To provide some context for this discussion, hereâs a 2017 overview of the cause prioritization landscape (not an intellectual summaryâmore about the way resources are distributed, and what happens to the output).
That summary notes that existing cause-prioritization research is rarely used by non-EAs, but has influenced some government funding when it was spread by other parties (e.g. the Copenhagen Consensus Center talking to the British government). If a journal did come to exist for cause prioritization, much of its impact might come from how the results are shared, rather than the existence of the results in a journal format. And the EA community already has routes to sharing our resultsâso to me, the main question at hand is: âHow do we get better results?â Or, as the OP put it, how do we make intellectual progress?
If we want to focus on accelerating progress and helping discussions not become âlostâ, a journal doesnât seem like the optimal format. Something like the Cause Prioritization Wiki, which allows for rapid updating and the aggregation of content in a single place (rather than scattered through many articles) seems better for those goals.
This makes it a bit harder for some outsiders (e.g. academics) to contribute, but makes it much easier for non-academics to incorporate academic information into summaries. I suspect that an approach of âhelp EAs find good research and add it to our databasesâ would go better than an approach of âhelp good researchers find EA and publish in our journalâ, but each plan has its own pro/âcon list.
To provide some context for this discussion, hereâs a 2017 overview of the cause prioritization landscape (not an intellectual summaryâmore about the way resources are distributed, and what happens to the output).
That summary notes that existing cause-prioritization research is rarely used by non-EAs, but has influenced some government funding when it was spread by other parties (e.g. the Copenhagen Consensus Center talking to the British government). If a journal did come to exist for cause prioritization, much of its impact might come from how the results are shared, rather than the existence of the results in a journal format. And the EA community already has routes to sharing our resultsâso to me, the main question at hand is: âHow do we get better results?â Or, as the OP put it, how do we make intellectual progress?
If we want to focus on accelerating progress and helping discussions not become âlostâ, a journal doesnât seem like the optimal format. Something like the Cause Prioritization Wiki, which allows for rapid updating and the aggregation of content in a single place (rather than scattered through many articles) seems better for those goals.
This makes it a bit harder for some outsiders (e.g. academics) to contribute, but makes it much easier for non-academics to incorporate academic information into summaries. I suspect that an approach of âhelp EAs find good research and add it to our databasesâ would go better than an approach of âhelp good researchers find EA and publish in our journalâ, but each plan has its own pro/âcon list.