Less directly related: I’ve recently been feeling confused about what my attitude to transparency (in general) should be. I really appreciate transparency and viscerally feel its (potential) benefits, but am also (probably less viscerally) aware of its costs. One example of my confusion: I’ve been struggling to decide how much I should prioritize transparency-oriented projects or tasks I could be working on, even when the only cost for me is time that I could be spending on something else (i.e. when I don’t have to worry about other potential risks because they’re not as relevant in that case). (I wrote a bit on this here.)
Indeed, I think those points in the right direction, and this post by 80k stands out as one of the most clear examples of things I would like to see more of. For example, you can gather from this 80k post that ~20% of effort goes to all areas outside of Xrisk/EA meta and I think this would be quite surprising for many people in the EA community to know. However, I still think this information is not well-known or internalised by the broader community.
That really surprises me at least, actually makes me a little nervous about directing public health bent people there like I do at the moment - I should look into it more...
I think their main research page on this is a good place to start—it gives an explicit ranking of their latest thinking on which problems are most pressing: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ (last updated May 24, 2023).
Thanks for posting this!
Some of what you’re saying reminds me of ” 80k would be happy to see more projects in the careers space” and “80,000 Hours wants to see more people trying out recruiting” — and another potentially relevant post is Healthy Competition.
Less directly related: I’ve recently been feeling confused about what my attitude to transparency (in general) should be. I really appreciate transparency and viscerally feel its (potential) benefits, but am also (probably less viscerally) aware of its costs. One example of my confusion: I’ve been struggling to decide how much I should prioritize transparency-oriented projects or tasks I could be working on, even when the only cost for me is time that I could be spending on something else (i.e. when I don’t have to worry about other potential risks because they’re not as relevant in that case). (I wrote a bit on this here.)
Indeed, I think those points in the right direction, and this post by 80k stands out as one of the most clear examples of things I would like to see more of. For example, you can gather from this 80k post that ~20% of effort goes to all areas outside of Xrisk/EA meta and I think this would be quite surprising for many people in the EA community to know. However, I still think this information is not well-known or internalised by the broader community.
Wow only 20%!
That really surprises me at least, actually makes me a little nervous about directing public health bent people there like I do at the moment - I should look into it more...
https://probablygood.org/ might be a potential alternative, together with Successif (You could send all 3 and see what they find most useful)
Thanks wil check them out
I think their main research page on this is a good place to start—it gives an explicit ranking of their latest thinking on which problems are most pressing: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ (last updated May 24, 2023).