We, the Effective Altruism group at UC Irvine (EA UCI), have trialled a new activity which we call “1 Question, 90 Minutes”. It involves taking 90 minutes (adjustable) to research a HAPIIE (highly and positively impactful in expectation) question.
Questions we’ve researched so far
How viable are high-protein sources that avoid suffering?
What are the low-hanging fruit with respect to reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
What are the biggest problems with EA?
Questions we plan to research
What are the most cost-effective ways to increase global healthspan?
What are the most cost-effective ways to improve the living conditions of the poorest people in the world?
Steps
Decide which question to research
Give a short introduction to the topic and explain why the question is HAPIIE (or show a short video or read a short article to the same effect)
Break down the question into sub-questions
Ask who wants to work on which sub-questions and assign participants into groups on that basis
Set around 30 minutes for group research
Ask each group to summarise their findings to the rest of the participants (maybe even write these down in a shared document)
Tips
Prepare a list of potential research questions (and corresponding introductions) in advance and have participants vote on which one they want to research
Invite everyone to the same Google doc with the question broken down into sub-questions so that everyone can edit their own sub-question simultaneously
Have one device projecting to a screen that everyone can see for the introduction and summary of findings
Alternatively, turn this into a debate
Benefits
Practise collective truth-seeking
Develop a better understanding of how to improve the world
Acknowledgements
Thanks to @Sergi at EA Bristol for persuading me to trial this activity!
1 Question, 90 Minutes
We, the Effective Altruism group at UC Irvine (EA UCI), have trialled a new activity which we call “1 Question, 90 Minutes”. It involves taking 90 minutes (adjustable) to research a HAPIIE (highly and positively impactful in expectation) question.
Questions we’ve researched so far
How viable are high-protein sources that avoid suffering?
What are the low-hanging fruit with respect to reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
What are the biggest problems with EA?
Questions we plan to research
What are the most cost-effective ways to increase global healthspan?
What are the most cost-effective ways to improve the living conditions of the poorest people in the world?
Steps
Decide which question to research
Give a short introduction to the topic and explain why the question is HAPIIE (or show a short video or read a short article to the same effect)
Break down the question into sub-questions
Ask who wants to work on which sub-questions and assign participants into groups on that basis
Set around 30 minutes for group research
Ask each group to summarise their findings to the rest of the participants (maybe even write these down in a shared document)
Tips
Prepare a list of potential research questions (and corresponding introductions) in advance and have participants vote on which one they want to research
Invite everyone to the same Google doc with the question broken down into sub-questions so that everyone can edit their own sub-question simultaneously
Have one device projecting to a screen that everyone can see for the introduction and summary of findings
Alternatively, turn this into a debate
Benefits
Practise collective truth-seeking
Develop a better understanding of how to improve the world
Acknowledgements
Thanks to @Sergi at EA Bristol for persuading me to trial this activity!