It’s rarely wise to do as many different types of things as Spencer Greenberg does and usually best to focus more, at least until you’re ~excelling at each thing
I think Spencer’s approach is going very well for him, but that it’s not good as standard advice for most people or even most entreprneurial EAs
I think it’s plausible it’d make sense for ESH to eventually sometimes do quite small, quick, simple, and cheap primary empirical research, like a small quick survey, as one small additional input into recommendations. But I think it’s easy to underestimate how much survey work benefits from methodological expertise and effort, and I think that sort of work is very different from what’s proposed in this post. So I’d guess it shouldn’t be one of ESH’s primary focuses or something ESH tries to get really good at (just in order to focus).
FWIW, I’d guess that:
It’s rarely wise to do as many different types of things as Spencer Greenberg does and usually best to focus more, at least until you’re ~excelling at each thing
I think Spencer’s approach is going very well for him, but that it’s not good as standard advice for most people or even most entreprneurial EAs
I think it’s plausible it’d make sense for ESH to eventually sometimes do quite small, quick, simple, and cheap primary empirical research, like a small quick survey, as one small additional input into recommendations. But I think it’s easy to underestimate how much survey work benefits from methodological expertise and effort, and I think that sort of work is very different from what’s proposed in this post. So I’d guess it shouldn’t be one of ESH’s primary focuses or something ESH tries to get really good at (just in order to focus).
But those are just some quick thoughts.