Is there a list of the ideas that the fellows were working on? I’d be curious.
It’s not surprising to me that there aren’t many “product focused” traditional startup style ideas in the longtermist space, but what does that leave? Are most of the potential organisations research focused? Or are there some other classes of organisation that could be founded? (Maybe this is a lack of imagination on my part!)
Hi Rory, thanks for the comment! We haven’t published those ideas. In terms of classes of organisation, one way to carve up the space is to think about Object-level and Meta-level approaches to generating ideas.
Object-level approaches focus on doing direct work to solve the problem at hand. For example:
developing and deploying technologies
conducting research
advocating for policy change
The main type of impact here comes in the form of tangible changes in actions taken in the real world, in whatever form that might take.
Meta-level approaches focus on improving the capacity for others to solve the problem. This can be done on the EA/longtermist wide-level (building up the movements) or in a specific domain, e.g. building a talent pipeline specifically for bio policy experts. Concrete types of meta work include, for example:
community and field building
the dissemination of ideas and knowledge and values
increasing the resources available to work on object-level approaches
The main type of impact here comes in the form of the change in likelihood that object-level approaches will be impactful.
Is there a list of the ideas that the fellows were working on? I’d be curious.
It’s not surprising to me that there aren’t many “product focused” traditional startup style ideas in the longtermist space, but what does that leave? Are most of the potential organisations research focused? Or are there some other classes of organisation that could be founded? (Maybe this is a lack of imagination on my part!)
Hi Rory, thanks for the comment! We haven’t published those ideas. In terms of classes of organisation, one way to carve up the space is to think about Object-level and Meta-level approaches to generating ideas.
Object-level approaches focus on doing direct work to solve the problem at hand. For example:
developing and deploying technologies
conducting research
advocating for policy change
The main type of impact here comes in the form of tangible changes in actions taken in the real world, in whatever form that might take.
Meta-level approaches focus on improving the capacity for others to solve the problem. This can be done on the EA/longtermist wide-level (building up the movements) or in a specific domain, e.g. building a talent pipeline specifically for bio policy experts. Concrete types of meta work include, for example:
community and field building
the dissemination of ideas and knowledge and values
increasing the resources available to work on object-level approaches
The main type of impact here comes in the form of the change in likelihood that object-level approaches will be impactful.
Hope that’s useful!