I would love to see more of the theories of change that researchers in EA have for their own career! I’m particularly interested to see them in Global Priorities Research as its done at GPI (because I find that both extremely interesting and I’m very uncertain how useful it is apart from field-building).
Two main reasons:
It’s not easy at all (in my experience) to figure out which claims are actually decision relevant in major ways. Seeing these theories of change might make it much easier for junior researchers to develop a “taste” for which research directions are tractable and important.
Publishing their theories of change would allow researchers to get more feedback on their project and perhaps realise earlier why it’s not that important. (This point of course applies not only to researchers). As a result of the second point, it seems less likely that EA researchers get off-track following intellectual curiosities rather than what’s most important (which I suspect researchers, in general, are prone to)
(Hastily written, sry)
I would love to see more of the theories of change that researchers in EA have for their own career! I’m particularly interested to see them in Global Priorities Research as its done at GPI (because I find that both extremely interesting and I’m very uncertain how useful it is apart from field-building).
Two main reasons:
It’s not easy at all (in my experience) to figure out which claims are actually decision relevant in major ways. Seeing these theories of change might make it much easier for junior researchers to develop a “taste” for which research directions are tractable and important.
Publishing their theories of change would allow researchers to get more feedback on their project and perhaps realise earlier why it’s not that important. (This point of course applies not only to researchers). As a result of the second point, it seems less likely that EA researchers get off-track following intellectual curiosities rather than what’s most important (which I suspect researchers, in general, are prone to)