Well, I work as a researcher in animal welfare, but I think that longtermist stuff is orders of magnitude more important, so if I was left to do whatever I want, I’d start looking into longtermism and try to find my place there. And I might quit my job and do that one day, but I’m not fully sure if researchers would have more impact if left to do what they want.
In terms of which cause to work on, OpenPhil thought more about which cause should receive how much money than I or probably any other researchers did. So I’m unsure if allocation between causes would be better if everyone did what they wanted. Maybe more people would work on interesting, obvious, or high-status problems. This applies not just to major cause-areas, but also to problems within causes.
In terms of what concrete projects to work on, I think that managers often know better what research would be more impactful because they are often more senior. And maybe researchers need less coordination and are more motivated if they work on what they want, but I think that the impact the project will have depends much more on the topic. And it’s great to be able to abandon projects when they no longer seem impactful, but needing to justify abandoning to your manager seems like a good safeguard against abandoning projects too much. And that is all I’d need to do to abandon my current project if I had a good reason to do that.
In practice, I sometimes was allowed to work on what I wanted, and sometimes I was given projects, and I haven’t noticed a clear correlation in which projects end up seeming more impactful in retrospect. I’m thinking about my two projects that seem most impactful per hour spent. In one case, I was passionately opposed to doing the project, argued against it in person, and wrote a longish document about why it’s a bad idea. I was told to do it anyway and I’m happy I did. In another case, everyone I talked to told me that the project I wanted to do was a very bad idea. I did it anyway during a free week we have at Rethink Priorities where we can do whatever we want, and later people who opposed the project agreed that it was a good idea. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
Well, I work as a researcher in animal welfare, but I think that longtermist stuff is orders of magnitude more important, so if I was left to do whatever I want, I’d start looking into longtermism and try to find my place there. And I might quit my job and do that one day, but I’m not fully sure if researchers would have more impact if left to do what they want.
In terms of which cause to work on, OpenPhil thought more about which cause should receive how much money than I or probably any other researchers did. So I’m unsure if allocation between causes would be better if everyone did what they wanted. Maybe more people would work on interesting, obvious, or high-status problems. This applies not just to major cause-areas, but also to problems within causes.
In terms of what concrete projects to work on, I think that managers often know better what research would be more impactful because they are often more senior. And maybe researchers need less coordination and are more motivated if they work on what they want, but I think that the impact the project will have depends much more on the topic. And it’s great to be able to abandon projects when they no longer seem impactful, but needing to justify abandoning to your manager seems like a good safeguard against abandoning projects too much. And that is all I’d need to do to abandon my current project if I had a good reason to do that.
In practice, I sometimes was allowed to work on what I wanted, and sometimes I was given projects, and I haven’t noticed a clear correlation in which projects end up seeming more impactful in retrospect. I’m thinking about my two projects that seem most impactful per hour spent. In one case, I was passionately opposed to doing the project, argued against it in person, and wrote a longish document about why it’s a bad idea. I was told to do it anyway and I’m happy I did. In another case, everyone I talked to told me that the project I wanted to do was a very bad idea. I did it anyway during a free week we have at Rethink Priorities where we can do whatever we want, and later people who opposed the project agreed that it was a good idea. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.