If I 1) had savings that cover over a year of my living expenses, 2) wasn’t already employed at an EA think tank, and 3) wanted to do EA research independently, I would probably apply to EA funds to do research on unspecified topics (if they would allow me to do that). I would ask them to give funds not now, but after the research period is over (let’s say 6 months). At the end of the research period, I would produce text that shows instances where I think I had impact and include reasoning why what I did may have had impact. Note that this could include not just published articles, but also comments or in-person communications with trusted advocates that changed how a certain organization does something, reviews of work of others, wikipedia article edits, etc. The amount of funds that I would receive would depend on EA funds manager’s opinion on how good or impactful my work was (or how good of a chance what I did had to be impactful). I imagine that there would be pre-agreed sums of money the manager could choose from. E.g.:
No significant effort to achieve impact - $0
Significant effort to achieve impact in ways that were plausible but most likely didn’t materialize - $8,000
Some expected impact - $15,000
High expect impact - $25,000
Very high expected impact - $40,000
Before the research period, there could be a consultation with the EA fund manager who is going to evaluate my work about what kind of work they think might be promising. Such consultations could also happen during the research period. Also, the research topics wouldn’t need to be something completely unspecified. E.g., it could be “something related to welfare reforms for farmed animals” or it could also be a fully specified topic.
I think that this is better than the traditional approach of applying for a grant to research a specific topic for the following reasons:
More direct motivation to do good. In the traditional approach, the incentive is to create a grant proposal that looks good on the surface (since I imagine that EA funds managers don’t have time to investigate grants very deeply). Then the financial incentive to do a good job can be less clear.
You can switch research directions on the go. This is good because of three related reasons:
It allows you to switch to more impactful research directions. I previously wrote this comment “To me, the main disadvantage of being funded through a fund is that I would be tied to a research topic and a timeframe in which I would have to complete the project (or at least that’s how I imagine it). Working at an organization allows me much more flexibility. I can begin researching a topic, see that it’s not as tractable as I thought, and then drop it. Alternatively, I can increase the scope of the project, or change it into something different, depending on what I feel will be more impactful. All of these scenarios happen often because the more I work on the project, the more informed I am about the most promising directions of that project.” This type of grant promise would allow flexibility for research being funded by a fund.
Relatedly, ability to work on whatever sparks your interest in the moment, freedom to do whatever you want. I sometimes read something on this forum, and want to read, or spend all day writing a comment on it. When I do it, I’m usually very productive while doing it because I work on what is interesting to me at the time. If I had a grant to do research on a specific topic, then I would be less likely to do any of this because I would feel pressure to research whatever I was paid to research.
Whenever I need to work on something, I don’t want to do it. And when I try to do it anyway, I am often less creative as I just want to get it over with. I’ve talked with some other people who had a similar issue.[1] I think that the structure I proposed would partly but not fully solve this issue for me at least.
Here are cons I can think of:
If you can work on anything, it can lead to too much indecisiveness about what to do. Sometimes it’s good when it’s decided what you should do and you don’t need to think about it.
It might create a nebulous pressure to do good that is difficult to act on, which could lead to stress.
One could fear that what they did was impactful but disagreed with the views of the assigned EA funds manager. In that case maybe other EA fund managers could get involved but that wouldn’t fully mitigate the problem.
I’m not going to compare this option with working for an EA research organization but I think that there are cons and pros compared to that too. I imagine that this sort of thing could be the right choice for some people.
I thought about this only for two hours so I’m probably missing some important considerations. Also, I don’t know if this is a new idea, I haven’t checked.. It reminds me of certificates of impact but it’s a bit different. If EA funds managers thought that this is a good idea, they could encourage people to apply in this way, and maybe make a separate application form for that.
To illustrate, I had multiple situations where I worked on some EA side project and was making a lot of progress in my free time and then my employer allowed me to work on it in my work time and my rate of progress per hour slowed down a lot. I think that for me this is because when I have to do something, I am motivated by negative incentives (fear of failure and hence losing my job, or doing job that is below what is expected of me and hence people thinking less of me (perfectionism)) more than by positive incentives (making an impact and impressing other people). This talk made me see that.
I guess this would also not necessarily have to be research. E.g., a grant for corporate campaigns where payout depends on the commitments they won. I imagine multiple problems with this and it’s probably a bad idea but perhaps it’s worth consideration in some cases.
