Funding weird stuff should just be a branding/logistics exercise. Highly exploratory stuff gets put out of sight in an R&D lab like Google X and only the successes are shown off. This is valuable to the degree that there might be valuable interventions cloaked by What You Can’t Say.
Giving away only small amounts for now is consistent with the VoI being much higher in the initial exploratory phase than any actual object level outcome. The outside view says: most charitable efforts in the past have NOT consistently ratcheted towards effectiveness, but have, if anything, ratcheted towards uselessness. Understanding why is potentially worth billions given the existence of the giving pledge and the idea that EA type memes might heavily influence a substantial chunk of that money in the coming decades.
Relevant research questions might include:
How do we form excellent research teams?
How do we divvy up the search space among teams?
What sorts of search and synthesis heuristics should be considered best practice?
This direction or frame sort of hints at a furthering of the frame of EA as a leaking into the charity world the lessons and practices of the for profit world. Can we do lean/agile charity? If so, can we find/develop excellent teams for executing on some part of the search space of charity interventions? Can we give them seed funding and check results? etc.
Funding weird stuff should just be a branding/logistics exercise. Highly exploratory stuff gets put out of sight in an R&D lab like Google X and only the successes are shown off. This is valuable to the degree that there might be valuable interventions cloaked by What You Can’t Say.
Giving away only small amounts for now is consistent with the VoI being much higher in the initial exploratory phase than any actual object level outcome. The outside view says: most charitable efforts in the past have NOT consistently ratcheted towards effectiveness, but have, if anything, ratcheted towards uselessness. Understanding why is potentially worth billions given the existence of the giving pledge and the idea that EA type memes might heavily influence a substantial chunk of that money in the coming decades.
Relevant research questions might include: How do we form excellent research teams? How do we divvy up the search space among teams? What sorts of search and synthesis heuristics should be considered best practice?
This direction or frame sort of hints at a furthering of the frame of EA as a leaking into the charity world the lessons and practices of the for profit world. Can we do lean/agile charity? If so, can we find/develop excellent teams for executing on some part of the search space of charity interventions? Can we give them seed funding and check results? etc.