Thanks for this detailed response! Lots of useful food for thought here, and I agree with much of what you say.
Regarding Effective Thesis:
I think I agree that āmost research areas relevant to longtermism require high context in order to contribute toā, at least given our current question lists and support options.
I also think this is the main reason Iām currently useful as a researcher despite (a) having little formal background in the areas I work in and (b) there being a bunch of non-longtermist specialists who already work in roughly those areas.
On the other hand, it seems like we should be able to identify many crisp, useful questions that are relatively easy to delegate to peopleāparticularly specialistsāwith less context, especially if accompanied with suggested resources, a mentor with more context, etc.
E.g., there are presumably specific technical-ish questions related to pathogens, antivirals, climate modelling, or international relations that could be delegated to people with good subject area knowledge but less longtermist context.
I think in theory Effective Thesis or things like it could contribute to that
After writing that, I saw you said the following, so I think we mostly agree here: āI think that it is quite hard to get non-EAs to do highly leveraged research of interest to EAs. I am not aware of many examples of it happening. (I actually canāt think of any offhand.) I think this is bottlenecked on EA having more problems that are well scoped and explained and can be handed off to less aligned people. Iām excited about work like The case for aligning narrowly superhuman models, because I think that this kind of work might make it easier to cause less aligned people to do useful stuff.ā
But in any case, I donāt see the main value proposition as the direct impact of the theses Effective Thesis guides people towards or through writing. I see the main value propositions as (a) increasing the number of people who will go on to become more involved in an area, get more context on it, and do useful research in it later, and (b) making it easier for people who already have good context, priorities, etc. to find mentorship and other support
Rather than the direct value of the theses themselves
(Disclaimer: This is a quick, high-level description of my thoughts, without explaining all my related thoughts of re-reading Effective Thesisās strategy, impact assessment, etc.)
Thanks for this detailed response! Lots of useful food for thought here, and I agree with much of what you say.
Regarding Effective Thesis:
I think I agree that āmost research areas relevant to longtermism require high context in order to contribute toā, at least given our current question lists and support options.
I also think this is the main reason Iām currently useful as a researcher despite (a) having little formal background in the areas I work in and (b) there being a bunch of non-longtermist specialists who already work in roughly those areas.
On the other hand, it seems like we should be able to identify many crisp, useful questions that are relatively easy to delegate to peopleāparticularly specialistsāwith less context, especially if accompanied with suggested resources, a mentor with more context, etc.
E.g., there are presumably specific technical-ish questions related to pathogens, antivirals, climate modelling, or international relations that could be delegated to people with good subject area knowledge but less longtermist context.
I think in theory Effective Thesis or things like it could contribute to that
After writing that, I saw you said the following, so I think we mostly agree here: āI think that it is quite hard to get non-EAs to do highly leveraged research of interest to EAs. I am not aware of many examples of it happening. (I actually canāt think of any offhand.) I think this is bottlenecked on EA having more problems that are well scoped and explained and can be handed off to less aligned people. Iām excited about work like The case for aligning narrowly superhuman models, because I think that this kind of work might make it easier to cause less aligned people to do useful stuff.ā
OTOH, in terms of examples of this happening, I think at least Luke Muehlhauser seems to believe some of this has happened for Open Philās AI governance grantmaking (though I havenāt looked into the details myself), based on this post: https://āāwww.openphilanthropy.org/āāblog/āāai-governance-grantmaking
But in any case, I donāt see the main value proposition as the direct impact of the theses Effective Thesis guides people towards or through writing. I see the main value propositions as (a) increasing the number of people who will go on to become more involved in an area, get more context on it, and do useful research in it later, and (b) making it easier for people who already have good context, priorities, etc. to find mentorship and other support
Rather than the direct value of the theses themselves
(Disclaimer: This is a quick, high-level description of my thoughts, without explaining all my related thoughts of re-reading Effective Thesisās strategy, impact assessment, etc.)