People who are new to a field usually listen to experienced experts. Of course, they don’t uncritically accept whatever they’re told. But they tend to feel that they need fairly strong reasons to dismiss the existing consensus.
But people who encounter global priorities research—the study of what actions would improve the world the most—often take a different approach. Many disagree with global priorities researchers’ rankings of causes, preferring a ranking of their own.
This can happen for many reasons, and there’s some merit to several of them. First, as global priorities researchers themselves acknowledge, there is much more uncertainty in global priorities research than in most other fields. Second, global priorities research is a young and not very well-established field.
But there are other factors that may make people defer less to existing global priorities research than is warranted. I think I did, when I first encountered the field.
First, people often have unusually strong feelings about global priorities. We often feel strongly for particular causes or particular ways of improving the world, and don’t like to hear that they are ineffective. So we may not listen to rankings of causes that we disagree with.
Second, most intellectually curious people usually have put some thought into the questions that global priorities research studies, even if they’ve never heard of the field itself. This is especially so since most academic disciplines have some relation with global priorities research. So people typically have a fair amount of relevant knowledge. That’s good in some ways, but can also make them overconfident of their abilities to judge existing global priorities research. Identifying the most effective ways of improving the world requires much more systematic thinking than most people will have done prior to encountering the field of global priorities research.
Third, people may underestimate how much thinking global priorities researchers have done over the past 10-20 years, and how sophisticated that thinking is. This is to some extent understandable, given how young the field is. But if you start to truly engage with the best global priorities research, you realize that they have an answer to most of your objections. And you’ll discover that they’ve come up with many important considerations that you’ve likely never thought of. This was definitely my personal experience.
For these reasons, people who are new to global priorities research may come to dismiss existing research prematurely. Of course, that’s not the only mistake you can make. You can also go too far in the other direction, and be overly deferential. It’s a tricky balance to strike. But in my experience, premature dismissal is relatively common—and maybe especially so among smart and experienced people. So it’s something to watch out for.
People who are new to a field usually listen to experienced experts. Of course, they don’t uncritically accept whatever they’re told. But they tend to feel that they need fairly strong reasons to dismiss the existing consensus.
I’m not sure I agree with this, so it is not obvious to me that there is anything special about GP research. But it depends on who you mean by ‘people’ and what your evidence is. The reference class of research also matters—I expect people are more willing to believe physicists, but less so sociologists.
Yeah, I agree that there are differences between different fields - e.g. physics and sociology—in this regard. I didn’t want to go into details about that, however, since it would have been a bit a distraction from the main subject (global priorities research).
On encountering global priorities research (from my blog).
People who are new to a field usually listen to experienced experts. Of course, they don’t uncritically accept whatever they’re told. But they tend to feel that they need fairly strong reasons to dismiss the existing consensus.
But people who encounter global priorities research—the study of what actions would improve the world the most—often take a different approach. Many disagree with global priorities researchers’ rankings of causes, preferring a ranking of their own.
This can happen for many reasons, and there’s some merit to several of them. First, as global priorities researchers themselves acknowledge, there is much more uncertainty in global priorities research than in most other fields. Second, global priorities research is a young and not very well-established field.
But there are other factors that may make people defer less to existing global priorities research than is warranted. I think I did, when I first encountered the field.
First, people often have unusually strong feelings about global priorities. We often feel strongly for particular causes or particular ways of improving the world, and don’t like to hear that they are ineffective. So we may not listen to rankings of causes that we disagree with.
Second, most intellectually curious people usually have put some thought into the questions that global priorities research studies, even if they’ve never heard of the field itself. This is especially so since most academic disciplines have some relation with global priorities research. So people typically have a fair amount of relevant knowledge. That’s good in some ways, but can also make them overconfident of their abilities to judge existing global priorities research. Identifying the most effective ways of improving the world requires much more systematic thinking than most people will have done prior to encountering the field of global priorities research.
Third, people may underestimate how much thinking global priorities researchers have done over the past 10-20 years, and how sophisticated that thinking is. This is to some extent understandable, given how young the field is. But if you start to truly engage with the best global priorities research, you realize that they have an answer to most of your objections. And you’ll discover that they’ve come up with many important considerations that you’ve likely never thought of. This was definitely my personal experience.
For these reasons, people who are new to global priorities research may come to dismiss existing research prematurely. Of course, that’s not the only mistake you can make. You can also go too far in the other direction, and be overly deferential. It’s a tricky balance to strike. But in my experience, premature dismissal is relatively common—and maybe especially so among smart and experienced people. So it’s something to watch out for.
Thanks to Ryan Carey for comments.
I’m not sure I agree with this, so it is not obvious to me that there is anything special about GP research. But it depends on who you mean by ‘people’ and what your evidence is. The reference class of research also matters—I expect people are more willing to believe physicists, but less so sociologists.
Yeah, I agree that there are differences between different fields - e.g. physics and sociology—in this regard. I didn’t want to go into details about that, however, since it would have been a bit a distraction from the main subject (global priorities research).