RP seems to err more towards quantity of research over quality than other organizations. Is this your impression as well? Is this a conscious decision? Do you think other EA research organizations should also steer in that direction, or does it reflect RP’s niche?
For example, Global Priorities Institute seems to prioritize high-quality research that will help garner momentum for longtermist work in academia, such as journal articles published by PhDs (compare to RP’s large number of blog post research and having, I believe, only one PhD on staff (edit: according to MichaelStJules, there are 2 PhDs on staff)). Of course work in peer-reviewed journals with academic training might not necessarily reflect higher quality, so I know this hinges on one’s view of the various metrics of “quality” we have available.
I just wanted to add my 2 cents. I work at FHI (near GPI) and am separately involved with Rethink Charity, so am involved (somewhat) in both.
I’d agree that Rethink Priorities’ work is formatted very differently than that of GPI, but am really not sure I’d say it’s lower quality on average. I’d have to spend much more time investigating both to be more sure of either side being “higher in quality” to whatever that could be compared (perhaps, differences in the rates of under-inspection-errors).
My impression is that Rethink Priorities is attempting optimizing it’s research for EA endeavors. So, if you would prefer them spend more time to change the formatting or similar, I’m sure they would be curious to know. I imagine they could shift more to produce LaTeX-type work, but that may take more time; but if this community would find it correspondingly more valuable, it could be worth it.
I’m also interested in this question for my own work and similar.
Yep, makes sense. One unfortunate and frustrating thing that I’ve noticed over the last few years is that lots that gets posted on the forum and similar gets amplified and misunderstood by many people online.
I’m quite sure that you were pretty reasonable, but I would flag that I would guess that at least some readers wouldn’t understand the nuance, and may just think something like, “I guess this user is using this as a sarcastic-like take at saying they think that Rethink’s work is low quality.” When I read your post I personally had a lot of uncertainty on where exactly you were coming from.
I’d definitely encourage you to keep on pointing things out and would probably recommend not modifying the main messages, buy may suggest that you be extra careful with the wording on such items. It kind of sucks, but that seems like one restriction of public forums like this.
Similar, to be extra clear, so this doesn’t get misinterpreted, my points are:
Feedback and comments are great! Please leave more! Don’t censor your main points, especially if they are important!
However, if they are things that could be misunderstood by some audience members in fairly impactful ways, try on the margin to make things extra clear.
Strongly agreed. In order to make myself understood to a broad audience online, I find I have to be much more sincere, straightforward, and kind than I would be in real life.
Personally, I really appreciate when other people online go out of their way to say positive things about me or my thoughts, particularly when it’s right before they disagree with or criticize me—feeling affirmed keeps me from getting defensive.
Online, you’re simultaneously speaking to many different people who come to the discussion with very different perceptions of background and context. I try to write accessibly, so that no matter your level of understanding of context and background assumptions, you can read what I’m saying and interpret it how I intended.
It’s a lot more work, and it feels weird to write with a different personality than I live, but I think it helps many more people understand what I really mean.
(I’m not trying to criticize redmoonsoaring’s comment, or say it fails to do these things, I’m just going on a tangent about communicating online)
That seems right, but I might be more inclined to push back against this kind of norm. I find on Reddit that I can be quite straightforward and brief, and people don’t downvote based on their interpretation of the feelings of the commenter. I would like to encourage that sort of norm on the EAF, rather than the norms that (as I see! and I could be wrong) focus on excessive positivity towards established views of the community as it currently stands.
I generally don’t like negativity, including negativity about negativity! (Harsh downvotes on cynical-seeming comments).
There are other times where harsh comments get a lot of upvotes; like around Leverage Research.
I think many people think that those go a bit too far and seem a bit more intense than the individuals mean. Similar to how you didn’t mean your comment to be too harsh, the downvoters probably didn’t mean to be too harsh in that signal.
Thanks for the question! To echo Ozzie, I don’t think it’s fair to directly compare the quality of our work to the quality of GPI’s work given we work in overlapping but quite distinct domains with different aims and target audiences.
Additionally, we haven’t prioritized publishing in academic journals, though we have considered it for many projects. We don’t believe publishing in academic journals is necessarily the best path towards impact in the areas we’ve published in given our goals and don’t view it as our comparative advantage.
All this said, we don’t deliberately err more towards quantity over quality, but we do consider the time tradeoff of further research on a given topic during the planning and execution phases of a project (though I don’t think this is in any way unique to us within EA). We do try to publish more frequently because of our desire for (relatively) shorter feedback loops. I’d also say we think our work is high quality but I’ll let the work speak for itself.
Finally, I take no position on whether EA organizations in general ought to err more or less towards academic publications as I think it depends on a huge number of factors specific to the aims and staffs of each organization.
Kim and Jason each have a PhD. Daniela, Neil, and David are also all working toward getting one. David is also a Research Fellow (normally requires a PhD) at a university in the UK. Kim is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of her own lab at the University of Waterloo.
RP seems to err more towards quantity of research over quality than other organizations. Is this your impression as well? Is this a conscious decision? Do you think other EA research organizations should also steer in that direction, or does it reflect RP’s niche?
