Tom is a junior officer in the UKās Royal Navy. He has been interested in EA and Rationality since 2017, was on the committee for the EA society at the University of St Andrews, and can intermittently be found in Trajan House, Oxford.
Note: Evidence suggests there is another Tom Gardiner in the EA community which may lead to reputational confusion.
My first thought on reading this suggestion for working groups was āThatās a great idea, Iād really support someone trying to set that up!ā
My second thought was āI would absolutely not have wanted to do that as a student. Where would I even begin?ā
My third thought was that even if you did organise a group of people to try implementing the frameworks of EA to build some recommendations from scratch, this will never compare to the research done by long-standing organisations that dedicate many experienced peopleās working lives to finding the answers. The conclusion of the project would surely be a sort of verbal participation medal, but youāre best off looking at GiveWellās charities anyway.
Maybe Iām being overly cynical here. It seems a good way to engage people who could later develop into strong priorities/ācharity evaluation researchers. I suspect itās best that any such initiative be administered by people already working to a high standard in those fields for that benefit to be properly reaped, however.