Suppose, in 10 years, CRS has succeeded way beyond what you expected now. What happened?
Suppose that, in 10 years, CRS seems to have had no impact.[2] What signs would reveal this? And what seem the most likely explanations for the lack of impact?
Have you already started trying to assess the quality or impact of CRSās work? Do you have thoughts on how you might do this in future?
(Feel free to answer different versions/āframings of the questions instead.)
Obviously these questions are unusually hard in relation to research and for longtermist stuff, and perhaps especially for a relatively new org, so apologies for that. But thatās also part of why these questions seem so interesting!
[1] In particular, nicked from/āinspired by Neel Nanda, myself, and tamgent.
[2] If there are already good signs of impact, feel free to interpret this as āseems to have had no impact after 2020ā, or as āseems to have had no impact after 2020, plus the apparent impacts by 2020 all ended up washing out over timeā.
Re: 1., there would be many more (thoughtful) people who share our concern about reducing suffering and s-risks (not necessarily with strongly suffering-focused values, but at least giving considerable weight to it). That results in an ongoing research project on s-risks that goes beyond a few EAs (e.g., it is also established in academia or other social movements).
Re: 2., a possible scenario is that suffering-focused ideas just never gain much traction, and consequently efforts to reduce s-risks will just fizzle out. However, I think there is significant evidence that at least an extreme version of this is not happening.
Re: 3., I think the levels of engagement and feedback we have received so far are encouraging. However, we do not currently have any procedures in place to measure impact, which is (as you say) incredibly hard for what we do. But of course, we are constantly thinking about what kind of work is most impactful!
Those answers make sense to me. But I notice that the answer to question 1 sounds like an outcome you want to bring about, but which I wouldnāt be way more surprised to observe in a world where CRS doesnāt exist/ādoesnāt have impact than one in which it does. This is because it could be brought about by the actions of others (e.g., CLR).
So I guess Iād be curious about things like:
Whether and how you think that that desired world-state will look different if CRS succeeds than if CRS accomplishes very little but other groups with somewhat similar goals succeed
How you might disentangle the contribution of CRS to this desired outcome from the contributions of others
I guess this connects to the question of quality/āimpact assessment as well.
I also think this dilemma is far from unique to CRS. In fact, itās probably weaker for CRS than for non-suffering-focused longtermists (e.g. much of FHI), because there are currently more of the latter (or at least they control more resources), so there are more plausible alternative candidates for the causes of non-suffering-focused longtermist impacts.
Three related questions, also nicked from the AMA with Owen Cotton-Barratt[1]:
Suppose, in 10 years, CRS has succeeded way beyond what you expected now. What happened?
Suppose that, in 10 years, CRS seems to have had no impact.[2] What signs would reveal this? And what seem the most likely explanations for the lack of impact?
Have you already started trying to assess the quality or impact of CRSās work? Do you have thoughts on how you might do this in future?
(Feel free to answer different versions/āframings of the questions instead.)
Obviously these questions are unusually hard in relation to research and for longtermist stuff, and perhaps especially for a relatively new org, so apologies for that. But thatās also part of why these questions seem so interesting!
[1] In particular, nicked from/āinspired by Neel Nanda, myself, and tamgent.
[2] If there are already good signs of impact, feel free to interpret this as āseems to have had no impact after 2020ā, or as āseems to have had no impact after 2020, plus the apparent impacts by 2020 all ended up washing out over timeā.
Re: 1., there would be many more (thoughtful) people who share our concern about reducing suffering and s-risks (not necessarily with strongly suffering-focused values, but at least giving considerable weight to it). That results in an ongoing research project on s-risks that goes beyond a few EAs (e.g., it is also established in academia or other social movements).
Re: 2., a possible scenario is that suffering-focused ideas just never gain much traction, and consequently efforts to reduce s-risks will just fizzle out. However, I think there is significant evidence that at least an extreme version of this is not happening.
Re: 3., I think the levels of engagement and feedback we have received so far are encouraging. However, we do not currently have any procedures in place to measure impact, which is (as you say) incredibly hard for what we do. But of course, we are constantly thinking about what kind of work is most impactful!
Thanks.
Those answers make sense to me. But I notice that the answer to question 1 sounds like an outcome you want to bring about, but which I wouldnāt be way more surprised to observe in a world where CRS doesnāt exist/ādoesnāt have impact than one in which it does. This is because it could be brought about by the actions of others (e.g., CLR).
So I guess Iād be curious about things like:
Whether and how you think that that desired world-state will look different if CRS succeeds than if CRS accomplishes very little but other groups with somewhat similar goals succeed
How you might disentangle the contribution of CRS to this desired outcome from the contributions of others
I guess this connects to the question of quality/āimpact assessment as well.
I also think this dilemma is far from unique to CRS. In fact, itās probably weaker for CRS than for non-suffering-focused longtermists (e.g. much of FHI), because there are currently more of the latter (or at least they control more resources), so there are more plausible alternative candidates for the causes of non-suffering-focused longtermist impacts.
Also, do you think it might make sense for CRS to run a (small) survey about the quality & impact of its outputs?