One thing which might be worth emphasizing is comparative advantage. For example, suppose I’m an econ student in a department that’s known for X, Y, and Z. My pool of potential advisors includes some of the world’s leading experts on X, Y, and Z, and I’m well-positioned to apply those ways of thinking to problems of EA interest. So a good strategy might be something like: Identify topics in your field of study (that you find personally interesting, that are currently hot research areas, that your advisor is interested in, etc.), and identify EA topics that you think are important/interesting, then create a 2d grid where you examine intersections of topics in your field/EA topics and see which are fertile.
To take this even further, thesis writers could ask questions like: What is the most beneficial/harmful research that has been done in my field so far from an EA perspective, and how can I do research that is likely to be beneficial and not harmful? If someone was to write a history of my field from an EA perspective, what might it look like? I would be interested to know what the “outside view” says about which research is likely to be beneficial in various fields.
You’ve probably already seen this thread, but if not you should take a look; many of the projects are research projects.
Some of the top EA research organizations are heavily time-constrained, and unable to spend much effort on proposing thesis topics
To make maximally good use of researcher time, it might be good to thoroughly familiarize yourself with publicly available info before having conversations. I added a comment to the other thread linking to some more obscure AI safety problem lists that could be useful (in addition to those in the main post).
This thread talks about the value of having a central clearinghouse for EA research, which is something you might aim to do in the long run.
So a good strategy might be something like: Identify topics in your field of study (that you find personally interesting, that are currently hot research areas, that your advisor is interested in, etc.), and identify EA topics that you think are important/interesting, then create a 2d grid where you examine intersections of topics in your field/EA topics and see which are fertile.
That’s what we plan to do, with the fact that the grid work will be done by our coaches, who we believe have a comparative advantage in doing this since they have a better overview of EA research landscape and can assess better what students’ opportunities are.
This is awesome!
One thing which might be worth emphasizing is comparative advantage. For example, suppose I’m an econ student in a department that’s known for X, Y, and Z. My pool of potential advisors includes some of the world’s leading experts on X, Y, and Z, and I’m well-positioned to apply those ways of thinking to problems of EA interest. So a good strategy might be something like: Identify topics in your field of study (that you find personally interesting, that are currently hot research areas, that your advisor is interested in, etc.), and identify EA topics that you think are important/interesting, then create a 2d grid where you examine intersections of topics in your field/EA topics and see which are fertile.
To take this even further, thesis writers could ask questions like: What is the most beneficial/harmful research that has been done in my field so far from an EA perspective, and how can I do research that is likely to be beneficial and not harmful? If someone was to write a history of my field from an EA perspective, what might it look like? I would be interested to know what the “outside view” says about which research is likely to be beneficial in various fields.
You’ve probably already seen this thread, but if not you should take a look; many of the projects are research projects.
To make maximally good use of researcher time, it might be good to thoroughly familiarize yourself with publicly available info before having conversations. I added a comment to the other thread linking to some more obscure AI safety problem lists that could be useful (in addition to those in the main post).
This thread talks about the value of having a central clearinghouse for EA research, which is something you might aim to do in the long run.
Thanks for the comment!
That’s what we plan to do, with the fact that the grid work will be done by our coaches, who we believe have a comparative advantage in doing this since they have a better overview of EA research landscape and can assess better what students’ opportunities are.