Thanks for the writeup Holden, I agree that this is a useful alternative to the 80k approach.
On the conceptual research track, you note “a year of full-time independent effort should be enough to mostly reach these milestones”. How do you think this career evolves as the researcher becomes more senior? For example, Scott Alexander seems to be doing about the same thing now as he was doing 8 years ago. Is the endgame for this track simply that you become better at doing a similar set of things?
I think a year of full-time work is likely enough to see the sort of “signs of life” I alluded to, but it could take much longer to fulfill one’s potential. I’d generally expect a lot of people in this category to see steady progress over time on things like (a) how open-ended and poorly-scoped of a question they can tackle, which in turn affects how important a question they can tackle; (b) how efficiently and thoroughly they can reach a good answer; (c) how well they can communicate their insights; (d) whether they can hire and train other people to do conceptual and empirical research, and hence “scale” what they’re doing (this won’t apply to everyone).
There could also be an effect in the opposite direction, though—I expect some people in this category to have their best insights relatively early on, and to have more trouble innovating in a field as the field becomes better-developed.
Overall this track doesn’t seem like the one most likely to offer a steady upward trajectory, though I think some people will experience that. (I’d guess that people focused on “answering questions” would probably have more of a steady upward trajectory than people focused on “asking new questions / having totally original ideas.”)
Thanks for the writeup Holden, I agree that this is a useful alternative to the 80k approach.
On the conceptual research track, you note “a year of full-time independent effort should be enough to mostly reach these milestones”. How do you think this career evolves as the researcher becomes more senior? For example, Scott Alexander seems to be doing about the same thing now as he was doing 8 years ago. Is the endgame for this track simply that you become better at doing a similar set of things?
I think a year of full-time work is likely enough to see the sort of “signs of life” I alluded to, but it could take much longer to fulfill one’s potential. I’d generally expect a lot of people in this category to see steady progress over time on things like (a) how open-ended and poorly-scoped of a question they can tackle, which in turn affects how important a question they can tackle; (b) how efficiently and thoroughly they can reach a good answer; (c) how well they can communicate their insights; (d) whether they can hire and train other people to do conceptual and empirical research, and hence “scale” what they’re doing (this won’t apply to everyone).
There could also be an effect in the opposite direction, though—I expect some people in this category to have their best insights relatively early on, and to have more trouble innovating in a field as the field becomes better-developed.
Overall this track doesn’t seem like the one most likely to offer a steady upward trajectory, though I think some people will experience that. (I’d guess that people focused on “answering questions” would probably have more of a steady upward trajectory than people focused on “asking new questions / having totally original ideas.”)