You mention that there are lots of different kinds of research, but I think this is the key point about testing fit. I’m pretty shocked by how uncorrelated research competences are.
So even if you fail at (say) solo academic technical research, you should definitely try team / assistant / desk / blog / strategy / research management before you write off research in general.
It makes me want to give a clarification: the reflections above are just the most important things I happened to learn—not a list of generally most important points to consider when testing fit for research. I think I’d need more research experience to write a good version of the latter thing (though I think my list probably overlaps with it somewhat).
I also want to respond to “you should definitely try [...] before you write off research in general”. I think I agree with this, conditional on it being a sensible idea for you to be testing your fit for research in general in the first place. Some thoughts:
There are loads and loads of other important things to do that are not research. For lots of people I imagine there being more information in switching tack completely and trying a few new things, than in working their way through a long list of different kinds of research.
The space of research is too big for it to be sensible to test your fit for everything, so you need to narrow down to things that seem especially fun/especially likely to be a good fit for you.
I particularly care about this because I think research has inflated prestige in the EA community, and so there’s a danger of people spending too much time testing fit for different kinds when really what they want is approval. I think the ideal solution here isn’t ‘keep testing your fit till you find some kind of research you’re good at’ - it’s ‘the norms of the community change such that there’s more social reward for things other than research’.
You mention that there are lots of different kinds of research, but I think this is the key point about testing fit. I’m pretty shocked by how uncorrelated research competences are.
So even if you fail at (say) solo academic technical research, you should definitely try team / assistant / desk / blog / strategy / research management before you write off research in general.
I have a similar knee-jerk reaction whenever I read a post “on research”, so I wrote up my experience with different types of research: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pHnMXaKEstJGcKP2m/different-types-of-research-are-different
(I’m not at all trying to imply that Rose should have caveated more in her post.)
This seems like a useful point, thanks!
It makes me want to give a clarification: the reflections above are just the most important things I happened to learn—not a list of generally most important points to consider when testing fit for research. I think I’d need more research experience to write a good version of the latter thing (though I think my list probably overlaps with it somewhat).
I also want to respond to “you should definitely try [...] before you write off research in general”. I think I agree with this, conditional on it being a sensible idea for you to be testing your fit for research in general in the first place. Some thoughts:
There are loads and loads of other important things to do that are not research. For lots of people I imagine there being more information in switching tack completely and trying a few new things, than in working their way through a long list of different kinds of research.
The space of research is too big for it to be sensible to test your fit for everything, so you need to narrow down to things that seem especially fun/especially likely to be a good fit for you.
I particularly care about this because I think research has inflated prestige in the EA community, and so there’s a danger of people spending too much time testing fit for different kinds when really what they want is approval. I think the ideal solution here isn’t ‘keep testing your fit till you find some kind of research you’re good at’ - it’s ‘the norms of the community change such that there’s more social reward for things other than research’.
Agree with all of this