What are the biggest mistakes Rethink Priorities did?
I can’t speak for the entire organization, but I can talk about what I see as my biggest mistakes since I started working at Rethink Priorities:
Writing articles about interventions I think are promising and thinking that my work is done once the article is published. Examples are baitfish (see the comment above), fish stocking, rodents farmed for pet snake food. The way I see things now, if I think that something should be done, I should express that opinion very clearly and with fewer caveats, find funders who want to fund it, find activists that want to do it, and connect them. Or something like that. And that is the kind of work I am doing at the moment, even though I think I am much better at writing articles than at doing this.
Avoiding expressing opinions too much. It’s related to the point above. I think that in the past I was too afraid of writing something that could later turn out to be wrong. Hence, I wrote articles in such a way that sometimes the reader could not even know what I think about a problem I am writing about, how important I think it is in the context of other things, etc. I wanted decision makers to read my articles and form their own opinions based on what I said. I now think that this is not ideal because decision makers may not have the time to form nuanced opinions based on subtle details in my long articles. But someone has to form actionable opinions, and it is me who has the context and the time for that. So I want to try to write more articles of the “This is what I think you should do and I’m going to explain why” type, rather than the “Here is a 40 page summary of everything I’ve ever read on this topic” type. I sometimes want to write articles of the former type because then my managers, funders and myself can all clearly see what I’ve been working on for all this time. But my end goal is making an impact so I try to not think about that too much. Note that if I pledged to only ever write articles that are purely of the former kind, I might end up not writing a single paragraph all year. I don’t think I should go that far.
Spending too much time on finishing articles that I know won’t have that much impact. In some cases, it’s better to just drop them, admit to yourself that you wasted some time, and move on to the next project. That said, there were some articles that I had strongly considered abandoning, but in the end I was happy I finished them.
Spending any time on details that I know right away won’t be that important. There are some examples of this in Estimates of global captive vertebrate numbers article. Did I really need to write about pets, civet farming, and other relatively minor problems that I know effective altruists won’t work on? I guess I wanted the list to be complete, but I don’t know why. It wasted not only my time, but also the time and the attention of the readers.
Being too frugal. In the beginning of working at Rethink Priorities, I wanted to either take a low salary, or spend as little money as I can and donate the rest. But the problems that it caused made me less productive and possibly decreased my impact. Now I allow myself to spend more and I think I’m better off because of it.
Not doing more to address some of my productivity problems, especially negative self-talk about myself and my work. Almost every day I hate myself for not doing enough work. It is exhausting, and it tires me out more quickly and hence I become even less productive. I still haven’t found a good way to deal with it. I tried therapy multiple times but I never emphasized this specific issue so that is on my to-do list. I also want to try more meditation, maybe that can help.
Saulius, just wanted to comment that while I haven’t devoted the time to read in detail most of your research, I have noticed and greatly appreciated that you have contributed a LOT of useful knowledge to EAA over the past several years. Yours is a name I’ve recognized in EAA since its early days. I am glad that you’re shifting to express your opinions more strongly so that more action can be taken on all of the wonderful research you’ve contributed. I’ve gotten the sense that you take these issues very seriously, are super motivated to address them, and don’t get pulled into more trivial things, and I greatly admire and am inspired by you for that.
Re (6), I hope that you can be proud of what you’ve done and decrease your negative self-talk. Take care of yourself. I’d be curious to hear if meditation ends up helping out with this.
I can’t speak for the entire organization, but I can talk about what I see as my biggest mistakes since I started working at Rethink Priorities:
Writing articles about interventions I think are promising and thinking that my work is done once the article is published. Examples are baitfish (see the comment above), fish stocking, rodents farmed for pet snake food. The way I see things now, if I think that something should be done, I should express that opinion very clearly and with fewer caveats, find funders who want to fund it, find activists that want to do it, and connect them. Or something like that. And that is the kind of work I am doing at the moment, even though I think I am much better at writing articles than at doing this.
Avoiding expressing opinions too much. It’s related to the point above. I think that in the past I was too afraid of writing something that could later turn out to be wrong. Hence, I wrote articles in such a way that sometimes the reader could not even know what I think about a problem I am writing about, how important I think it is in the context of other things, etc. I wanted decision makers to read my articles and form their own opinions based on what I said. I now think that this is not ideal because decision makers may not have the time to form nuanced opinions based on subtle details in my long articles. But someone has to form actionable opinions, and it is me who has the context and the time for that. So I want to try to write more articles of the “This is what I think you should do and I’m going to explain why” type, rather than the “Here is a 40 page summary of everything I’ve ever read on this topic” type. I sometimes want to write articles of the former type because then my managers, funders and myself can all clearly see what I’ve been working on for all this time. But my end goal is making an impact so I try to not think about that too much. Note that if I pledged to only ever write articles that are purely of the former kind, I might end up not writing a single paragraph all year. I don’t think I should go that far.
Spending too much time on finishing articles that I know won’t have that much impact. In some cases, it’s better to just drop them, admit to yourself that you wasted some time, and move on to the next project. That said, there were some articles that I had strongly considered abandoning, but in the end I was happy I finished them.
Spending any time on details that I know right away won’t be that important. There are some examples of this in Estimates of global captive vertebrate numbers article. Did I really need to write about pets, civet farming, and other relatively minor problems that I know effective altruists won’t work on? I guess I wanted the list to be complete, but I don’t know why. It wasted not only my time, but also the time and the attention of the readers.
Being too frugal. In the beginning of working at Rethink Priorities, I wanted to either take a low salary, or spend as little money as I can and donate the rest. But the problems that it caused made me less productive and possibly decreased my impact. Now I allow myself to spend more and I think I’m better off because of it.
Not doing more to address some of my productivity problems, especially negative self-talk about myself and my work. Almost every day I hate myself for not doing enough work. It is exhausting, and it tires me out more quickly and hence I become even less productive. I still haven’t found a good way to deal with it. I tried therapy multiple times but I never emphasized this specific issue so that is on my to-do list. I also want to try more meditation, maybe that can help.
Saulius, just wanted to comment that while I haven’t devoted the time to read in detail most of your research, I have noticed and greatly appreciated that you have contributed a LOT of useful knowledge to EAA over the past several years. Yours is a name I’ve recognized in EAA since its early days. I am glad that you’re shifting to express your opinions more strongly so that more action can be taken on all of the wonderful research you’ve contributed. I’ve gotten the sense that you take these issues very seriously, are super motivated to address them, and don’t get pulled into more trivial things, and I greatly admire and am inspired by you for that.
Re (6), I hope that you can be proud of what you’ve done and decrease your negative self-talk. Take care of yourself. I’d be curious to hear if meditation ends up helping out with this.
I found this response insightful and feel like it echoes mistakes I’ve made as well; really appreciate you writing it.