Jade Leung’s EAGx talk ‘Fostering longtermist entrepreneurship’ touched on some relevant ideas related to individual capacity for risk taking. (this isn’t in the public CEA playlist, but a recording is still available via the Grip agenda)
At the moment I think there aren’t obvious mechanisms to support independent early-stage and high-risk projects at the point where they aren’t well defined and, more generally, to support independent projects that aren’t intended to lead to careers.
As an example that address both points, one of the highest impact things that I’m considering working on currently is a research project that could either fail in ~3 months or, if successful, occupy several years of work to develop into a viable intervention (with several more failure points along the way).
With regards to point 1: At the moment, my only option seems to be applying for seed-funding, doing some work and if that its successful, applying to another funder to provide longer-term project funding (probably on several occasions). Each funding application is both uncertain and time consuming, and knowing this somewhat disincentives me from even starting (although I have recently applied for seed stage funding). Having a funding format that started at project inception and could be renewed several times would be really helpful. I don’t think something like this currently exists for EA projects.
With regards to point 2: As a researcher, I would view my involvement with the project as winding down if/when it lead to a viable intervention—while I could stay involved as a technical advisor, I doubt I’d contribute much after the technology is demonstrated, nor do I imagine particularly wanting to be involved in later stage activities such as manufacturing and distribution. This essentially means that the highest impact thing I can think of working on would probably need my involvement for, at most, a decade. If it did work out then I’d least have some credibility to get support for doing research in another area, but taking a gamble on starting something that won’t even need your involvement after a few years hardly seems like sound career advice to give (although from the inside view, it is quite tempting to ignore that argument against doing the project).
I think that lack of support in these areas is most relevant to independent researchers or small research teams—researchers at larger organisations probably have more institutional support when developing or moving between projects, while applied work, such as distributing an intervention, should be somewhat easier to plan out.
Do you think that there is any institution or norm severely lacking in the EA community?
Jade Leung’s EAGx talk ‘Fostering longtermist entrepreneurship’ touched on some relevant ideas related to individual capacity for risk taking. (this isn’t in the public CEA playlist, but a recording is still available via the Grip agenda)
Definitely! The notes and slides can be found here
Here is just linking to this post, I think you meant to link somewhere else?
Fixed, thanks! :)
At the moment I think there aren’t obvious mechanisms to support independent early-stage and high-risk projects at the point where they aren’t well defined and, more generally, to support independent projects that aren’t intended to lead to careers.
As an example that address both points, one of the highest impact things that I’m considering working on currently is a research project that could either fail in ~3 months or, if successful, occupy several years of work to develop into a viable intervention (with several more failure points along the way).
With regards to point 1: At the moment, my only option seems to be applying for seed-funding, doing some work and if that its successful, applying to another funder to provide longer-term project funding (probably on several occasions). Each funding application is both uncertain and time consuming, and knowing this somewhat disincentives me from even starting (although I have recently applied for seed stage funding). Having a funding format that started at project inception and could be renewed several times would be really helpful. I don’t think something like this currently exists for EA projects.
With regards to point 2: As a researcher, I would view my involvement with the project as winding down if/when it lead to a viable intervention—while I could stay involved as a technical advisor, I doubt I’d contribute much after the technology is demonstrated, nor do I imagine particularly wanting to be involved in later stage activities such as manufacturing and distribution. This essentially means that the highest impact thing I can think of working on would probably need my involvement for, at most, a decade. If it did work out then I’d least have some credibility to get support for doing research in another area, but taking a gamble on starting something that won’t even need your involvement after a few years hardly seems like sound career advice to give (although from the inside view, it is quite tempting to ignore that argument against doing the project).
I think that lack of support in these areas is most relevant to independent researchers or small research teams—researchers at larger organisations probably have more institutional support when developing or moving between projects, while applied work, such as distributing an intervention, should be somewhat easier to plan out.