To respond more concretely to the “due diligence” vs. unstructured discussion section, which I think refers to some discussion me and Jan had on the Google doc he shared:
I think the thing I would like to see is something that is just a bit closer towards structured discussion than what we currently have on the forum. I think there doesn’t currently exist anything like an “EA Forum Project discussion thread” and in particular not one that has any kind of process like
“One suggestion for a project per top-level comment. If you are interested in working on a project, I will edit the top-level post to reflect that you are interested in working on it. If you want to leave a comment anonymously, please use this form.”
I think adding a tiny bit of process like this will cause there to be valuable discussion, will actually be better at causing good projects to be funded and for teams to start working on it, and is much less effort to set up than the process you are proposing here.
I am also worried that this process, even though it is already 7 stages long and involves at least 10 people, only covers less than half of the actual pipeline towards causing people to work on projects. I know that you want to explicitly separate the evaluation of projects from the evaluation of teams working on those project, but I don’t think you can easily do that.
I think 90% of the time whether a project is good or bad depends on the team that wants to work on it, which is something that you strongly see reflected in the startup and investment world. It’s extremely rare for a VC to fund or even evaluate a project without knowing what team is working on it, and I think you will find that any evaluation that doesn’t include the part of matching up the teams with the projects will find that that part will quickly block any progress on this.
I share Habryka’s concern for the complexity of the project; each step clearly has a useful purpose, but it’s still the case that adding more steps to a process will tend to make it harder to finish that process in a reasonable amount of time. I think this system could work, but I also like the idea of running a quick, informal test of a simpler system to see what happens.
Habryka, if you create the “discussion thread” you’ve referenced here, I will commit to leaving at least one comment on every project idea; this seems like a really good way to test the capabilities of the Forum as a place where projects can be evaluated.
(It would be nice if participants shared a Google Doc or something similar for each of their ideas, since leaving in-line comments is much better than writing a long comment with many different points, but I’m not sure about the best way to turn “comments on a doc” into something that’s also visible on the Forum.)
I am currently quite busy, so only 50% on me finding the time to do it, but I will seriously look into making the time for this. I am also happy to chat to anyone else who wants to do this, and help out both with setting it up, and to participate in the thread.
1. there may be projects, mostly in long-term, x-risk, meta- and outreach spaces, which are very negative, but not in an obvious way
2. there may be ideas, mostly in long-term and x-risk, which are infohazard
The problem with 1. is most of the EV can be caused by just one project, with large negative impact, where the downside is not obvious to notice.
It seems to me standard startup thinking does not apply here, because startups generally can not go way bellow zero.
I also do not trust arbitrary set of forum users to handle this well.
Overall I believe the very lightweight unstructured processes are trading some gain in speed and convenience in most cases for some decreased robustness in worst cases.
In general I would feel much better if the simple system you want to try would avoid projects in long-term, x-risk, meta-, outreach, localization, and “searching for cause X” areas.
To respond more concretely to the “due diligence” vs. unstructured discussion section, which I think refers to some discussion me and Jan had on the Google doc he shared:
I think the thing I would like to see is something that is just a bit closer towards structured discussion than what we currently have on the forum. I think there doesn’t currently exist anything like an “EA Forum Project discussion thread” and in particular not one that has any kind of process like
“One suggestion for a project per top-level comment. If you are interested in working on a project, I will edit the top-level post to reflect that you are interested in working on it. If you want to leave a comment anonymously, please use this form.”
I think adding a tiny bit of process like this will cause there to be valuable discussion, will actually be better at causing good projects to be funded and for teams to start working on it, and is much less effort to set up than the process you are proposing here.
I am also worried that this process, even though it is already 7 stages long and involves at least 10 people, only covers less than half of the actual pipeline towards causing people to work on projects. I know that you want to explicitly separate the evaluation of projects from the evaluation of teams working on those project, but I don’t think you can easily do that.
I think 90% of the time whether a project is good or bad depends on the team that wants to work on it, which is something that you strongly see reflected in the startup and investment world. It’s extremely rare for a VC to fund or even evaluate a project without knowing what team is working on it, and I think you will find that any evaluation that doesn’t include the part of matching up the teams with the projects will find that that part will quickly block any progress on this.
I share Habryka’s concern for the complexity of the project; each step clearly has a useful purpose, but it’s still the case that adding more steps to a process will tend to make it harder to finish that process in a reasonable amount of time. I think this system could work, but I also like the idea of running a quick, informal test of a simpler system to see what happens.
Habryka, if you create the “discussion thread” you’ve referenced here, I will commit to leaving at least one comment on every project idea; this seems like a really good way to test the capabilities of the Forum as a place where projects can be evaluated.
(It would be nice if participants shared a Google Doc or something similar for each of their ideas, since leaving in-line comments is much better than writing a long comment with many different points, but I’m not sure about the best way to turn “comments on a doc” into something that’s also visible on the Forum.)
I am currently quite busy, so only 50% on me finding the time to do it, but I will seriously look into making the time for this. I am also happy to chat to anyone else who wants to do this, and help out both with setting it up, and to participate in the thread.
FWIW, part of my motivation for the design, was
1. there may be projects, mostly in long-term, x-risk, meta- and outreach spaces, which are very negative, but not in an obvious way
2. there may be ideas, mostly in long-term and x-risk, which are infohazard
The problem with 1. is most of the EV can be caused by just one project, with large negative impact, where the downside is not obvious to notice.
It seems to me standard startup thinking does not apply here, because startups generally can not go way bellow zero.
I also do not trust arbitrary set of forum users to handle this well.
Overall I believe the very lightweight unstructured processes are trading some gain in speed and convenience in most cases for some decreased robustness in worst cases.
In general I would feel much better if the simple system you want to try would avoid projects in long-term, x-risk, meta-, outreach, localization, and “searching for cause X” areas.