I would like more concrete examples of nontrivial questions people might be interested in. Too much of this conversation is too abstract, and I worry people are imagining different things.
Toward that end, here are a few research projects I’ve either taken on or considered, which I would have been happy to outsource and which seem like a good fit for the format:
Go through the data on spending by US colleges. Look at how much is actually charged per student (including a comparison of sticker price to actual tuition), how much is spent per student, and where all the money is spent. Graph how these have changed over time, to figure out exactly which expenditures account for the rapid growth of college cost. Where is all the extra money going? (I’ve done this one; results here.)
Go through the data on aggregate financial assets held, and on real capital assets held by private citizens/public companies/the state (i.e. patents, equipment, property, buildings, etc) to find out where money invested ultimately ends up. What are the main capital sinks in the US economy? Where do marginal capital investments go? (I’ve also done this one, but haven’t gotten around to writing it up.)
Go through the genes of JCVI’s minimal cell, and write up an accessible explanation of the (known) functionality of all of its genes (grouping them into pathways/systems as needed). The idea is to give someone with minimal bio background a comprehensive knowledge of everything needed for bare-minimum life. Some of this will have to be speculative, since not all gene functions are known, but a closed list of known-unknowns sure beats unknown-unknowns.
Something like Laura Deming’s longevity FAQ, but focused on the macro rather than micro side of what’s known—i.e. (macroscopic) physiology of vascular calcification and heart disease, alzheimers, cancer, and maybe a bit on statistical models of old-age survival rates. In general, there seems to be lots of research on the micro side, lots known on the macro side, but few-if-any well-understood mechanistic links from tone to the other; so understanding both sides in depth is likely to have value.
An accessible explanation of Cox’ Theorem, especially what each piece means. The tough part: include a few examples in which a non-obvious interpretation of a system as a probabilistic model is directly derived via Cox’ Theorem. I have tried to write this at least four separate times, and the examples part in particular seems like a great exercise for people interested in embedded agency.
Thanks, and yeah these are approximately the same order-of-magnitude-of-difficulty that was I imagining as a “hard” question (some seem to require more specialized knowledge though, which I’m not sure of the viability of)
Some additional examples (answering Chris_Leong’s question here I guess), are:
My existing question “How Old is Smallpox” (which I wasn’t quite satisfied by the answer of). This one requires some specialist knowledge and is pretty niche so it seems fair if it doesn’t get answered. [fwiw I cared about the answer to this to know whether it was epistemically kosher to read 500 Million at Winter Solstices ceremonies.]
Possible re-run that experiment on Mechanical Turk on a broader audience (I specifically wanted to know how people who work in “traditionally shitty jobs” related to their work.)
In general, I’d like to build an engine that translates “papers written in academic-ese” into “plain english summaries”.
I would like more concrete examples of nontrivial questions people might be interested in. Too much of this conversation is too abstract, and I worry people are imagining different things.
Toward that end, here are a few research projects I’ve either taken on or considered, which I would have been happy to outsource and which seem like a good fit for the format:
Go through the data on spending by US colleges. Look at how much is actually charged per student (including a comparison of sticker price to actual tuition), how much is spent per student, and where all the money is spent. Graph how these have changed over time, to figure out exactly which expenditures account for the rapid growth of college cost. Where is all the extra money going? (I’ve done this one; results here.)
Go through the data on aggregate financial assets held, and on real capital assets held by private citizens/public companies/the state (i.e. patents, equipment, property, buildings, etc) to find out where money invested ultimately ends up. What are the main capital sinks in the US economy? Where do marginal capital investments go? (I’ve also done this one, but haven’t gotten around to writing it up.)
Go through the genes of JCVI’s minimal cell, and write up an accessible explanation of the (known) functionality of all of its genes (grouping them into pathways/systems as needed). The idea is to give someone with minimal bio background a comprehensive knowledge of everything needed for bare-minimum life. Some of this will have to be speculative, since not all gene functions are known, but a closed list of known-unknowns sure beats unknown-unknowns.
Something like Laura Deming’s longevity FAQ, but focused on the macro rather than micro side of what’s known—i.e. (macroscopic) physiology of vascular calcification and heart disease, alzheimers, cancer, and maybe a bit on statistical models of old-age survival rates. In general, there seems to be lots of research on the micro side, lots known on the macro side, but few-if-any well-understood mechanistic links from tone to the other; so understanding both sides in depth is likely to have value.
An accessible explanation of Cox’ Theorem, especially what each piece means. The tough part: include a few examples in which a non-obvious interpretation of a system as a probabilistic model is directly derived via Cox’ Theorem. I have tried to write this at least four separate times, and the examples part in particular seems like a great exercise for people interested in embedded agency.
Thanks, and yeah these are approximately the same order-of-magnitude-of-difficulty that was I imagining as a “hard” question (some seem to require more specialized knowledge though, which I’m not sure of the viability of)
Some additional examples (answering Chris_Leong’s question here I guess), are:
My existing question “How Old is Smallpox” (which I wasn’t quite satisfied by the answer of). This one requires some specialist knowledge and is pretty niche so it seems fair if it doesn’t get answered. [fwiw I cared about the answer to this to know whether it was epistemically kosher to read 500 Million at Winter Solstices ceremonies.]
My existing question “How Much Funding and Researchers were in AI, and AI Safety, in 2018”, which I think is “somewhat hard, but accessible, and doesn’t require specialist knowledge to answer.”
Summarize the important highlights of this paper (“Job, Career, Calling”) on how people relate to their job. Also seems pretty generalist.
Possible re-run that experiment on Mechanical Turk on a broader audience (I specifically wanted to know how people who work in “traditionally shitty jobs” related to their work.)
In general, I’d like to build an engine that translates “papers written in academic-ese” into “plain english summaries”.