EAs studying history and fully support it, and I just wanted to give some closely related options!
Good points!
This comment isn’t really a reply, but is about the same career idea, so I figured it might make sense to put it here.
At EAGx, I talked with someone interested in history, so I made some notes about topics I’d be excited to see historians explore (or at least to see non-historians explore in a similar style), as well as some relevant resources. I’ll share those notes here, in case they’re helpful to others.
Disclaimer: These are quick thoughts from someone (me) who’s only ~6 months into doing longtermist research, and who has no background in academic history. Also, this list of topics is neither comprehensive nor prioritised.
History of economic, technological, moral, etc. growth and progress (this post already mentioned this topic)
This could give us evidence not just about what’s likely to happen from where we are now, but also about things like how severe and lasting the consequences of civilizational collapse and global (but non-existential) catastrophes are, and thus how much we should prioritise work on those issues. See e.g. The long-term significance of reducing global catastrophic risks.
History of societal collapse and recovery (some relevant sources)
Historical scenarios of movements growing, having influence, collapsing, etc. (this post already mentioned this one) (some relevant sources)
This could provide evidence relevant to what might happen to EA or related movements and how to steer things well.
History of proliferation and nonproliferation efforts in the case of nuclear weapons or other military technologies/weapons
History of efforts to regulate technology (or otherwise influence the direction or applications of technological development)
See Grace and Grace for works I haven’t actually read but that seem relevant to this topic or the above topic.
History of predictions, predictions of things like extinction or collapse, millenarianism, and how often people have been right vs wrong about these and other things
Knowing more about this would help us know how much to trust predictions of various kinds, which is relevant to things like whether we’re at the Hinge of History and how high existential risk is. We currently seem to know very little about this. See e.g. Muehlhauser, me, and me again.
History of legal and other efforts to represent future generations or other neglected populations (animals, slaves, etc.)
History of moral circle expansion
Counterfactual history related to what factors might’ve led the Nazi regime, Soviet Union, etc. to last, and how long it would’ve lasted if those factors had been present.
This could inform how high the risk from dystopias/totalitarianism is, etc.
I’d guess that the question of what factors might have led those regimes to last wouldn’t be neglected by mainstream historians, but that the question of just how long they might have lasted is probably neglected. But this is purely a guess.
And as a broadly relevant resource here, there was an EAG 2018 talk entitled From the Neolithic Revolution to the Far Future: How to do EA History.
It seems to me that a recurring theme is that EAs without a background in history have done relatively brief analyses of these topics, and then other people have been very interested and maybe made big decisions based on it, but there’s been no deeper or more rigorous follow-up. I’d therefore be quite excited to see more historians (or similar types) in/interacting with EA. (That said, I have no specific reason to believe this is a more valuable career path that then others mentioned in this post; I think it might just be the lack of EAs on this career path happens to be more noticeable to me as I do my current work. Also, I’m not saying the existing analyses were bad—I’ve very much appreciated many of them.)
A potential counterexample to that “recurring theme” is AI Impacts’ research into “historic cases of discontinuously fast technological progress”. My understanding is that that research has indeed been done by EAs without a background in history, but it also seem quite thorough and rigorous, and possibly more useful for informing key decisions about than work on that topic by most academic historians would’ve been. (I hold that view very tentatively.) I’m not sure if that’s evidence for or against the value of EAs becoming historians.
By the way, I’ve added this comment to A central directory for open research questions. So if anyone reading this thinks of other topics worth mentioning, or knows of other collections of topics it would be high-priority from an EA perspective for historians to look into, please comment about that below.
Semi-relevant update: I’ve now created a History tag, and listed some posts there. Posts with this tag might be useful for EAs considering this career idea, as they might provide some ideas about the sorts of topics from history EAs are interested in, and about how historical research methods can be useful for EA.
Hey Michael,
Thanks (as often) for this list! I’m wondering, might you be up for putting it into a slightly more fomal standalone post or google doc that we could potentially link to from the blurb?
Really love how you’re collecting resources on so many different important topics!
Happy to hear this list seems helpful, and thanks for the suggestion! I’ve now polished & slightly expanded my comment into a top level post: Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate.
(I also encourage people in that post to suggest additional topics they think it’d be good to explore, so hopefully the post can become something of a “hub” for that.)
Great! Linked.
Just to let you know I’ve revised the blurb in light of this. Thanks again!
Thanks for these points! Very encouraging that you can do this work from such a variety of disciplines. I’ll revise the blurb in light of this.