Methods work could be framed as trying to build new streetlights to search under. I would guess (to echo kbog) that building new streetlights will ultimately prove more important/be persistently neglected than expanding existing streetlights.
Expanding circle is predicated on our understanding of suffering. I expect direct inquiry into this by cognitive science to wind up having important ramifications for trying to reduce suffering.
Exploring ways of sharpening problems/problem formulations is an area I expect has not been exhausted of low hanging fruit. Much of EA itself, after all, could be seen as framing the charity problem similarly to common startup problem frames. This lead to applying a new set of tools to an existing problem that caused significant gains. This could also be framed as choice of reference class. Some examples: what does EA look like if you model the problems as bottleneck/constraint problems? What does it look like when you model it as memetic spread (and not simply EA should spread to as many as possible, but what are the 2nd order effects likely to look like given the memetic environment)? What does EA look like if you model it as a process that generates feedback loops? EA as a motivation problem? A game theory problem? You get the idea. Each frame is going to highlight different hypotheses that might be worth testing.
I think methods work is currently neglected given that we need to figure out the way the world is. The degree to which our search methods mimic existing search methods is the degree to which I expect our impact to be roughly the same as the impact generated by the existing systems.
A few thoughts:
Methods work could be framed as trying to build new streetlights to search under. I would guess (to echo kbog) that building new streetlights will ultimately prove more important/be persistently neglected than expanding existing streetlights.
Expanding circle is predicated on our understanding of suffering. I expect direct inquiry into this by cognitive science to wind up having important ramifications for trying to reduce suffering.
Exploring ways of sharpening problems/problem formulations is an area I expect has not been exhausted of low hanging fruit. Much of EA itself, after all, could be seen as framing the charity problem similarly to common startup problem frames. This lead to applying a new set of tools to an existing problem that caused significant gains. This could also be framed as choice of reference class. Some examples: what does EA look like if you model the problems as bottleneck/constraint problems? What does it look like when you model it as memetic spread (and not simply EA should spread to as many as possible, but what are the 2nd order effects likely to look like given the memetic environment)? What does EA look like if you model it as a process that generates feedback loops? EA as a motivation problem? A game theory problem? You get the idea. Each frame is going to highlight different hypotheses that might be worth testing.
I think methods work is currently neglected given that we need to figure out the way the world is. The degree to which our search methods mimic existing search methods is the degree to which I expect our impact to be roughly the same as the impact generated by the existing systems.