One very good way to inspire research is to create a list of open questions. Iām aware of a few resources like this:
Richard Battyās Concrete Projects List (and some of the comments).
Open Philās āquestions that might affect our grantmakingā list.
Paul Christianoās sequence on iterated amplification, which talks about open questions but never quite lists them as such.
Are there other sets of EA-related open questions that Iāve left out of this list, and that arenāt on Richardās list?
Specifically, Iām looking for questions that could be solved through research or experimentation, rather than āprojectsā that require competitive execution (ācould someone create an Amazon for charitable donations?ā doesnāt count, but āwhat factors lead to someone repeatedly using a donation website?ā could).
Effectivethesis.com contains many possible topics
Thereās also Jacy Reeseās 2018 list of half-baked volunteer research ideas
There are some research ideas at the end of EA Summitās list
Global Priorities Instituteās research agenda a has very many possible research projects listed.
80,000 hours as a list of potentially promising paths that they havenāt written reviews on yet. I vaguely remember them mentioning somewhere that it could be valuable for people to write reviews about careers they are seriously considering. I guess 80,000 hours framework could be used for that.
This post compiles lists of important questions and problems.
I was going to post a few lists that hadnāt already been posted, but this one had all of them already :)
Interesting. I would be excited about someone collating all of these into one large post. I find that the trivial inconvenience of clicking through all of them is indeed a pretty significant barrier to me reading them.
One of CEAās future goals for the Forum is to have an āOpen Questionsā page which is the most comprehensive source for such questions. Having interactivity around question posts (e.g. commenters adding papers that contribute to a question, with summaries of what progress was made) seems potentially really good.
I canāt promise a particular timeline for this, and Iām not sure what form it will take, but I do think the Forum is a good place for questions to exist. If anyone sees this and has thoughts/āquestions, Iād be very happy to talk to them about what might make an āOpen Questionsā list especially good/āhelpful.
This would actually be really helpful for people new in EA to learn more and catch up on existing discussions and find more thoughtful ways to join the conversation. It sounds a bit like Kialo a platform for rational debate (ex: āethics of eating animals: is eating meat wrong?ā). Would be awesome to see something along the lines of their format for tracking all points around a discussion (but focused only on topics in EA).
Iāll add Sentience Instituteās list of common disagreements in animal welfare, which Peter Hurford linked to in another thread. Thanks, Peter!
Other links added later:
The EA Thesis list of other orgsā research agendas.
The Cause Prioritization Wiki