A lot of the topics in this post seem like just âthe history of EA-related idea Xâ
For some (but not all) of these topics, my friend doesnât really see a clear path to impact, and they think one would need to flesh out the case for why the history of X is particularly important to understand
I think those are basically fair points, but Iâm fairly excited about research into these topics despite them. Hereâs the response I wrote to that friend of mine, which might be useful to other people who are trying to think about the value of EA-aligned history research (whether or not on these topics).
Yeah, Iâd agree that my post doesnât explicitly outline paths to impactâor at least not very concrete onesâand that fleshing out and critiquing potential paths to impact would be a logical and useful early step. (The post was meant mainly as a starting point.)
But Iâd be surprised if quality research into each of those topics wouldnât turn out to be at least fairly useful. (But that sentence could be said about way more things that EAs have time to research, so fleshing out the paths to impact would still be useful for prioritisation, as well as for crafting more specific research directions, making dissemination plans, etc. See also.)
The reason Iâd be surprised is partly because of roughly the following generic argument:
âUnderstanding the history of a topic often seems to help in:
Predicting what will happen in future in relation to that topic
Thinking about what one could/âshould do to intervene in that (including noticing common mistakes/âpitfalls/âdownside risks)
Thinking about what to do in relation to other topics that might be affected by this topic (e.g., maybe understanding things to do with AI, bio, and nuclear risks should influence which countries we prioritise engagement with or movement-building in or how we do that)
And it seems reasonable to assume that thatâll be true for a given topic unless one has reason to believe otherwise.
So if a topic seems potentially quite relevant to efforts to improve the expected value of the long-term future, then understanding the history of it better will probably be useful.â
(But there are definitely more than 10 topics that fit that description, so it could definitely be useful to create a longlist of a broader set of topics that seem to fit that description, sketch potential paths to impact for research on them, and get a rough sense of which ones should be highest priority. Iâd guess that the âideal top 10â would differ at least somewhat from whatâs in this post.)
A friend of mine said, essentially, that:
A lot of the topics in this post seem like just âthe history of EA-related idea Xâ
For some (but not all) of these topics, my friend doesnât really see a clear path to impact, and they think one would need to flesh out the case for why the history of X is particularly important to understand
I think those are basically fair points, but Iâm fairly excited about research into these topics despite them. Hereâs the response I wrote to that friend of mine, which might be useful to other people who are trying to think about the value of EA-aligned history research (whether or not on these topics).