Overall I think all the core claims and implications sound right to me, but I’ll raise a few nit-picks in comments.
We could break down some of the key leadership positions needed to deploy these funds as follows:
Researchers able to come up with ideas for big projects, new cause areas, or other new ways to spend funds on a big scale
EA entrepreneurs/managers/research leads able to run these projects and hire lots of people
Grantmakers able to evaluate these projects
I agree with all that, but think that that’s a somewhat too narrow framing of how researchers can contribute to deploying these funds. I’d also highlight their ability to:
Help us sift through the existing ideas for projects, cause areas, “intermediate goals”, etc. to work out what would be high-priority/cost-effective (or even just what seems net-positive overall)
Generate or sharpen insights, concepts, and/or vocabulary that can help the entrepreneurs, grantmakers, etc. do their work
E.g., as a (very new and temporary) grantmaker, I think I’ve probably done a better job because other people had previously developed the following concepts and terms and some analysis related to them:
I agree there are lots of forms of useful research that could feed into this, and in general better ideas feels like a key bottleneck for EA. I’m excited to see more ‘foundational’ work and disentanglement as well. Though I do feel like at least right now there’s an especially big bottleneck for ideas for specific shovel ready projects that could absorb a lot of funding.
Thanks for this really interesting post!
Overall I think all the core claims and implications sound right to me, but I’ll raise a few nit-picks in comments.
I agree with all that, but think that that’s a somewhat too narrow framing of how researchers can contribute to deploying these funds. I’d also highlight their ability to:
Help us sift through the existing ideas for projects, cause areas, “intermediate goals”, etc. to work out what would be high-priority/cost-effective (or even just what seems net-positive overall)
See also parts of Luke Muehlhauser’s A personal take on longtermist AI governance
Generate or sharpen insights, concepts, and/or vocabulary that can help the entrepreneurs, grantmakers, etc. do their work
E.g., as a (very new and temporary) grantmaker, I think I’ve probably done a better job because other people had previously developed the following concepts and terms and some analysis related to them:
information hazards
the unilateralist’s curse
disentanglement research
value of movement growth
talent constraints vs funding constraints vs vetting constraints
(a bunch of other things)
Maybe helping refine precise ideas for cause areas, projects, etc. (but I’m less sure what I mean by this)
(That said, I think some other people are more pessimistic than me either about how much research has helped on these fronts or how much it’s likely to in future. See e.g. some other parts of Luke’s post or some comments on What are novel major insights from longtermist macrostrategy or global priorities research found since 2015?)
I agree there are lots of forms of useful research that could feed into this, and in general better ideas feels like a key bottleneck for EA. I’m excited to see more ‘foundational’ work and disentanglement as well. Though I do feel like at least right now there’s an especially big bottleneck for ideas for specific shovel ready projects that could absorb a lot of funding.