Thank you. Your comment has caused me to change my mind somewhat. In particular, I am now inclined to believe that getting people to actually read the material is, for a significant fraction of these people, a more serious challenge than I previously assumed. And if CFAR’s goal is to selectively target folks concerned with x-risk, the benefits of insuring that this small, select group learn the material well may justify the workshop format, with its associated costs.
I would still like to see more empirical research conducted on this, so that decisions that involve the allocation of hundreds of thousands of EA dollars per year rest on firmer ground than speculative reasoning. At the current margin, I’d be surprised if a dollar given to CFAR to do object-level work achieves more than a dollar spent in uncovering “organizational crucial considerations”—that is, information with the potential to induce a major shift in the organization’s direction or priority. (Note that I think this is true of some other EA orgs, too. For example, I believe that 80k should be using randomization to test the impact of their coaching sessions.)
Thank you. Your comment has caused me to change my mind somewhat. In particular, I am now inclined to believe that getting people to actually read the material is, for a significant fraction of these people, a more serious challenge than I previously assumed. And if CFAR’s goal is to selectively target folks concerned with x-risk, the benefits of insuring that this small, select group learn the material well may justify the workshop format, with its associated costs.
I would still like to see more empirical research conducted on this, so that decisions that involve the allocation of hundreds of thousands of EA dollars per year rest on firmer ground than speculative reasoning. At the current margin, I’d be surprised if a dollar given to CFAR to do object-level work achieves more than a dollar spent in uncovering “organizational crucial considerations”—that is, information with the potential to induce a major shift in the organization’s direction or priority. (Note that I think this is true of some other EA orgs, too. For example, I believe that 80k should be using randomization to test the impact of their coaching sessions.)