also I have a strong suspicion that a lot of needed research work in EA “just isn’t that hard” and if it’s done by less competent people, this frees up other EA researchers to do more important work.
I agree with that suspicion, especially if we include things like “Just collect a bunch of stuff in one place” or “Just summarise some stuff” as “research”. I think a substantial portion of my impact to date has probably come from that sort of thing (examples in this sentence from a post I made earlier today: “I’maddictedtocreatingcollections”). It basically always feel like (a) a lot of other people could’ve done what I’m doing and (b) it’s kinda crazy no one had yet. I also sometimes don’t have time to execute on some of my seemingly-very-executable and actually-not-that-time-consuming ideas, and the time I do spend on such things does slow down my progress otherwork that does seem to require more specialised skills. I also think this would apply to at least some things that are more classically “research” outputs than collections or summaries are.
But I want to push back on “this frees up other EA researchers to do more important work”. I think you probably mean “this frees up other EA researchers to do work that they’re more uniquely suited for”? I think (and your comment seems to imply you agree?) that there’s not a very strong correlation between importance and difficulty/uniqueness-of-skillset-required—i.e., many low-hanging fruit remain unplucked despite being rather juicy.
Strongly agree with this. While I was working on LEAN and the EA Hub I felt that there were a lot of very necessary and valuable things to do, that nobody wanted to do (or fund) because they seemed too easy. But a lot of value is lost, and important things are undermined if everyone turns their noses up at simple tasks. I’m really glad that since then CEA has significantly built up their local group support. But it’s a perennial pitfall to watch out for.
But I want to push back on “this frees up other EA researchers to do more important work”. I think you probably mean “this frees up other EA researchers to do work that they’re more uniquely suited for”? I think (and your comment seems to imply you agree?) that there’s not a very strong correlation between importance and difficulty/uniqueness-of-skillset-required—i.e., many low-hanging fruit remain unplucked despite being rather juicy.
I think this is probably true. One thing to flag here is people’s counterfactuals are not necessarily in research. I think one belief that I recently updated towards but haven’t fully incorporated in my decision-making is that for a non-trivial subset of EAs in prominent org positions (particularly STEM-trained risk-neutral Americans with elite networks), counterfactuals might be more like expected E2G earnings more in the mid-7 figures or so* than the low- to mid- 6 figures I was previously assuming.
*to be clear, almost all of this is EV is in the high upside things, very few people make 7 figures working jobby jobs.
I agree with that suspicion, especially if we include things like “Just collect a bunch of stuff in one place” or “Just summarise some stuff” as “research”. I think a substantial portion of my impact to date has probably come from that sort of thing (examples in this sentence from a post I made earlier today: “I’m addicted to creating collections”). It basically always feel like (a) a lot of other people could’ve done what I’m doing and (b) it’s kinda crazy no one had yet. I also sometimes don’t have time to execute on some of my seemingly-very-executable and actually-not-that-time-consuming ideas, and the time I do spend on such things does slow down my progress other work that does seem to require more specialised skills. I also think this would apply to at least some things that are more classically “research” outputs than collections or summaries are.
But I want to push back on “this frees up other EA researchers to do more important work”. I think you probably mean “this frees up other EA researchers to do work that they’re more uniquely suited for”? I think (and your comment seems to imply you agree?) that there’s not a very strong correlation between importance and difficulty/uniqueness-of-skillset-required—i.e., many low-hanging fruit remain unplucked despite being rather juicy.
Strongly agree with this. While I was working on LEAN and the EA Hub I felt that there were a lot of very necessary and valuable things to do, that nobody wanted to do (or fund) because they seemed too easy. But a lot of value is lost, and important things are undermined if everyone turns their noses up at simple tasks. I’m really glad that since then CEA has significantly built up their local group support. But it’s a perennial pitfall to watch out for.
I think this is probably true. One thing to flag here is people’s counterfactuals are not necessarily in research. I think one belief that I recently updated towards but haven’t fully incorporated in my decision-making is that for a non-trivial subset of EAs in prominent org positions (particularly STEM-trained risk-neutral Americans with elite networks), counterfactuals might be more like expected E2G earnings more in the mid-7 figures or so* than the low- to mid- 6 figures I was previously assuming.
*to be clear, almost all of this is EV is in the high upside things, very few people make 7 figures working jobby jobs.