So of course developing expertise in something important is better than “ending up in a never-ending strategy spiral.” But I largely disagree about your focus on established, specific, boring, prosaic questions. The relevant way I can impact governance by discovering something good, telling EAs, and thus causing EAs to use their influence to make it happen. And I think I can do that much better by starting at questions like “if AI goes well, what happened” and “what intermediate goals improve AI safety” and “what should labs do” than the kind of topics on your list.
So of course developing expertise in something important is better than “ending up in a never-ending strategy spiral.” But I largely disagree about your focus on established, specific, boring, prosaic questions. The relevant way I can impact governance by discovering something good, telling EAs, and thus causing EAs to use their influence to make it happen. And I think I can do that much better by starting at questions like “if AI goes well, what happened” and “what intermediate goals improve AI safety” and “what should labs do” than the kind of topics on your list.