1. I really like this list. Lost of the ideas look very sensible. I also really really value that you are doing prioritisation exercises across ideas and not just throwing out ideas that you feel sound nice without any evidence of background research (like FTX, and others, did). Great work!
– – 2. Quick question about the research: Does the process consider cost-effectiveness as a key factor? For each of the ideas do you feel like you have a sense of why this thing has not happened already?
– –
3. Some feedback on the idea here I know most about: policy field building (although admittedly from a UK not US perspective). I found the idea strong and was happy to see it on the list but I found reading the description of it unconvincing. I am not sure there is much point getting people to take jobs in government without giving them direction, strategic clarity, things to do to or leavers to pull to drive change. Policy success needs an ecosystem, some people in technocratic roles, some in government, some in external policy think tank style research, some in advocacy and lobby groups, etc. If this idea is only about directing people into government I am much less excited by it than a broader conception of field building that includes institution building and lobbying work.
Thanks, appreciate your comment and the compliment!
On your questions:
2. The research process does consider cost-effectiveness as a key factor – e.g., the weighted factor model we used included both an “impact potential” and a “cost” item, so projects were favoured if they had high estimated impact potential and/or a low estimated cost. “Impact potential” here means “impact with really successful (~90th percentile) execution” – we’re focusing on the extreme rather than the average case because we expect most of our expected impact to come from tail outcomes (but have a separate item in the model to account for downside risk). The “cost” score was usually based on a rough proxy, but the “impact potential” score was basically just a guess – so it’s quite different from how CE (presumably) uses cost-effectiveness, in that we don’t make an explicit cost-effectiveness estimate and in that we don’t consult evidence from empirical studies (which typically don’t exist for the kinds of projects we consider).
Re: “For each of the ideas do you feel like you have a sense of why this thing has not happened already?” – we didn’t consider this explicitly in the process (though it somewhat indirectly featured as part of considering tractability and impact potential). I feel like I have a rough sense for each of the projects listed – and we wouldn’t include projects where we didn’t think it was plausible that the project would be feasible, that there’d be a good founder out there etc. – but I could easily be missing important reasons. Definitely an important question – would be curious to hear how CE takes it into account.
3. Appreciate the input! The idea here wouldn’t be to just shove people into government jobs, but also making sure that they have the right context, knowledge, skills and opportunities to have a positive impact once there. I agree that policy is an ecosystem and that people are needed in many kinds of roles. I think it could make sense for an individual project to focus just/primarily on one or a few types of role (analogously to how the Horizon Institute focuses primarily on technocratic staffer and executive branch roles + think tank roles), but am generally in favour of high-quality projects in multiple policy-related areas (including advocacy/lobbying and developing think tank pipelines).
1.
I really like this list. Lost of the ideas look very sensible.
I also really really value that you are doing prioritisation exercises across ideas and not just throwing out ideas that you feel sound nice without any evidence of background research (like FTX, and others, did). Great work!
– –
2.
Quick question about the research: Does the process consider cost-effectiveness as a key factor? For each of the ideas do you feel like you have a sense of why this thing has not happened already?
– –
3.
Some feedback on the idea here I know most about: policy field building (although admittedly from a UK not US perspective). I found the idea strong and was happy to see it on the list but I found reading the description of it unconvincing. I am not sure there is much point getting people to take jobs in government without giving them direction, strategic clarity, things to do to or leavers to pull to drive change. Policy success needs an ecosystem, some people in technocratic roles, some in government, some in external policy think tank style research, some in advocacy and lobby groups, etc. If this idea is only about directing people into government I am much less excited by it than a broader conception of field building that includes institution building and lobbying work.
Thanks, appreciate your comment and the compliment!
On your questions:
2. The research process does consider cost-effectiveness as a key factor – e.g., the weighted factor model we used included both an “impact potential” and a “cost” item, so projects were favoured if they had high estimated impact potential and/or a low estimated cost. “Impact potential” here means “impact with really successful (~90th percentile) execution” – we’re focusing on the extreme rather than the average case because we expect most of our expected impact to come from tail outcomes (but have a separate item in the model to account for downside risk). The “cost” score was usually based on a rough proxy, but the “impact potential” score was basically just a guess – so it’s quite different from how CE (presumably) uses cost-effectiveness, in that we don’t make an explicit cost-effectiveness estimate and in that we don’t consult evidence from empirical studies (which typically don’t exist for the kinds of projects we consider).
Re: “For each of the ideas do you feel like you have a sense of why this thing has not happened already?” – we didn’t consider this explicitly in the process (though it somewhat indirectly featured as part of considering tractability and impact potential). I feel like I have a rough sense for each of the projects listed – and we wouldn’t include projects where we didn’t think it was plausible that the project would be feasible, that there’d be a good founder out there etc. – but I could easily be missing important reasons. Definitely an important question – would be curious to hear how CE takes it into account.
3. Appreciate the input! The idea here wouldn’t be to just shove people into government jobs, but also making sure that they have the right context, knowledge, skills and opportunities to have a positive impact once there. I agree that policy is an ecosystem and that people are needed in many kinds of roles. I think it could make sense for an individual project to focus just/primarily on one or a few types of role (analogously to how the Horizon Institute focuses primarily on technocratic staffer and executive branch roles + think tank roles), but am generally in favour of high-quality projects in multiple policy-related areas (including advocacy/lobbying and developing think tank pipelines).