Iāve heard many people express the view that in EA, and perhaps especially in longtermism:
There are a lot of people who could potentially be good/āgreat researchers, but have limited experience thus far
There is too little capacity to mentor and manage these people
This is partly because the best candidates for doing that are also able to do very valuable research themselves, or other things like outreach, so the opportunity costs for them are very high
This results in an untapped pool of potential talent, and also makes it harder to fix this problem itself, because it limits the pipeline of new mentors and managers as well
So itād be highly valuable for more people to build skills in research as well as in mentorship/āmanagement, to address this problem
And maybe this pushes in favour of starting oneās research career outside of explicitly EA orgs, e.g. in academia, to draw on the mentorship capacity there
1. Does all of those claims seem true to you?
2. If so, do you expect this to remain true for a long time, or do you think weāre already moving rapidly towards fixing it? (E.g., maybe there are a lot of people already āin the pipelineā, reducing the need for new people to enter it.)
3. Do you think there are other ways to potentially address this problem (if it exists) that deserve more attention or that I didnāt mention above?
4. Do you think RSP, or things like it, are especially good ways to address this problem (if it exists)?
I donāt think this is centrally about āresearchersā, but about āpeople-who-are-decent-at-working-out-what-to-do-amongst-the-innumerable-possibilitiesā
This is a class we need more of in EA (and particularly longtermist EA); research is one of the applications of the (major) applications of such people, but far from the only one
Mentorship/āmanagement is more like a thousand small things than two big things
Often people will be better off learning from multiple strong mentors than one, because theyāll be good at different subcomponents
There are very substantial reasons beyond this to spend part of oneās (research) career outside of explicitly EA orgs, particularly if you get an opportunity to work with outstanding people
Such as:
You can better learn the specialist knowledge belonging to the relevant domain by spending time working with top experts
Or idiosyncratic-but-excellent pieces of mentorship
To the extent that EA has important insights that are relevant in many domains, working closely with smart people is a good opportunity to share those insights
Itās a powerful way to develop a network
I gave the reasons above in terms of āhow this seems locally goodā, but it might be more natural to think about it globally, and notice that a version of EA which is very insular and just builds up its own stuff kind-of cut off from the rest of intellectual endeavour seems way worse (in expectation) than a version which has lots of surface area and good interfaces
2. If so, do you expect this to remain true for a long time, or do you think weāre already moving rapidly towards fixing it?
Hmm, I think that Iām less conceiving of this as a problem-to-be-fixed than you are. Partially itās because I do see these substantial benefits of spending part of oneās career outside of explicitly EA orgsāI donāt think itās important that everyone does this (and it doesnāt have to be at the start of their career), but important that thereās at least a solid fraction of people who have done so.
That said, I do think itās somewhat a problem, and there are people (whether or not theyāve already spent part of their career outside of explicitly EA orgs) who would be in a good position to contribute directly to EA work if only they had the right mentorship. I think maybe weāre on the way to having the most acute versions of it fixed (though Iām not that confident about that), but I think the basic dynamic will remain true for a long time.
4. Do you think RSP, or things like it, are especially good ways to address this problem (if it exists)?
I think things like RSP are a good way to address a facet of this problem, of getting people towards āpeople-who-are-decent-at-working-out-what-to-do-amongst-the-innumerable-possibilitiesā. I think that this can be significantly complementary to people spending part of their career outside of EA orgs.
(I think this last paragraph in particular may not be very clear. Feel free to poke at what doesnāt make sense.)
Hmm, I think that Iām less conceiving of this as a problem-to-be-fixed than you are.
I think my second question was broad and vague.
I could operationalise part of it as: āDo you expect thereās still high expected value in more people starting now at trying to get good at āresearch mentorship/āmanagementā? Do you expect the same would be true if they started on that in, e.g., 2 years? Or do you think that, by the time people got good at this if they start now, the āgapā will have been largely filled?ā
It sounds like you think the answer is essentially āYes, thereās still high expected value in thisā?
Iād agree that there are other strong arguments for many people working outside of explicitly EA orgs. And I think many EAsāmyself includedāare biased towards and often overemphasise working at explicitly EA orgs.
But ājobs/āprojects that are unusually good for getting better at āresearch mentorship/āmanagementāā includes various jobs both within and outside of EA, as well as excluding various jobs both within and outside of EA. So I think the questions in this comment are distinct fromāthough somewhat related toāthe question āShould more people work outside of EA orgs?ā
Ahh, I think I was interpreting your general line of questioning as being:
A) Absent ability to get sufficient mentorship within EA circles, should people go outside to get mentorship?
ā¦ whereas this comment makes me think you were more asking:
B) Since research mentorship/āmanagement is such a bottleneck, should we get people trying to skill up a lot in that?
I think that some of the most important skills for research mentorship from an EA perspective include transferring intuitions about what is important to work on, and that this will be hard to learn properly outside an EA context (although there are probably some complementary skills one can effectively learn).
