Here are my thoughts on discovering, writing, and/or promoting positive case studies (moved to a comment since I tentatively think this intervention would be less valuable than the others):
I know of some cases (in addition to me) of people who are now doing impactful EA-aligned research and got to that point partly via something related to one of the interventions discussed elsewhere in this post or sequence
E.g., via doing independent research/writing published on the EA Forum, choosing a thesis and getting mentored via Effective Thesis, or doing a research training program
But I mostly know these cases because I’m now well-networked in EA, rather than because of easily findable public writeups. And I’d also guess that there are many more cases that I’m not aware of.
This could cause people to underestimate how achievable this is, underestimate the value of these “interventions” (e.g., writing on the Forum), or simply have a harder time motivating themselves to try (since success doesn’t feel like a real possibility)
So maybe it’d be valuable to simply:
Find and collect a larger set of positive case studies
Write many of them up (or record podcasts or videos or whatever)
Promote those writeups (or whatever) in such a way that they’ll be found by the people who’d benefit from them
E.g., so that the relevant people would stumble upon these case studies, or so that the people they’d reach out to (e.g., community-builders offering careers advice) would know to mention these case studies
This process could also provide useful data on which methods of entering and progressing through the EA-aligned research pipeline have been used, how successful the methods have been, how they could be supported, etc.^[Though I think the data collection that would be best for directly encouraging and guiding aspiring/junior researchers would differ from that which is best for guiding efforts to improve the pipeline.]
I haven’t thought much about how best to do this, who would be best placed to do it, how valuable it’d be, or what the most similar existing things are
Obviously there are already some things like case studies of successful-seeming EA-aligned careers, including research ones.
Maybe WANBAM have done something similar specifically for women, trans people of any gender, and non-binary people?
Obvious downside risk: Focusing solely on positive case studies could mislead people about how easy these pathways are and cause them to overly focus on pursuing research roles or roles at explicitly EA orgs
Here are my thoughts on discovering, writing, and/or promoting positive case studies (moved to a comment since I tentatively think this intervention would be less valuable than the others):
I know of some cases (in addition to me) of people who are now doing impactful EA-aligned research and got to that point partly via something related to one of the interventions discussed elsewhere in this post or sequence
E.g., via doing independent research/writing published on the EA Forum, choosing a thesis and getting mentored via Effective Thesis, or doing a research training program
But I mostly know these cases because I’m now well-networked in EA, rather than because of easily findable public writeups. And I’d also guess that there are many more cases that I’m not aware of.
This could cause people to underestimate how achievable this is, underestimate the value of these “interventions” (e.g., writing on the Forum), or simply have a harder time motivating themselves to try (since success doesn’t feel like a real possibility)
So maybe it’d be valuable to simply:
Find and collect a larger set of positive case studies
Write many of them up (or record podcasts or videos or whatever)
Promote those writeups (or whatever) in such a way that they’ll be found by the people who’d benefit from them
E.g., so that the relevant people would stumble upon these case studies, or so that the people they’d reach out to (e.g., community-builders offering careers advice) would know to mention these case studies
This process could also provide useful data on which methods of entering and progressing through the EA-aligned research pipeline have been used, how successful the methods have been, how they could be supported, etc.^[Though I think the data collection that would be best for directly encouraging and guiding aspiring/junior researchers would differ from that which is best for guiding efforts to improve the pipeline.]
I haven’t thought much about how best to do this, who would be best placed to do it, how valuable it’d be, or what the most similar existing things are
Obviously there are already some things like case studies of successful-seeming EA-aligned careers, including research ones.
Maybe WANBAM have done something similar specifically for women, trans people of any gender, and non-binary people?
Obvious downside risk: Focusing solely on positive case studies could mislead people about how easy these pathways are and cause them to overly focus on pursuing research roles or roles at explicitly EA orgs