One type of intervention for improving the EA-aligned research pipeline is creating and/âor improving research training programs. When doing so, I think three important, related questions are:
To what extent should the participants decide for themselves what projects to work on, vs deferring to the decisions/ârecommendations of others?
What fraction of each participantâs time should be spent tackling full research projects themselves, vs doing âdelegated subtasksâ /â producing âintermediate productsâ (e.g., finding literature relevant to a question for someone else)?
(Maybe thereâs a more elegant or standard way to describe this question.)
To what extent should participants be tackling a âfreshâ question, vs tackling something closely related to what a mentor/âmanager is already working on?
I originally thought that, the more weight one puts on the goals of âcredible signals of fitâ, âknowledge and skillsâ, and âtesting fitâ, the more that would push in favour of participants deciding for themselves which projects to work on, tackling full research projects themselves, and tackling âfreshâ questions. And I thought that putting more weight on âdirect impactâ would push in the opposite direction.
But after some further thinking, a call with someone whoâs a research assistant to a great researcher, and some comments on a draft of this post, I now think this will vary a lot depending on the specifics. For example, doing âdelegated subtasksâ might lead to more and better feedback, since the delegator actually needs and will use what the aspiring/âjunior researcher produced, and that feedback should help with building knowledge and skills.
That said, I still think that thinking about the goals outlined in this post should help one think through the above questions in light of the specific situation theyâre facing.
An example I originally had in the final section
One type of intervention for improving the EA-aligned research pipeline is creating and/âor improving research training programs. When doing so, I think three important, related questions are:
To what extent should the participants decide for themselves what projects to work on, vs deferring to the decisions/ârecommendations of others?
What fraction of each participantâs time should be spent tackling full research projects themselves, vs doing âdelegated subtasksâ /â producing âintermediate productsâ (e.g., finding literature relevant to a question for someone else)?
(Maybe thereâs a more elegant or standard way to describe this question.)
To what extent should participants be tackling a âfreshâ question, vs tackling something closely related to what a mentor/âmanager is already working on?
I originally thought that, the more weight one puts on the goals of âcredible signals of fitâ, âknowledge and skillsâ, and âtesting fitâ, the more that would push in favour of participants deciding for themselves which projects to work on, tackling full research projects themselves, and tackling âfreshâ questions. And I thought that putting more weight on âdirect impactâ would push in the opposite direction.
But after some further thinking, a call with someone whoâs a research assistant to a great researcher, and some comments on a draft of this post, I now think this will vary a lot depending on the specifics. For example, doing âdelegated subtasksâ might lead to more and better feedback, since the delegator actually needs and will use what the aspiring/âjunior researcher produced, and that feedback should help with building knowledge and skills.
That said, I still think that thinking about the goals outlined in this post should help one think through the above questions in light of the specific situation theyâre facing.