Relative to my own intuitions, I feel like you underestimate the extent to which your “spine” ideally would be a back-and-forth between its different levels
I agree, the “spine” glosses over a lot of the important dynamics.
I think I would find it easier to understand to what extent I agree with your recommendations if you gave specific examples of (i) what you consider to be valuable past examples of strategy research, and (ii) how you’re planning to do strategy research going forward (or what methods you’d recommend to others).
Very good points. Both would indeed be highly valuable to the argument. As follow up posts, I’m considering writing up (1) concrete projects in strategy research that seem valuable, and (2) a research agenda.
While I agree that we face substantial strategic uncertainty, I think I’m significantly less optimistic about the marginal tractability of strategy research than you seem to be.
Yeah, we’re more optimistic than you here. I don’t think it’s possible to do useful completely “tactics and data free” strategy research. But I do think there is highly valuable strategy research to do that can be grounded with a smaller amount of tactics and data gathering. What tactics research and data gathering is key? I think this is a strategic question and I think we’re currently just scratching the surface.
For example, while I tend to be excited about work that, say, immediately helps Open Phil to determine their funding allocation, I tend to be quite pessimistic about external researchers sitting at their desks and considering questions such as “how to best allocate resources between reducing various existential risks” in the abstract.
I agree that it seems like that could easily be a bad use of time for “external researchers” to do that. I’m somewhat optimistic about these researchers examining sub-questions that would inform how to do the allocation.
Very loosely, I expect marginal activities that effectively reduce strategic uncertainty to look more like executives debating their companies strategy in a meeting rather than, say, Newton coming up with his theory of mechanics. I’m therefore reluctant to call them “research”.
I think the idea cluster of existential risk reduction was formed through something I’d call “research”. I think, in a certain way, we need more work of this type. But it also needs to be different in some important way in order to create new valuable knowledge. We hope to do work of this nature.
Thank you for your response, David! One quick observation:
I think the idea cluster of existential risk reduction was formed through something I’d call “research”. I think, in a certain way, we need more work of this type.
I agree that the current idea cluster of existential risk reduction was formed through research. However, it seems that one key difference between our views is: you seem to be optimistic that future research of this type (though different in some ways, as you say later) would uncover similarly useful insights, while I tend to think that the space of crucial considerations we can reliably identify with this type of research has been almost exhausted. (NB I think there are many more crucial considerations “out there”, it’s just that I’m skeptical we can find them.)
If this is right, then it seems we actually make different predictions about the future, and you could prove me wrong by delivering valuable strategy research outputs within the next few years.
Thanks for your detailed comment, Max!
I agree, the “spine” glosses over a lot of the important dynamics.
Very good points. Both would indeed be highly valuable to the argument. As follow up posts, I’m considering writing up (1) concrete projects in strategy research that seem valuable, and (2) a research agenda.
Yeah, we’re more optimistic than you here. I don’t think it’s possible to do useful completely “tactics and data free” strategy research. But I do think there is highly valuable strategy research to do that can be grounded with a smaller amount of tactics and data gathering.
What tactics research and data gathering is key? I think this is a strategic question and I think we’re currently just scratching the surface.
I agree that it seems like that could easily be a bad use of time for “external researchers” to do that. I’m somewhat optimistic about these researchers examining sub-questions that would inform how to do the allocation.
I think the idea cluster of existential risk reduction was formed through something I’d call “research”. I think, in a certain way, we need more work of this type. But it also needs to be different in some important way in order to create new valuable knowledge. We hope to do work of this nature.
Thank you for your response, David! One quick observation:
I agree that the current idea cluster of existential risk reduction was formed through research. However, it seems that one key difference between our views is: you seem to be optimistic that future research of this type (though different in some ways, as you say later) would uncover similarly useful insights, while I tend to think that the space of crucial considerations we can reliably identify with this type of research has been almost exhausted. (NB I think there are many more crucial considerations “out there”, it’s just that I’m skeptical we can find them.)
If this is right, then it seems we actually make different predictions about the future, and you could prove me wrong by delivering valuable strategy research outputs within the next few years.
Indeed! We hope we can deliver that sooner rather than later. Though foundational research may need time to properly come to fruition.