A possible middle ground is to make efforts to ensure that important source material was preserved, to keep option value of doing this project later. That would presumably require significantly fewer resources, and wouldn’t require opportunity costs from “the sort of person who could do [the writing of a book] well.”
Great point! A historian or archivist could take on this role. Maybe CEA could hire one? I’d say it fits within their mission “to nurture a community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s biggest problems and taking impactful action to solve them.”
A possible middle ground is to make efforts to ensure that important source material was preserved, to keep option value of doing this project later. That would presumably require significantly fewer resources, and wouldn’t require opportunity costs from “the sort of person who could do [the writing of a book] well.”
Great point! A historian or archivist could take on this role. Maybe CEA could hire one? I’d say it fits within their mission “to nurture a community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s biggest problems and taking impactful action to solve them.”