I think it would be great to have some directory of attempted but failed projects. Often I’ve thought “Oh I think X is a cool idea, but I bet someone more qualified has already tried it, and if it doesn’t exist publicly then it must have failed” but I don’t think this is often true (also see this shortform about the failure of the efficient market hypothesis for EA projects). Having a list of attempted but shut down (for whatever reason) projects might encourage people to start more projects, as we can really see how little of the idea space has been explored in practice.
There’s a few helpful write-ups (e.g. shutting down the longtermist incubator) but in addition to detailed post-mortems, I would be keen to see a low-effort directory (AirTable or even Google Sheets?) of attempted projects, who tried, contact details (with permission), why it stopped, etc. If people are interested in this, I can make some preliminary spreadsheet that we can start populating, but other recommendations are of course welcome.
I think it would be great to have some directory of attempted but failed projects. Often I’ve thought “Oh I think X is a cool idea, but I bet someone more qualified has already tried it, and if it doesn’t exist publicly then it must have failed” but I don’t think this is often true (also see this shortform about the failure of the efficient market hypothesis for EA projects). Having a list of attempted but shut down (for whatever reason) projects might encourage people to start more projects, as we can really see how little of the idea space has been explored in practice.
There’s a few helpful write-ups (e.g. shutting down the longtermist incubator) but in addition to detailed post-mortems, I would be keen to see a low-effort directory (AirTable or even Google Sheets?) of attempted projects, who tried, contact details (with permission), why it stopped, etc. If people are interested in this, I can make some preliminary spreadsheet that we can start populating, but other recommendations are of course welcome.
I would love to see this!