Agreed on the feedback part, but pretty unsure how to solve this without bringing on one person for a few hundred hours to give individual feedback.
Regarding the hours of productivity lost: I’m not sure about the counterfactual, since CERI applicants are mostly students.
I think my main point however is this: being forced to actually write a proposal for that vague research idea that has been floating around in your head seems pretty valuable to me whether you get feedback or not. I, for example, spent quite a few hours just digging through research agendas in different x-risk fields to make sure I’m not just riding my hobby horse, but that my research actually fills some gap.
So, even if I hadn’t been accepted, I would probably have considered this “time well spent” rather than “lost productivity”.
(Disclaimer that I might be biased here though—motivated reasoning/avoiding cognitive dissonance etc.)
Agreed on the feedback part, but pretty unsure how to solve this without bringing on one person for a few hundred hours to give individual feedback.
Regarding the hours of productivity lost: I’m not sure about the counterfactual, since CERI applicants are mostly students.
I think my main point however is this: being forced to actually write a proposal for that vague research idea that has been floating around in your head seems pretty valuable to me whether you get feedback or not. I, for example, spent quite a few hours just digging through research agendas in different x-risk fields to make sure I’m not just riding my hobby horse, but that my research actually fills some gap. So, even if I hadn’t been accepted, I would probably have considered this “time well spent” rather than “lost productivity”.
(Disclaimer that I might be biased here though—motivated reasoning/avoiding cognitive dissonance etc.)