Therefore, for most of this year I’ve seen myself as more in “explore” than “exploit” mode.
As I gradually move more towards the “exploit” end of that continuum, I’d guess that:
I’ll have less need of feedback that just gives me an overall sense of whether I’m a good fit for X
The value of feedback that improves a given piece of work (e.g., points out mistakes or angles that should be explored more or clarified) will rise, because the direct value of the individual pieces of work I’m doing is higher
This reminds me of some education researchers emphasising that the purpose of feedback in the context of high schools is to improve the student, not the piece of work. This makes sense, because the essay that 15 year old wrote isn’t going to affect any important decisions, but the 15 year old may later do useful things, and has a lot to learn in order to do so.
But in other contexts, a given piece of writing may be likely to influence important decisions, and the writer may already be more experienced. In those cases, it might make sense for feedback to focus on improving the piece of writing rather than the writing.
It seems worth emphasising here that, before 2020:
I’d only done ~0.5FTE years of research before 2020, and it was in an area and methodology that’s not very relevant to what I’m doing now
I hadn’t started my “EA-aligned career”
(More on this in this comment)
Therefore, for most of this year I’ve seen myself as more in “explore” than “exploit” mode.
As I gradually move more towards the “exploit” end of that continuum, I’d guess that:
I’ll have less need of feedback that just gives me an overall sense of whether I’m a good fit for X
The value of feedback that improves a given piece of work (e.g., points out mistakes or angles that should be explored more or clarified) will rise, because the direct value of the individual pieces of work I’m doing is higher
This reminds me of some education researchers emphasising that the purpose of feedback in the context of high schools is to improve the student, not the piece of work. This makes sense, because the essay that 15 year old wrote isn’t going to affect any important decisions, but the 15 year old may later do useful things, and has a lot to learn in order to do so.
But in other contexts, a given piece of writing may be likely to influence important decisions, and the writer may already be more experienced. In those cases, it might make sense for feedback to focus on improving the piece of writing rather than the writing.