GiveWell’s way of evaluating charities improves the ability of the people to make predictions about which charities will produce worthwhile effects in the future.
I’ll have to think more about this.
I think one of the big things we had in the old LMB, which I don’t think is the case now, was that we never let the committee assess individuals. We never let them; the individuals were our responsibility. We asked them to review the work of the group as a whole. Because if they went down to individuals, they would say, this man is unproductive. He hasn’t published anything for the last five years. So you’ve got to have institutions that can not only allow this, but also protect the people that are engaged on very long term, and to the funders, extremely risky work.`
I agree with this. But I still think science has something that the rationality community currently lacks. A place for people with shared interests to meet. Schelling points for people who might paradigm shift a certain subject. If you can fit your interest into LW or EA, or happen to have people in your area you are okay. Otherwise you are out of luck.
Sydney Brenner : I strongly believe that the only way to encourage innovation is to give it to the young. The young have a great advantage in that they are ignorant. Because I think ignorance in science is very important. If you’re like me and you know too much you can’t try new things. I always work in fields of which I’m totally ignorant.
Reading a long list about why ideas fail gives you a perspective of how the person who evaluated them considered them failing. It doesn’t give you necessarily a new perspective
I don’t think young people should be forced to read everything other people have done before discussing or formulating a hypotheses. But they should be able to explain how their hypothesis differs from things that have gone before if they want large amounts of funding. That should be what literature reviews are about IMO.
The AirBnB folks didn’t even know of CouchSurfing when they started AirBnB.
With companies, the environment is always changing so there is less value in knowing about previous attempts. How many rationalist enterprises fit that mold rather than the scientific one I don’t know.
With companies, the environment is always changing so there is less value in knowing about previous attempts. How many rationalist enterprises fit that mold rather than the scientific one I don’t know.
In science the available tools are also always changing. Molecular biology couldn’t have been done fifty years earlier.
Paradigm change is quite often due to new tools that allow new ways of doing research.
If you can fit your interest into LW or EA, or happen to have people in your area you are okay.
I don’t think the goal of providing places to meet for every possible interest is valuable. You can’t discuss every kind of question at a university either. The kind of questions that GiveWell investigates aren’t traditional academic questions.
I think the domain of questions that can be ask in LW and EA is quite broad.
When it comes to places to meet events like the European Community Weekend are good. EA Global also exists for getting people to meet.
The Accelerator Project might create a more permanent place for people to go and find people to do projects with.
I’ll have to think more about this.
I agree with this. But I still think science has something that the rationality community currently lacks. A place for people with shared interests to meet. Schelling points for people who might paradigm shift a certain subject. If you can fit your interest into LW or EA, or happen to have people in your area you are okay. Otherwise you are out of luck.
I don’t think young people should be forced to read everything other people have done before discussing or formulating a hypotheses. But they should be able to explain how their hypothesis differs from things that have gone before if they want large amounts of funding. That should be what literature reviews are about IMO.
With companies, the environment is always changing so there is less value in knowing about previous attempts. How many rationalist enterprises fit that mold rather than the scientific one I don’t know.
In science the available tools are also always changing. Molecular biology couldn’t have been done fifty years earlier. Paradigm change is quite often due to new tools that allow new ways of doing research.
I don’t think the goal of providing places to meet for every possible interest is valuable. You can’t discuss every kind of question at a university either. The kind of questions that GiveWell investigates aren’t traditional academic questions.
I think the domain of questions that can be ask in LW and EA is quite broad.
When it comes to places to meet events like the European Community Weekend are good. EA Global also exists for getting people to meet.
The Accelerator Project might create a more permanent place for people to go and find people to do projects with.