I do think that if the questions were in the vein of B) Iām more wary in my agreement: I kind of think that research mentorship is a valuable skill to look for opportunities to practice, but a little hard to be >50% of what someone focuses on? So Iām closer to encouraging people doing research that seems valuable to look for opportunities to do this as well. I guess I am positive on people practicising mentorship generally, or e.g. reading a lot of different pieces of research and forming inside views on what makes some pieces seem more valuable. I think the demand for these skills will become slightly less acute but remain fairly high for at least a decade.
I donāt think this is centrally about āresearchersā, but about āpeople-who-are-decent-at-working-out-what-to-do-amongst-the-innumerable-possibilitiesā
[...] research is one of the [...] (major) applications of such people, but far from the only one
Other than research, what do you see as fitting in this category? Iād guess it includes grantmaking, and making high-level/āstrategic organisation decisions. And Iād guess it wouldnāt include working out which accounting firm an organisation should use. But Iām unsure about both of those guesses, and especially about things āin betweenā them.
Perhaps you mean something like āpeople who are decent at working out what strategies and interventions we should pursue amongst the innumerable possibilitiesā? (As opposed to what fine-grained decisions individual people/āorgs should make on a day to day level.)
I think that this can be significantly complementary to people spending part of their career outside of EA orgs.
Iām not sure I know what you mean by this (as you anticipate!). Is it about the research scholars themselves spending part of their career before or after RSP outside of EA orgs? Or about the research scholars complementing other people working elsewhere?
Is it about the research scholars themselves spending part of their career before or after RSP outside of EA orgs?
Roughly, yes. e.g. I think several people currently at RSP have had some career outside first, and I think that they are typically deriving some real benefit from that (i.e. RSP is providing a complement rather than a substitute for the experience they have already).
(Not claiming that RSP is only for people with such experience!)
Perhaps you mean something like āpeople who are decent at working out what strategies and interventions we should pursue amongst the innumerable possibilitiesā? (As opposed to what fine-grained decisions individual people/āorgs should make on a day to day level.)
Yes, I think thatās mostly a better characterisation.
(Thereās definitely some grey area, as e.g. I think that people who are good at the thing Iām pointing to are in touch with the reasons behind a choice of intervention, in a way that feeds into some of the decisions about how to implement it on a day-to-day level.)
Why not just have the people who need mentorship serve as āresearch personal assistantsā to improve the productivity of people who are qualified to provide mentorship? (This describes something which occurs between professors and graduate students right?)
Iāve heard the view that more EAs should consider being research assistants to seemingly highly skilled EA researchers[1], both for their own learning and to improve those researchersā productivity. Is this what you mean?
I didnāt deliberately exclude mention of this from my above comment; I just didnāt think to include it. And now that you mention it (or something similar), Iād be interested in Owenās take on this as well :)
[1] One could of course also do this for highly skilled non-EA researchers working in relevant areas. I just havenāt heard that suggested as often; Iām not sure if there are good reasons for that.
Iāve heard many people express the view that in EA, and perhaps especially in longtermism:
There are a lot of people who could potentially be good/āgreat researchers, but have limited experience thus far
There is too little capacity to mentor and manage these people
This is partly because the best candidates for doing that are also able to do very valuable research themselves, or other things like outreach, so the opportunity costs for them are very high
This results in an untapped pool of potential talent, and also makes it harder to fix this problem itself, because it limits the pipeline of new mentors and managers as well
So itād be highly valuable for more people to build skills in research as well as in mentorship/āmanagement, to address this problem
And maybe this pushes in favour of starting oneās research career outside of explicitly EA orgs, e.g. in academia, to draw on the mentorship capacity there
1. Does all of those claims seem true to you?
2. If so, do you expect this to remain true for a long time, or do you think weāre already moving rapidly towards fixing it? (E.g., maybe there are a lot of people already āin the pipelineā, reducing the need for new people to enter it.)
3. Do you think there are other ways to potentially address this problem (if it exists) that deserve more attention or that I didnāt mention above?
4. Do you think RSP, or things like it, are especially good ways to address this problem (if it exists)?
Yes, with some important comments:
I donāt think this is centrally about āresearchersā, but about āpeople-who-are-decent-at-working-out-what-to-do-amongst-the-innumerable-possibilitiesā
This is a class we need more of in EA (and particularly longtermist EA); research is one of the applications of the (major) applications of such people, but far from the only one
Mentorship/āmanagement is more like a thousand small things than two big things
Often people will be better off learning from multiple strong mentors than one, because theyāll be good at different subcomponents
There are very substantial reasons beyond this to spend part of oneās (research) career outside of explicitly EA orgs, particularly if you get an opportunity to work with outstanding people
Such as:
You can better learn the specialist knowledge belonging to the relevant domain by spending time working with top experts
Or idiosyncratic-but-excellent pieces of mentorship
To the extent that EA has important insights that are relevant in many domains, working closely with smart people is a good opportunity to share those insights
Itās a powerful way to develop a network
I gave the reasons above in terms of āhow this seems locally goodā, but it might be more natural to think about it globally, and notice that a version of EA which is very insular and just builds up its own stuff kind-of cut off from the rest of intellectual endeavour seems way worse (in expectation) than a version which has lots of surface area and good interfaces
Hmm, I think that Iām less conceiving of this as a problem-to-be-fixed than you are. Partially itās because I do see these substantial benefits of spending part of oneās career outside of explicitly EA orgsāI donāt think itās important that everyone does this (and it doesnāt have to be at the start of their career), but important that thereās at least a solid fraction of people who have done so.
