(I work at RP, as well as at FHI and the EA Infrastructure Fund, but I’m writing in a personal capacity and describing activities I did in a personal capacity.)
On a similar note, there have been at least two times in the last few months when I think I provided quite useful advice to someone who was recently started an organisation or plans to do so soon, basically just via me describing aspects of how RP thinks and works. And probably >10 times in the last few months when I provided quite useful advice to researchers or aspiring researchers simply by describing aspects of how RP generates ideas for research projects, prioritises among them, plans them, conducts them, disseminates findings, and assesses impact.*
I’ll also be delivering a 1-hour workshop that partly covers that latter batch of topics to participants of a research training program soon, and would potentially be open to delivering the same workshop to other groups as well. (You can see the slides and links to related resources here. Note that this workshop is something I’m doing in my personal time and expresses personal views only; it merely draws on things I’ve learned from RP.)
I say “quite useful” based on things like the people wanting the calls to run longer, asking for followup calls, writing up strategy docs afterwards and asking for my feedback on them, etc. I don’t yet have much evidence of actual good outcomes in the world from this.
This all increases my enthusiasm about the idea of more people trying to copy or draw on good bits of RP, including via:
people reading public writeups of aspects of RP’s strategy (e.g. here and here)
RP producing more such writeups (though as Luke’s post implies, there are many other projects competing for our staff time!)
Maybe RP people delivering some workshops on aspects of this, like I’m now dipping my toes into doing
people having calls with RP staff to talk about these things
(I also of course think there’s a lot I and RP could usefully copy or draw on from elsewhere, and I’ve indeed already “imported” various things from e.g. CLR and FHI into RP or at least my own work.)
Basically, I’d be excited for lots of orgs and individual researchers to operate as anything on a spectrum from “good RP clones” to “very much their own thing, but remixing good aspects from RP and elsewhere”. I think there’s a lot of room for this.
I’m also now a guest fund manager at the EA Infrastructure Fund, and the version of me that wears that hat would likewise be excited about funding more people to do that sor tof thing. (That of course doesn’t mean that I’d want to fund every application like this, but I’d want to fund some and would be excited to have more such applications coming our way.)
(Again, just writing in a personal capacity.)
*I also have my own in-my-view-useful thoughts on these topics, but even if I had deleted all of those from the conversations and just described RP thinking and processes, I think the conversations would’ve been quite useful.
The slides look good Michael. I also think that there is a lot of value in delivering research training and improving skills in the community - being an EA is basically doing applied research on how to do good better! By the way, here is a quick prioritisation template that Alexander Saeri and I developed based on the SNS/INT framework. There are also other tools on the linked website around intervention prioritisation that might be useful—feel free to take and adapt the spreadsheets if you want to create tools.
I’m happy to speak with anyone who wants to compete with Rethink Priorities! Feel free to send inquiries to peter@rethinkpriorities.org
(I work at RP, as well as at FHI and the EA Infrastructure Fund, but I’m writing in a personal capacity and describing activities I did in a personal capacity.)
On a similar note, there have been at least two times in the last few months when I think I provided quite useful advice to someone who was recently started an organisation or plans to do so soon, basically just via me describing aspects of how RP thinks and works. And probably >10 times in the last few months when I provided quite useful advice to researchers or aspiring researchers simply by describing aspects of how RP generates ideas for research projects, prioritises among them, plans them, conducts them, disseminates findings, and assesses impact.*
I’ll also be delivering a 1-hour workshop that partly covers that latter batch of topics to participants of a research training program soon, and would potentially be open to delivering the same workshop to other groups as well. (You can see the slides and links to related resources here. Note that this workshop is something I’m doing in my personal time and expresses personal views only; it merely draws on things I’ve learned from RP.)
I say “quite useful” based on things like the people wanting the calls to run longer, asking for followup calls, writing up strategy docs afterwards and asking for my feedback on them, etc. I don’t yet have much evidence of actual good outcomes in the world from this.
This all increases my enthusiasm about the idea of more people trying to copy or draw on good bits of RP, including via:
people reading public writeups of aspects of RP’s strategy (e.g. here and here)
RP producing more such writeups (though as Luke’s post implies, there are many other projects competing for our staff time!)
Maybe RP people delivering some workshops on aspects of this, like I’m now dipping my toes into doing
people having calls with RP staff to talk about these things
(I also of course think there’s a lot I and RP could usefully copy or draw on from elsewhere, and I’ve indeed already “imported” various things from e.g. CLR and FHI into RP or at least my own work.)
Basically, I’d be excited for lots of orgs and individual researchers to operate as anything on a spectrum from “good RP clones” to “very much their own thing, but remixing good aspects from RP and elsewhere”. I think there’s a lot of room for this.
I’m also now a guest fund manager at the EA Infrastructure Fund, and the version of me that wears that hat would likewise be excited about funding more people to do that sor tof thing. (That of course doesn’t mean that I’d want to fund every application like this, but I’d want to fund some and would be excited to have more such applications coming our way.)
(Again, just writing in a personal capacity.)
*I also have my own in-my-view-useful thoughts on these topics, but even if I had deleted all of those from the conversations and just described RP thinking and processes, I think the conversations would’ve been quite useful.
The slides look good Michael. I also think that there is a lot of value in delivering research training and improving skills in the community - being an EA is basically doing applied research on how to do good better! By the way, here is a quick prioritisation template that Alexander Saeri and I developed based on the SNS/INT framework. There are also other tools on the linked website around intervention prioritisation that might be useful—feel free to take and adapt the spreadsheets if you want to create tools.
Thanks so much Peter! READI could never compete with Rethink Priorities but we might be interested in some coopetition :) I will send you an email!