Thanks for the aggregate position summary! I’d be interested to hear more about the motivation behind that wish, as it seems likely to me that doing shallow investigations of very speculative causes would actually be the comparative advantage of people who aren’t employed at existing EA organizations. I’m especially curious given the high probability that people assigned to the existence of a Cause X that should be getting so much resources. It seems like having people who don’t work at existing EA organizations (and are thus relatively unaffected by existing blind spots) do shallow investigations of very speculative causes would be just the thing for discovering Cause X.
For a while now I’ve been thinking that the crowdsourcing of alternate perspectives (“breadth-first” rather than “depth-first” exploration of idea space) is one of the internet’s greatest strengths. (I also suspect “breadth-first” idea exploration is underrated in general.) On the flip side, I’d say one of the internet’s greatest weaknesses is the ease with which disagreements become unnecessarily dramatic. So I think if someone was to do a meta-analysis of recent literature on, say, whether remittances are actually good for developing economies in the long run (critiquing GiveDirectly—btw, I couldn’t find any reference to academic research on the impact of remittances on Givewell’s current GiveDirectly profile—maybe they just didn’t think to look it up—case study in the value of an alternate perspective?), or whether usage of malaria bed nets for fishing is increasing or not (critiquing AMF), there’s a sense in which we’d be playing against the strengths of the medium. Anyway, if organizations wanted critical feedback on their work, they could easily request that critical feedback publicly (solicited critical feedback is less likely to cause drama / bad feelings that unsolicited critical feedback), or even offer cash prizes for best critiques, and I see few cases of organizations doing that.
Maybe part of what’s going on is that shallow investigations of very speculative causes only rarely amount to something? See this previous comment of mine for more discussion.
Thanks for the aggregate position summary! I’d be interested to hear more about the motivation behind that wish, as it seems likely to me that doing shallow investigations of very speculative causes would actually be the comparative advantage of people who aren’t employed at existing EA organizations. I’m especially curious given the high probability that people assigned to the existence of a Cause X that should be getting so much resources. It seems like having people who don’t work at existing EA organizations (and are thus relatively unaffected by existing blind spots) do shallow investigations of very speculative causes would be just the thing for discovering Cause X.
For a while now I’ve been thinking that the crowdsourcing of alternate perspectives (“breadth-first” rather than “depth-first” exploration of idea space) is one of the internet’s greatest strengths. (I also suspect “breadth-first” idea exploration is underrated in general.) On the flip side, I’d say one of the internet’s greatest weaknesses is the ease with which disagreements become unnecessarily dramatic. So I think if someone was to do a meta-analysis of recent literature on, say, whether remittances are actually good for developing economies in the long run (critiquing GiveDirectly—btw, I couldn’t find any reference to academic research on the impact of remittances on Givewell’s current GiveDirectly profile—maybe they just didn’t think to look it up—case study in the value of an alternate perspective?), or whether usage of malaria bed nets for fishing is increasing or not (critiquing AMF), there’s a sense in which we’d be playing against the strengths of the medium. Anyway, if organizations wanted critical feedback on their work, they could easily request that critical feedback publicly (solicited critical feedback is less likely to cause drama / bad feelings that unsolicited critical feedback), or even offer cash prizes for best critiques, and I see few cases of organizations doing that.
Maybe part of what’s going on is that shallow investigations of very speculative causes only rarely amount to something? See this previous comment of mine for more discussion.