We have published a summary of the survey, but we only plan on publishing deeper reports on the top ideas we recommend. Due to the lack of preexisting research, we would be less confident in the robustness of the shallow reports. We think it’s quite likely we will find exciting-sounding but ultimately less impactful ideas, and do not want people to found charities based on our reports on non-recommended areas.
I think it’d be reasonable to not publish the shallow reports because of associated time costs, but I’m not sure I really see the logic for not posting due to downside risk.
I think you could just have strong caveats, clear epistemic statuses, reasoning transparency, etc.
And then to a decent extent, you can trust readers to update their beliefs and behaviours appropriately.
If they update wildly inappropriately, this may also suggest what they would’ve done otherwise isn’t great either (maybe they’re just not great at choosing careers), so the “lost impact” is lower (though actual downsides caused by what they do could still be important).
I don’t think people will found charities at the drop of a hat—that’s a big commitment, and essentially requires funding or large savings, so they’ll presumably want and have to talk to people for advice, funding, hires, etc.
Your shallow reports might also suggest why an idea doesn’t seem promising, and there’s at least some chance someone else would’ve spent time thinking about the idea themselves later.
Again, I’m not necessarily advocating you try to publish those shallow reports, nor even necessarily saying I’d read them. I’m just not sure I understand/buy the argument that publication would be net negative due to the chance that (a) the idea is bad, (b) you fail to realise or convey this, and (c) someone actually takes the big step of founding a charity due to this, and this is notably worse than what they would’ve done otherwise.
I think it’d be reasonable to not publish the shallow reports because of associated time costs, but I’m not sure I really see the logic for not posting due to downside risk.
I think you could just have strong caveats, clear epistemic statuses, reasoning transparency, etc.
And then to a decent extent, you can trust readers to update their beliefs and behaviours appropriately.
If they update wildly inappropriately, this may also suggest what they would’ve done otherwise isn’t great either (maybe they’re just not great at choosing careers), so the “lost impact” is lower (though actual downsides caused by what they do could still be important).
I don’t think people will found charities at the drop of a hat—that’s a big commitment, and essentially requires funding or large savings, so they’ll presumably want and have to talk to people for advice, funding, hires, etc.
Your shallow reports might also suggest why an idea doesn’t seem promising, and there’s at least some chance someone else would’ve spent time thinking about the idea themselves later.
Again, I’m not necessarily advocating you try to publish those shallow reports, nor even necessarily saying I’d read them. I’m just not sure I understand/buy the argument that publication would be net negative due to the chance that (a) the idea is bad, (b) you fail to realise or convey this, and (c) someone actually takes the big step of founding a charity due to this, and this is notably worse than what they would’ve done otherwise.