Hey Charles, yeah Sean _o_ h made a similar comment. I now see that a lot of the scientific research grants are still targeted towards global health and development or biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.
Nevertheless, I think my questions still stand—I’d still love to hear how OpenPhil decided to grant more towards scientific research, especially for global health and development. I’m also curious if there are already any “big wins” among these scientific research grants.
I also think it’s worth asking him “Do you think more EAs should be looking into careers in scientific research? Why or why not?”. I think only a few EA groups have discussion groups about scientific research or improving science, so I guess a related question would be if he thinks that there should be more reading groups / discussion groups on scientific research or improving science, in order to increase the number of EAs interested in scientific research as a career.
This seems like great points and of course, your question stands.
I wanted to say that most R1 research is problematic for new grads: this is because of difficulty of success, low career capital, and frankly “impact” can also be dubious. It is also hard to get started. It typically requires PhD, post-doc(s), all poorly paid—contrast with say, software engineering.
My motivation for writing the above is for others, akin to the “bycatch” article—I don’t think you are here to read my opinions.
Thanks for responding thoughtfully and I’m sure you will get an interesting answer from Holden.
Hey Charles, yeah Sean _o_ h made a similar comment. I now see that a lot of the scientific research grants are still targeted towards global health and development or biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.
Nevertheless, I think my questions still stand—I’d still love to hear how OpenPhil decided to grant more towards scientific research, especially for global health and development. I’m also curious if there are already any “big wins” among these scientific research grants.
I also think it’s worth asking him “Do you think more EAs should be looking into careers in scientific research? Why or why not?”. I think only a few EA groups have discussion groups about scientific research or improving science, so I guess a related question would be if he thinks that there should be more reading groups / discussion groups on scientific research or improving science, in order to increase the number of EAs interested in scientific research as a career.
This seems like great points and of course, your question stands.
I wanted to say that most R1 research is problematic for new grads: this is because of difficulty of success, low career capital, and frankly “impact” can also be dubious. It is also hard to get started. It typically requires PhD, post-doc(s), all poorly paid—contrast with say, software engineering.
My motivation for writing the above is for others, akin to the “bycatch” article—I don’t think you are here to read my opinions.
Thanks for responding thoughtfully and I’m sure you will get an interesting answer from Holden.