I’d be interested in more specific private feedback on which projects you don’t think would not be useful, or ideas for other things you think people with those skill sets could do that would be more useful. Cross-checking you intuitions with others would be good—for each of these projects, someone else working actively in biosecurity thought the project would be useful. And I think that it’s easy to have a narrow view of what is useful—I wouldn’t have thought people would want many of these answers until they explained that they did, and often why.
That said, if someone is interested in working directly on things that are substantially important, and has a track record for doing so, there are people who want to hire them already, and they have plenty of opportunity for collaboration with biosecurity EAs. I didn’t, and don’t, think that we need to provide that set of people lists of things to work on—and I would agree that this isn’t the set of highest priority tasks, many of which require funding and support, or have other reasons that people cannot pick them up as side projects. This list is geared towards things that people with a diverse skill set can do as an initial step, which active biosecurity researchers have said would show them someone is capable of doing useful research, while avoiding information hazards.
Makes sense- possibly I’d change my mind about many of these after hearing the motivation. The second half of your response make me believe that we actually don’t disagree that much RE a lot of the projects in here being good substantially or primarily because they could help establish a research track record or be a good learning opportunity.
I’d be interested in more specific private feedback on which projects you don’t think would not be useful, or ideas for other things you think people with those skill sets could do that would be more useful. Cross-checking you intuitions with others would be good—for each of these projects, someone else working actively in biosecurity thought the project would be useful. And I think that it’s easy to have a narrow view of what is useful—I wouldn’t have thought people would want many of these answers until they explained that they did, and often why.
That said, if someone is interested in working directly on things that are substantially important, and has a track record for doing so, there are people who want to hire them already, and they have plenty of opportunity for collaboration with biosecurity EAs. I didn’t, and don’t, think that we need to provide that set of people lists of things to work on—and I would agree that this isn’t the set of highest priority tasks, many of which require funding and support, or have other reasons that people cannot pick them up as side projects. This list is geared towards things that people with a diverse skill set can do as an initial step, which active biosecurity researchers have said would show them someone is capable of doing useful research, while avoiding information hazards.
Makes sense- possibly I’d change my mind about many of these after hearing the motivation. The second half of your response make me believe that we actually don’t disagree that much RE a lot of the projects in here being good substantially or primarily because they could help establish a research track record or be a good learning opportunity.
Happy to chat more about this.