On first pass, I didn’t pickup if this is always Connor or can be different people in Conjecture. Anyway, I think whoever it is should consider it an active responsibility to be very responsive to anyone’s requests or queries. The default thing that happens when there’s a person with massive power over a project but isn’t in constant contact with the project, is that they slow everything down. Like if it were my job, I might be like…
Okay, I really don’t know, there’s a bunch of factors. I don’t know if the infohazard coordinator is actually on the team of the project they’re coordinator for, I don’t know how many projects they’re coordinator for, and I don’t know how fast requests need to be answered. Nonetheless, here’s the kind of rule-set I can imagine making sense.
If anyone ever asks about a private project “Can I share with Person X” I should always answer same day, and maybe set a target to always answer in <3 hours.
If anyone wants to add a collaborator to a secret project, I should always give them an answer within 2 days.
If anyone wants to change the secrecy level of a project, I give my take on it within 5 working days, and generally should either say “no” or should set in-motion the plan to move it out of that secrecy level within 2 weeks of the initial request.
My guess is without this sort of ruleset, without the infohazard coordinator taking on the responsibility to respond extremely quickly whenever they’re blocking a research team, at some point folks will be asking “Why did Project X not get finished 2 months faster?” and the answer will be “Well it was too costly for us to get in-sync with the infohazard coordinator about who we could share on this project because they were always busy with other projects, so we ended up not sharing our work with Alice, Bob, or Charlie until much later than we otherwise would have, and each time we did we got a big speed up.”
Another thought:
On first pass, I didn’t pickup if this is always Connor or can be different people in Conjecture. Anyway, I think whoever it is should consider it an active responsibility to be very responsive to anyone’s requests or queries. The default thing that happens when there’s a person with massive power over a project but isn’t in constant contact with the project, is that they slow everything down. Like if it were my job, I might be like…
Okay, I really don’t know, there’s a bunch of factors. I don’t know if the infohazard coordinator is actually on the team of the project they’re coordinator for, I don’t know how many projects they’re coordinator for, and I don’t know how fast requests need to be answered. Nonetheless, here’s the kind of rule-set I can imagine making sense.
If anyone ever asks about a private project “Can I share with Person X” I should always answer same day, and maybe set a target to always answer in <3 hours.
If anyone wants to add a collaborator to a secret project, I should always give them an answer within 2 days.
If anyone wants to change the secrecy level of a project, I give my take on it within 5 working days, and generally should either say “no” or should set in-motion the plan to move it out of that secrecy level within 2 weeks of the initial request.
My guess is without this sort of ruleset, without the infohazard coordinator taking on the responsibility to respond extremely quickly whenever they’re blocking a research team, at some point folks will be asking “Why did Project X not get finished 2 months faster?” and the answer will be “Well it was too costly for us to get in-sync with the infohazard coordinator about who we could share on this project because they were always busy with other projects, so we ended up not sharing our work with Alice, Bob, or Charlie until much later than we otherwise would have, and each time we did we got a big speed up.”