Collection of EA-associated historical case study research
This collection is in reverse chronological order of publication date. I think I’m forgetting lots of relevant things, and I intend to add more things in future—please let me know if you know of something I’m missing.
One relevant type of research is investigation of historical case studies to draw insights for specific other topics or questions.
I expect we might get more of that type of research, and at a higher quality level, if it was easier for people to find previous examples of such research conducted or commissioned by people in or associated with the EA community. For example, that could help people:
Think about what sorts of questions this sort of research could shed light on
Think about how to conduct that research
Decide whether to fund, encourage, hire for, or support such research
Hence I’m making this collection.
Scope of this collection
I currently intend to:
Not include work that’s already on the EA Forum, since that can be found via the History tag (though that tag’s scope is broader than the scope of this collection).
Not include types of history research other than case studies, such as quantitative macrohistory
Though often a single project or writeup includes elements of multiple types of history research
Not include any of the huge amount of historical case study research that’s not associated with EA (even research on topics EAs care about).
People could of course learn a lot from that research as well.
The reasons I’m collecting only EA-associated work is that:
Otherwise this collection would just be insanely large
I’d guess that many collections of non-EA-associated historical case study research already exist?
The precise focuses or methodologies of EA-associated work may be more relevant to other EAs
Links to non-EA-associated work can be found in most of the things I list here
Let me know if you think it’d be useful to change the scope of this (e.g., also including Forum posts) or to make other related collections (e.g., historical case study analyses focused on drawing insights for reducing AI risk, whether or not those case studies are EA-associated and whether or not they’re on the Forum).
Collection of EA-associated historical case study research
This collection is in reverse chronological order of publication date. I think I’m forgetting lots of relevant things, and I intend to add more things in future—please let me know if you know of something I’m missing.
Zaidi and Dafoe (2021), International Control of Powerful Technology: Lessons from the Baruch Plan for Nuclear Weapons
Some of the Sentience Institute’s research, such as its “social movement case studies”* and perhaps the post How tractable is changing the course of history?
Open Philanthropy’s list of case studies on the History of Philanthropy
This includes work they commissioned, work done by Luke Muehlhauser, and previous non-EA-associated work which Open Philanthropy found
Grace (2015), Leó Szilárd and the Danger of Nuclear Weapons: A Case Study in Risk Mitigation
Muehlhauser (2013) How well will policy-makers handle AGI? (initial findings)
Possibly relevant things:
Some book reviews by Scott Alexander, such as:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/18/book-review-inventing-the-future/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/30/book-review-history-of-the-fabian-society/
It appears Animal Charity Evaluators did relevant research, but I haven’t read it, they described it as having been “of variable quality”, and they’ve discontinued it.
Motivation for this collection
I think it would be good for more EAs to learn about, research, and/or draw insights from history. See also Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate and 80k’s thoughts on the career idea of becoming a historian.
One relevant type of research is investigation of historical case studies to draw insights for specific other topics or questions.
I expect we might get more of that type of research, and at a higher quality level, if it was easier for people to find previous examples of such research conducted or commissioned by people in or associated with the EA community. For example, that could help people:
Think about what sorts of questions this sort of research could shed light on
Think about how to conduct that research
Decide whether to fund, encourage, hire for, or support such research
Hence I’m making this collection.
Scope of this collection
I currently intend to:
Not include work that’s already on the EA Forum, since that can be found via the History tag (though that tag’s scope is broader than the scope of this collection).
Not include types of history research other than case studies, such as quantitative macrohistory
Though often a single project or writeup includes elements of multiple types of history research
Not include any of the huge amount of historical case study research that’s not associated with EA (even research on topics EAs care about).
People could of course learn a lot from that research as well.
The reasons I’m collecting only EA-associated work is that:
Otherwise this collection would just be insanely large
I’d guess that many collections of non-EA-associated historical case study research already exist?
The precise focuses or methodologies of EA-associated work may be more relevant to other EAs
Links to non-EA-associated work can be found in most of the things I list here
See also
Posts tagged History
Collection of EA analyses of how social social movements rise, fall, can be influential, etc.
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Let me know if you think it’d be useful to change the scope of this (e.g., also including Forum posts) or to make other related collections (e.g., historical case study analyses focused on drawing insights for reducing AI risk, whether or not those case studies are EA-associated and whether or not they’re on the Forum).