Research grants with outcome-based payouts
If I 1) had savings that cover over a year of my living expenses, 2) wasn’t already employed at an EA think tank, and 3) wanted to do EA research independently, I would probably apply to EA funds to do research on unspecified topics (if they would allow me to do that). I would ask them to give funds not now, but after the research period is over (let’s say 6 months). At the end of the research period, I would produce text that shows instances where I think I had impact and include reasoning why what I did may have had impact. Note that this could include not just published articles, but also comments or in-person communications with trusted advocates that changed how a certain organization does something, reviews of work of others, wikipedia article edits, etc. The amount of funds that I would receive would depend on EA funds manager’s opinion on how good or impactful my work was (or how good of a chance what I did had to be impactful). I imagine that there would be pre-agreed sums of money the manager could choose from. E.g.:
No significant effort to achieve impact - $0
Significant effort to achieve impact in ways that were plausible but most likely didn’t materialize - $8,000
Some expected impact - $15,000
High expect impact - $25,000
Very high expected impact - $40,000
Before the research period, there could be a consultation with the EA fund manager who is going to evaluate my work about what kind of work they think might be promising. Such consultations could also happen during the research period. Also, the research topics wouldn’t need to be something completely unspecified. E.g., it could be “something related to welfare reforms for farmed animals” or it could also be a fully specified topic.
I think that this is better than the traditional approach of applying for a grant to research a specific topic for the following reasons:
More direct motivation to do good. In the traditional approach, the incentive is to create a grant proposal that looks good on the surface (since I imagine that EA funds managers don’t have time to investigate grants very deeply). Then the financial incentive to do a good job can be less clear.
You can switch research directions on the go. This is good because of three related reasons:
It allows you to switch to more impactful research directions. I previously wrote this comment “To me, the main disadvantage of being funded through a fund is that I would be tied to a research topic and a timeframe in which I would have to complete the project (or at least that’s how I imagine it). Working at an organization allows me much more flexibility. I can begin researching a topic, see that it’s not as tractable as I thought, and then drop it. Alternatively, I can increase the scope of the project, or change it into something different, depending on what I feel will be more impactful. All of these scenarios happen often because the more I work on the project, the more informed I am about the most promising directions of that project.” This type of grant promise would allow flexibility for research being funded by a fund.
Relatedly, ability to work on whatever sparks your interest in the moment, freedom to do whatever you want. I sometimes read something on this forum, and want to read, or spend all day writing a comment on it. When I do it, I’m usually very productive while doing it because I work on what is interesting to me at the time. If I had a grant to do research on a specific topic, then I would be less likely to do any of this because I would feel pressure to research whatever I was paid to research.
Whenever I need to work on something, I don’t want to do it. And when I try to do it anyway, I am often less creative as I just want to get it over with. I’ve talked with some other people who had a similar issue.[1] I think that the structure I proposed would partly but not fully solve this issue for me at least.
Here are cons I can think of:
If you can work on anything, it can lead to too much indecisiveness about what to do. Sometimes it’s good when it’s decided what you should do and you don’t need to think about it.
It might create a nebulous pressure to do good that is difficult to act on, which could lead to stress.
One could fear that what they did was impactful but disagreed with the views of the assigned EA funds manager. In that case maybe other EA fund managers could get involved but that wouldn’t fully mitigate the problem.
I’m not going to compare this option with working for an EA research organization but I think that there are cons and pros compared to that too. I imagine that this sort of thing could be the right choice for some people.
I thought about this only for two hours so I’m probably missing some important considerations. Also, I don’t know if this is a new idea, I haven’t checked.. It reminds me of certificates of impact but it’s a bit different. If EA funds managers thought that this is a good idea, they could encourage people to apply in this way, and maybe make a separate application form for that.
Any thoughts?
To illustrate, I had multiple situations where I worked on some EA side project and was making a lot of progress in my free time and then my employer allowed me to work on it in my work time and my rate of progress per hour slowed down a lot. I think that for me this is because when I have to do something, I am motivated by negative incentives (fear of failure and hence losing my job, or doing job that is below what is expected of me and hence people thinking less of me (perfectionism)) more than by positive incentives (making an impact and impressing other people). This talk made me see that.
Interesting idea. I think this could be useful in cases where people know that they don’t have the credibility to receive a direct grant.
I guess this would also not necessarily have to be research. E.g., a grant for corporate campaigns where payout depends on the commitments they won. I imagine multiple problems with this and it’s probably a bad idea but perhaps it’s worth consideration in some cases.