Have you directly asked these people if they’re interested (in the headhunting task)? It’s sort of a lot to just put something like this on someone’s plate (and it doesn’t feel to me like a-thing-they’ve-implicitly-signed-up-for-by-taking-their-role).
I have not. While nobody in EA leadership has weighed in on this explicitly, the general vibe I get is “we don’t need an investigation, and in any case it’d be hard to conduct and we’d need to fund it somehow.” So I’m focusing on arguing the need for an investigation, because without that the other points are moot. And my assumption is that if we build sufficient consensus on the need for an investigation, we could sort out the other issues. If leaders think an investigation is warranted but the logistical problems are insurmountable, they should make that case and then we can get to work on seeing if we can actually solve those logistical problems.
Hmm, I think perhaps I have different takes on the basic mechanisms that make sense here?
Here’s a scattershot of background takes:
It makes sense to first check for consensus
People’s sense of “need for an investigation” isn’t binary
Lots of people may think “all else equal that would be nice to have” (as they think about many things), without it ever rising to the top of their internal importance-stack
Probably people who were closer to things generally feel less need for investigation
(since they’re more likely to think they understand the basic dynamics)
If there isn’t consensus on how important this is, I don’t expect it to be easy to reach one
Since presumably one driver of different views is different people having access to different information (exactly the kind of thing an investigation might help with)
In general things go best when they’re done by people who feel the need for them
… and then given those, my position is that if you want it to happen, the right step is less like “try to create a consensus that it should happen” and more like “try to find/make an alliance of people who want it, and then make sure there’s someone taking responsibility for the specific unblocking steps”. (I guess this view is not very much about the investigation, and more like my generic take on how to make things happen.)
Honestly my view of how important it is that the whole project happen will also be somewhat mediated by whether it can find a decently strong lead and can attract some moderate amount of funding. Since these would be indicative of “people really want answers”, and I think the whole project is more valuable if that demand exists.
I have not. While nobody in EA leadership has weighed in on this explicitly, the general vibe I get is “we don’t need an investigation, and in any case it’d be hard to conduct and we’d need to fund it somehow.” So I’m focusing on arguing the need for an investigation, because without that the other points are moot. And my assumption is that if we build sufficient consensus on the need for an investigation, we could sort out the other issues. If leaders think an investigation is warranted but the logistical problems are insurmountable, they should make that case and then we can get to work on seeing if we can actually solve those logistical problems.
Hmm, I think perhaps I have different takes on the basic mechanisms that make sense here?
Here’s a scattershot of background takes:
It makes sense to first check for consensus
People’s sense of “need for an investigation” isn’t binary
Lots of people may think “all else equal that would be nice to have” (as they think about many things), without it ever rising to the top of their internal importance-stack
Probably people who were closer to things generally feel less need for investigation
(since they’re more likely to think they understand the basic dynamics)
If there isn’t consensus on how important this is, I don’t expect it to be easy to reach one
Since presumably one driver of different views is different people having access to different information (exactly the kind of thing an investigation might help with)
In general things go best when they’re done by people who feel the need for them
… and then given those, my position is that if you want it to happen, the right step is less like “try to create a consensus that it should happen” and more like “try to find/make an alliance of people who want it, and then make sure there’s someone taking responsibility for the specific unblocking steps”. (I guess this view is not very much about the investigation, and more like my generic take on how to make things happen.)
Honestly my view of how important it is that the whole project happen will also be somewhat mediated by whether it can find a decently strong lead and can attract some moderate amount of funding. Since these would be indicative of “people really want answers”, and I think the whole project is more valuable if that demand exists.