That said, I do think itās somewhat a problem, and there are people (whether or not theyāve already spent part of their career outside of explicitly EA orgs) who would be in a good position to contribute directly to EA work if only they had the right mentorship. I think maybe weāre on the way to having the most acute versions of it fixed (though Iām not that confident about that), but I think the basic dynamic will remain true for a long time.
I think things like RSP are a good way to address a facet of this problem, of getting people towards āpeople-who-are-decent-at-working-out-what-to-do-amongst-the-innumerable-possibilitiesā. I think that this can be significantly complementary to people spending part of their career outside of EA orgs.
(I think this last paragraph in particular may not be very clear. Feel free to poke at what doesnāt make sense.)
I think my second question was broad and vague.
I could operationalise part of it as: āDo you expect thereās still high expected value in more people starting now at trying to get good at āresearch mentorship/āmanagementā? Do you expect the same would be true if they started on that in, e.g., 2 years? Or do you think that, by the time people got good at this if they start now, the āgapā will have been largely filled?ā
It sounds like you think the answer is essentially āYes, thereās still high expected value in thisā?
Iād agree that there are other strong arguments for many people working outside of explicitly EA orgs. And I think many EAsāmyself includedāare biased towards and often overemphasise working at explicitly EA orgs.
But ājobs/āprojects that are unusually good for getting better at āresearch mentorship/āmanagementāā includes various jobs both within and outside of EA, as well as excluding various jobs both within and outside of EA. So I think the questions in this comment are distinct fromāthough somewhat related toāthe question āShould more people work outside of EA orgs?ā
Ahh, I think I was interpreting your general line of questioning as being:
A) Absent ability to get sufficient mentorship within EA circles, should people go outside to get mentorship?
ā¦ whereas this comment makes me think you were more asking:
B) Since research mentorship/āmanagement is such a bottleneck, should we get people trying to skill up a lot in that?
I think that some of the most important skills for research mentorship from an EA perspective include transferring intuitions about what is important to work on, and that this will be hard to learn properly outside an EA context (although there are probably some complementary skills one can effectively learn).
I do think that if the questions were in the vein of B) Iām more wary in my agreement: I kind of think that research mentorship is a valuable skill to look for opportunities to practice, but a little hard to be >50% of what someone focuses on? So Iām closer to encouraging people doing research that seems valuable to look for opportunities to do this as well. I guess I am positive on people practicising mentorship generally, or e.g. reading a lot of different pieces of research and forming inside views on what makes some pieces seem more valuable. I think the demand for these skills will become slightly less acute but remain fairly high for at least a decade.
I think I had both of those lines of questioning in mind, but didnāt make this explicit. Thanks for your responses :)
Thanks for that interesting response!
Other than research, what do you see as fitting in this category? Iād guess it includes grantmaking, and making high-level/āstrategic organisation decisions. And Iād guess it wouldnāt include working out which accounting firm an organisation should use. But Iām unsure about both of those guesses, and especially about things āin betweenā them.
Perhaps you mean something like āpeople who are decent at working out what strategies and interventions we should pursue amongst the innumerable possibilitiesā? (As opposed to what fine-grained decisions individual people/āorgs should make on a day to day level.)
Iām not sure I know what you mean by this (as you anticipate!). Is it about the research scholars themselves spending part of their career before or after RSP outside of EA orgs? Or about the research scholars complementing other people working elsewhere?
Roughly, yes. e.g. I think several people currently at RSP have had some career outside first, and I think that they are typically deriving some real benefit from that (i.e. RSP is providing a complement rather than a substitute for the experience they have already).
(Not claiming that RSP is only for people with such experience!)
Yes, I think thatās mostly a better characterisation.
(Thereās definitely some grey area, as e.g. I think that people who are good at the thing Iām pointing to are in touch with the reasons behind a choice of intervention, in a way that feeds into some of the decisions about how to implement it on a day-to-day level.)
Why not just have the people who need mentorship serve as āresearch personal assistantsā to improve the productivity of people who are qualified to provide mentorship? (This describes something which occurs between professors and graduate students right?)
Iāve heard the view that more EAs should consider being research assistants to seemingly highly skilled EA researchers[1], both for their own learning and to improve those researchersā productivity. Is this what you mean?
I didnāt deliberately exclude mention of this from my above comment; I just didnāt think to include it. And now that you mention it (or something similar), Iād be interested in Owenās take on this as well :)
[1] One could of course also do this for highly skilled non-EA researchers working in relevant areas. I just havenāt heard that suggested as often; Iām not sure if there are good reasons for that.