I still think this was a useful post. It’s one of many posts of mine that seem like they were somewhat obvious low-hanging fruit that other people could’ve plucked too; more thoughts on that in other self-reviews here and here.
That said, I also think that, at least as far as I’m aware, this post has been less impactful and less used than I’d have guessed. I’m not actually aware of any instances where I know for sure that someone used this post to pick a research project and then followed it through to completion. I am aware of two other well-received and high-quality-seeming research question collection posts that were substantially influenced by this one (by 80k and by Lizka), but I’m also not aware of clear signs of impact from those either. This seems kinda surprising and sad.
I wrote some thoughts on why that might’ve happened, and what it might suggest we need to do to improve the EA-aligned research pipeline, in this sequence and in a draft “Proposal: A central, editable database to help people choose and do research projects”. But I no longer plan to publish the latter draft or to strongly encourage people to work on that idea. (I can expand on why if people are interested.) I’m now focused more on other ways to improve the EA-aligned research pipeline, like causing there to be more available high-quality mentorship via research training programs, scaling EA research orgs, and sharing tips and resources on how to do research and how to do management and stuff.
I still think this was a useful post. It’s one of many posts of mine that seem like they were somewhat obvious low-hanging fruit that other people could’ve plucked too; more thoughts on that in other self-reviews here and here.
That said, I also think that, at least as far as I’m aware, this post has been less impactful and less used than I’d have guessed. I’m not actually aware of any instances where I know for sure that someone used this post to pick a research project and then followed it through to completion. I am aware of two other well-received and high-quality-seeming research question collection posts that were substantially influenced by this one (by 80k and by Lizka), but I’m also not aware of clear signs of impact from those either. This seems kinda surprising and sad.
I wrote some thoughts on why that might’ve happened, and what it might suggest we need to do to improve the EA-aligned research pipeline, in this sequence and in a draft “Proposal: A central, editable database to help people choose and do research projects”. But I no longer plan to publish the latter draft or to strongly encourage people to work on that idea. (I can expand on why if people are interested.) I’m now focused more on other ways to improve the EA-aligned research pipeline, like causing there to be more available high-quality mentorship via research training programs, scaling EA research orgs, and sharing tips and resources on how to do research and how to do management and stuff.