For example, Global Priorities Institute seems to prioritize high-quality research that will help garner momentum for longtermist work in academia, such as journal articles published by PhDs (compare to RP’s large number of blog post research and having, I believe, only one PhD on staff (edit: according to MichaelStJules, there are 2 PhDs on staff)). Of course work in peer-reviewed journals with academic training might not necessarily reflect higher quality, so I know this hinges on one’s view of the various metrics of “quality” we have available.
Thanks for the comment!
I just wanted to add my 2 cents. I work at FHI (near GPI) and am separately involved with Rethink Charity, so am involved (somewhat) in both.
I’d agree that Rethink Priorities’ work is formatted very differently than that of GPI, but am really not sure I’d say it’s lower quality on average. I’d have to spend much more time investigating both to be more sure of either side being “higher in quality” to whatever that could be compared (perhaps, differences in the rates of under-inspection-errors).
My impression is that Rethink Priorities is attempting optimizing it’s research for EA endeavors. So, if you would prefer them spend more time to change the formatting or similar, I’m sure they would be curious to know. I imagine they could shift more to produce LaTeX-type work, but that may take more time; but if this community would find it correspondingly more valuable, it could be worth it.
I’m also interested in this question for my own work and similar.
That sounds right to me and seems consistent with my original comment.
Yep, makes sense. One unfortunate and frustrating thing that I’ve noticed over the last few years is that lots that gets posted on the forum and similar gets amplified and misunderstood by many people online.
I’m quite sure that you were pretty reasonable, but I would flag that I would guess that at least some readers wouldn’t understand the nuance, and may just think something like, “I guess this user is using this as a sarcastic-like take at saying they think that Rethink’s work is low quality.” When I read your post I personally had a lot of uncertainty on where exactly you were coming from.
I’d definitely encourage you to keep on pointing things out and would probably recommend not modifying the main messages, buy may suggest that you be extra careful with the wording on such items. It kind of sucks, but that seems like one restriction of public forums like this.
Similar, to be extra clear, so this doesn’t get misinterpreted, my points are:
Feedback and comments are great! Please leave more! Don’t censor your main points, especially if they are important!
However, if they are things that could be misunderstood by some audience members in fairly impactful ways, try on the margin to make things extra clear.
Strongly agreed. In order to make myself understood to a broad audience online, I find I have to be much more sincere, straightforward, and kind than I would be in real life.
Personally, I really appreciate when other people online go out of their way to say positive things about me or my thoughts, particularly when it’s right before they disagree with or criticize me—feeling affirmed keeps me from getting defensive.
Online, you’re simultaneously speaking to many different people who come to the discussion with very different perceptions of background and context. I try to write accessibly, so that no matter your level of understanding of context and background assumptions, you can read what I’m saying and interpret it how I intended.
It’s a lot more work, and it feels weird to write with a different personality than I live, but I think it helps many more people understand what I really mean.
(I’m not trying to criticize redmoonsoaring’s comment, or say it fails to do these things, I’m just going on a tangent about communicating online)
That seems right, but I might be more inclined to push back against this kind of norm. I find on Reddit that I can be quite straightforward and brief, and people don’t downvote based on their interpretation of the feelings of the commenter. I would like to encourage that sort of norm on the EAF, rather than the norms that (as I see! and I could be wrong) focus on excessive positivity towards established views of the community as it currently stands.
I generally don’t like negativity, including negativity about negativity! (Harsh downvotes on cynical-seeming comments).
There are other times where harsh comments get a lot of upvotes; like around Leverage Research.
I think many people think that those go a bit too far and seem a bit more intense than the individuals mean. Similar to how you didn’t mean your comment to be too harsh, the downvoters probably didn’t mean to be too harsh in that signal.
Thanks for the question! To echo Ozzie, I don’t think it’s fair to directly compare the quality of our work to the quality of GPI’s work given we work in overlapping but quite distinct domains with different aims and target audiences.
Additionally, we haven’t prioritized publishing in academic journals, though we have considered it for many projects. We don’t believe publishing in academic journals is necessarily the best path towards impact in the areas we’ve published in given our goals and don’t view it as our comparative advantage.
All this said, we don’t deliberately err more towards quantity over quality, but we do consider the time tradeoff of further research on a given topic during the planning and execution phases of a project (though I don’t think this is in any way unique to us within EA). We do try to publish more frequently because of our desire for (relatively) shorter feedback loops. I’d also say we think our work is high quality but I’ll let the work speak for itself.
Finally, I take no position on whether EA organizations in general ought to err more or less towards academic publications as I think it depends on a huge number of factors specific to the aims and staffs of each organization.
Relatedly, who is the intended audience of RP research products?
People in the effective altruism movement and EA-aligned organizations.
Minor correction: Kim and Jason each have a PhD. Daniela is also working on one.
Correction to the correction, just to be clear:
Kim and Jason each have a PhD. Daniela, Neil, and David are also all working toward getting one. David is also a Research Fellow (normally requires a PhD) at a university in the UK. Kim is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of her own lab at the University of Waterloo.
Thank you. I was just estimating PhDs based on their bios.
Thank you. I was just estimating PhDs based on their bios.