I think the general thrust of your argument is clearly right, and it’s weird/frustrating that this is not the default assumption when people talk about megaprojects (though maybe I’m not reading the existing discussions of megaprojects sufficiently charitably).
2 moderately-sized caveats:
Re 2) “Projects with great EV are really the focus and always have been”, I think in the early days of EA, and to a lesser degree still today, a lot of focus of EA isn’t on great EV so much as high cost-effectiveness. To some degree the megaprojects discourse was set to push back against this.
Re: 5, “It’s probably also partly because a lot of people aren’t naturally sufficiently ambitious or lack sufficient self-confidence” I think this is definitely true, but maybe I’d like to push back a bit on the individual framing of this lack of ambition, as I think it’s partially cultural/institutional. That is, until very recently, we (EA broadly, or the largest funders etc), haven’t made it as clear that EA supports and encourages extreme ambition in outputs in a way that means we (collectively) are potentially willing to pay large per-project costs in inputs.
Thanks—I think those are both really good points! I’ve now made a top-level post version of this shortform, with the main modifications being adjustments in light of your points (plus, unrelatedly, adding a colourful diagram because colourful diagrams are fun).
I think the general thrust of your argument is clearly right, and it’s weird/frustrating that this is not the default assumption when people talk about megaprojects (though maybe I’m not reading the existing discussions of megaprojects sufficiently charitably).
2 moderately-sized caveats:
Re 2) “Projects with great EV are really the focus and always have been”, I think in the early days of EA, and to a lesser degree still today, a lot of focus of EA isn’t on great EV so much as high cost-effectiveness. To some degree the megaprojects discourse was set to push back against this.
Re: 5, “It’s probably also partly because a lot of people aren’t naturally sufficiently ambitious or lack sufficient self-confidence” I think this is definitely true, but maybe I’d like to push back a bit on the individual framing of this lack of ambition, as I think it’s partially cultural/institutional. That is, until very recently, we (EA broadly, or the largest funders etc), haven’t made it as clear that EA supports and encourages extreme ambition in outputs in a way that means we (collectively) are potentially willing to pay large per-project costs in inputs.
Thanks—I think those are both really good points! I’ve now made a top-level post version of this shortform, with the main modifications being adjustments in light of your points (plus, unrelatedly, adding a colourful diagram because colourful diagrams are fun).