I did try it on some occasions with people who wanted to do research similar to the kind of research that I do. I think that it saved me less time than the time it took me to think of good questions to outsource and explain everything, and so on. This might be partly because there is a skill in outsourcing that I haven’t mastered yet. I don’t know if it helped anyone to decide whether they should pursue this type of career. If it did, then it was very much worth it.
One way I used volunteers (and friends whom I forced to volunteer) productively was making them read texts that I wrote and asking to comment aloud (not in writing) on everything that is at least slightly unclear. Then I didn’t explain, but rewrote that part, and asked them to read again and asked if they understand it now. I found that this is important for texts that contain some complicated ideas/reasoning. E.g., it was very useful for the explanation of optimizer’s curse and other things in this article. Not important for simple texts.
I also tried organizing some brainstorming sessions with members of the EA community. It was a bit useful, though I’m not sure it was wroth it (despite great participants), mostly because I get stressed about running events and then overprepare. And also because it would have taken too much time to explain all the relevant context in which I needed ideas. I think that in the right hands and the right situation, this is a tool that could be used productively though.
We’ve had some experience working with volunteers. In the past, when we had less operational support than we do now, we found it challenging to manage and monitor volunteers but we think it’s something that we’re better placed to handle now so may explore again in the coming years, though we are generally hesitant about depending on free labor.
We’ve not really had experience publicly outsourcing questions to the EA community, but we regularly consult wider EA communities for input on questions we are working on. Finally, and I’m not sure this is what you meant, but we’ve also partnered with Metaculus on some forecasting questions.
Have you had experience with using volunteers or outsourcing questions to the broad EA community? How was it?
I did try it on some occasions with people who wanted to do research similar to the kind of research that I do. I think that it saved me less time than the time it took me to think of good questions to outsource and explain everything, and so on. This might be partly because there is a skill in outsourcing that I haven’t mastered yet. I don’t know if it helped anyone to decide whether they should pursue this type of career. If it did, then it was very much worth it.
One way I used volunteers (and friends whom I forced to volunteer) productively was making them read texts that I wrote and asking to comment aloud (not in writing) on everything that is at least slightly unclear. Then I didn’t explain, but rewrote that part, and asked them to read again and asked if they understand it now. I found that this is important for texts that contain some complicated ideas/reasoning. E.g., it was very useful for the explanation of optimizer’s curse and other things in this article. Not important for simple texts.
I also tried organizing some brainstorming sessions with members of the EA community. It was a bit useful, though I’m not sure it was wroth it (despite great participants), mostly because I get stressed about running events and then overprepare. And also because it would have taken too much time to explain all the relevant context in which I needed ideas. I think that in the right hands and the right situation, this is a tool that could be used productively though.
Hey Edo, thanks for the question!
We’ve had some experience working with volunteers. In the past, when we had less operational support than we do now, we found it challenging to manage and monitor volunteers but we think it’s something that we’re better placed to handle now so may explore again in the coming years, though we are generally hesitant about depending on free labor.
We’ve not really had experience publicly outsourcing questions to the EA community, but we regularly consult wider EA communities for input on questions we are working on. Finally, and I’m not sure this is what you meant, but we’ve also partnered with Metaculus on some forecasting questions.