This is excellent, thank you. But if you could do whatever you wanted, and you think deferring to your manager/boss is optimal as a rule, wouldn’t you just generally do that?
Maybe it’d be systemically worse if everyone did whatever they wanted, because they wouldn’t be willing or able to coordinate to allocate themselves optimally. Instead, maybe they’d be selfishly prioritising what’s interesting/high-status rather than what’s important. Fine, maybe, idk. But I still strongly support EA tenure for the EAs you trust to be able to prioritise based on importance rather than shiny.
I don’t think that deferring to manager is always optimal, and I’d support EA tenure for some EAs too (I even suggested a mechanism of how that could work for less trusted researchers). Sorry that I didn’t make it clear in my comment, I just thought that you did a good job at presenting the pros of researchers doing what they want, so I wanted to give arguments for the other side to paint a fuller picture :)
Absolutely. I was hoping someone would provide good arguments against it too, since I know I was being overly rosy about the case in favour. Mainly this post wasn’t about convincing people that EA tenure is optimal, it’s mainly about eliciting anecdotes and perspectives.
This is excellent, thank you. But if you could do whatever you wanted, and you think deferring to your manager/boss is optimal as a rule, wouldn’t you just generally do that?
Maybe it’d be systemically worse if everyone did whatever they wanted, because they wouldn’t be willing or able to coordinate to allocate themselves optimally. Instead, maybe they’d be selfishly prioritising what’s interesting/high-status rather than what’s important. Fine, maybe, idk. But I still strongly support EA tenure for the EAs you trust to be able to prioritise based on importance rather than shiny.
I don’t think that deferring to manager is always optimal, and I’d support EA tenure for some EAs too (I even suggested a mechanism of how that could work for less trusted researchers). Sorry that I didn’t make it clear in my comment, I just thought that you did a good job at presenting the pros of researchers doing what they want, so I wanted to give arguments for the other side to paint a fuller picture :)
Absolutely. I was hoping someone would provide good arguments against it too, since I know I was being overly rosy about the case in favour. Mainly this post wasn’t about convincing people that EA tenure is optimal, it’s mainly about eliciting anecdotes and perspectives.