I get the impression that some parts of CSER are fairly valuable, whereas others are essentially dead weight. E.g., if I imagine ranking in pairs all the work referenced in your presentation, my impression is that value would range 2+ orders of magnitude between the most valuable and the least valuable.
Is that also your impression? Even if not, how possible is it to fund some parts of CSER, but not others?
Thanks Nuño! I don’t think I’ve got well thought out views on relative importance or rankings of these work streams; I’m mostly focused on understanding scenarios in which my own work might be more or less impactful (I also should note that if some lines of research mentioned here seem much more impactful, that may be more a result of me being more familiar with them, and being able to give a more detailed account of what the research is trying to get at / what threat models and policy goals it is connected to).
On your second question, as with other academic institutes, I believe it’s actually both doable and common for donors or funders to support some of CSER’s themes or lines of work but not others. Some institutional funders (e.g. for large academic grants) will often focus on particular themes or risks (rather than e.g. ‘X-risk’ as a general class), and therefore want to ensure their funding is going to just that work. The same has been the case for individual donations, to support certain projects we’ve done, I think.
[ED: -- see link to CSER donation form. Admittedly, this web form doesn’t clearly allow you to specify different lines of work to support, but in practice this could be arranged in a bespoke way—by sending an email to director@cser.cam.ac.uk indicating what area of work one would want to support.]
I get the impression that some parts of CSER are fairly valuable, whereas others are essentially dead weight. E.g., if I imagine ranking in pairs all the work referenced in your presentation, my impression is that value would range 2+ orders of magnitude between the most valuable and the least valuable.
Is that also your impression? Even if not, how possible is it to fund some parts of CSER, but not others?
Thanks Nuño! I don’t think I’ve got well thought out views on relative importance or rankings of these work streams; I’m mostly focused on understanding scenarios in which my own work might be more or less impactful (I also should note that if some lines of research mentioned here seem much more impactful, that may be more a result of me being more familiar with them, and being able to give a more detailed account of what the research is trying to get at / what threat models and policy goals it is connected to).
On your second question, as with other academic institutes, I believe it’s actually both doable and common for donors or funders to support some of CSER’s themes or lines of work but not others. Some institutional funders (e.g. for large academic grants) will often focus on particular themes or risks (rather than e.g. ‘X-risk’ as a general class), and therefore want to ensure their funding is going to just that work. The same has been the case for individual donations, to support certain projects we’ve done, I think.
[ED: -- see link to CSER donation form. Admittedly, this web form doesn’t clearly allow you to specify different lines of work to support, but in practice this could be arranged in a bespoke way—by sending an email to director@cser.cam.ac.uk indicating what area of work one would want to support.]
Thanks Matthijs