EAs should take on ambitious projects with high expected value, even if they have a high chance of failure. And people deserve praise for taking on those projects, whether they succeed or fail.
I want to give praise to those people. Who are they?
One example is No Lean Season[1]—a promising global poverty intervention that turned out not to work as well as expected. Good on them for running this project, and good on them for shutting it down when it didn't pan out.
What are some other examples? If you did something that you thought was high-EV but ended up failing, feel free to name yourself!
H/T Will MacAskill for this example. ↩︎
That's fascinating! What do you think were the key differences between the 2016 approach and the 2018 approach, and how much was just luck of timing?
I think three key differences:
By 2018, we had more of a track record before starting.
For the 2018 attempt, we self-funded for six months before seeking funding to build an even bigger track record, rather than trying to get funding right at the beginning.
EA funding was notably more plentiful in 2018 than 2016. (Though still notably less plentiful than in 2022.)