The community building part doesn’t surprise me, I’ll read stuff other people have written, unless there’s an unpopular take you have that you’d like to mention. And of course shotgunning program and grant applications
I’m interested in the civilisational collapse thing. I always considered it a valid and meaningful area of investment. I’m curious how you’d recommend someone early in their career get in on this? Because I always implicitly assumed “the government was handling it”, and that you’d need 30 years of civil service experience before getting to do anything.
What would you recommend to get started on forecasting? I have a fairly above-average track record especially for unusual occurences, and would not mind doing it as a hobby or full time. My issue was that I hated seeing decision makers ignore my findings/predictions, hence why I first went so hard into advocacy. I struggle to see how forecasting could go mainstream, but I find I’m earlier to trends than I expect.
I’m interested in the civilisational collapse thing. I always considered it a valid and meaningful area of investment. I’m curious how you’d recommend someone early in their career get in on this?
E.g. Think about a likely trajectory of civilizational collapse, and what’s needed to restart it. Figure out a narrow subset of the problem (fertilizer?) and how would you do this if you were in charge of making it happen.
Maybe do some desk research on what’s already been done in the space, and try to branch out from there.
Because I always implicitly assumed “the government was handling it”, and that you’d need 30 years of civil service experience before getting to do anything.
Which governments in particular are you thinking about? I guess my perspective (which to be clear is more theoretical; I can definitely be corrected by empirical evidence!) is that basically no government has ever put serious effort into this. Like why would they? This seems far outside of their organizational mandate, and even many EAs I know of don’t want to work on this because of the long time to impact and potentially grim worldview.
What would you recommend to get started on forecasting? I have a fairly above-average track record especially for unusual occurences, and would not mind doing it as a hobby or full time.
My issue was that I hated seeing decision makers ignore my findings/predictions, hence why I first went so hard into advocacy.
I think if you built up a legible track record for your past predictions, and have good, clear, arguments for each of your future predictions, then decision-makers in EA will probably pay attention. And at this point, EA is a large enough force in the world that you can have a lot of impact just by making EA decisions better.
hmmmmn further implementation questions hehe
The community building part doesn’t surprise me, I’ll read stuff other people have written, unless there’s an unpopular take you have that you’d like to mention. And of course shotgunning program and grant applications
I’m interested in the civilisational collapse thing. I always considered it a valid and meaningful area of investment. I’m curious how you’d recommend someone early in their career get in on this? Because I always implicitly assumed “the government was handling it”, and that you’d need 30 years of civil service experience before getting to do anything.
What would you recommend to get started on forecasting? I have a fairly above-average track record especially for unusual occurences, and would not mind doing it as a hobby or full time. My issue was that I hated seeing decision makers ignore my findings/predictions, hence why I first went so hard into advocacy. I struggle to see how forecasting could go mainstream, but I find I’m earlier to trends than I expect.
E.g. Think about a likely trajectory of civilizational collapse, and what’s needed to restart it. Figure out a narrow subset of the problem (fertilizer?) and how would you do this if you were in charge of making it happen.
Maybe do some desk research on what’s already been done in the space, and try to branch out from there.
Which governments in particular are you thinking about? I guess my perspective (which to be clear is more theoretical; I can definitely be corrected by empirical evidence!) is that basically no government has ever put serious effort into this. Like why would they? This seems far outside of their organizational mandate, and even many EAs I know of don’t want to work on this because of the long time to impact and potentially grim worldview.
Probably start an account on Metaculus or Manifold Markets and just start predicting? You can also find study materials later, like the book Superforecasting and this youtube series.
I think if you built up a legible track record for your past predictions, and have good, clear, arguments for each of your future predictions, then decision-makers in EA will probably pay attention. And at this point, EA is a large enough force in the world that you can have a lot of impact just by making EA decisions better.