TL;DR Having a good research track record is some evidence of good big-picture takes, but it's weak evidence. Strategic thinking is hard, and requires different skills. But people often conflate these skills, leading to excessive deference to researchers in the field, without evidence that that person is good at strategic thinking specifically. I certainly try to have good strategic takes, but it's hard, and you shouldn't assume I succeed!
Introduction
I often find myself giving talks or Q&As about mechanistic interpretability research. But inevitably, I'll get questions about the big picture: "What's the theory of change for interpretability?", "Is this really going to help with alignment?", "Does any of this matter if we can’t ensure all labs take alignment seriously?". And I think people take my answers to these way too seriously.
These are great questions, and I'm happy to try answering them. But I've noticed a bit of a pathology: people seem to assume that because I'm (hopefully!) good at the research, I'm automatically well-qualified to answer these broader strategic questions. I think this is a mistake, a form of undue deference that is both incorrect and unhelpful. I certainly try to have good strategic takes, and I think this makes me better at my job, but this is far from sufficient. Being good at research and being good at high level strategic thinking are just fairly different skillsets!
But isn’t someone being good at research strong evidence they’re also good at strategic thinking? I personally think it’s moderate evidence, but far from sufficient. One key factor is that a very hard part of strategic thinking is the lack of feedback. Your reasoning about confusing long-term factors need to extrapolate from past trends and make analogies from things you do understand better, and it can be quite hard to tell if what you're saying is complete bullshit or not. In an empirical science like mechanistic interpretability, however, you can get a lot more fe
I endorse most of Max's recommendations.
Based on my own experience I would definitely recommend being very cautious about RSI, i.e. especially resting carefully, as well as investing in solutions like more ergonomic devices, voice control, reading different resources (e.g. about good posture and different solutions) and visiting physiotherapists and other specicialists. I was largely unable to type or use a computer for 2-3 years due to RSI and I attribute a lot of this not having rested enough early on (despite the fact that I actually did reduce my activity quite dramatically almost immediately upon experiencing symptoms).
Another thing I would note is that although I think it's good to seek help from different experts, I would treat this very critically. I received completely conflicting, but entirely confidently expressed, diagnoses and recommendations from a number of different GPs, physiotherapists and consultant rheumatologists. Some of the literature I read myself also explicitly suggested that tendinopathies tended to be poorly understood by frontline medics, though I'm not in a position to evaluate whether that is the case (or at least true relative to other conditions). Some of the things which were recommended seem to have some evidence suggesting potential for harm (e.g. strengthening exercises, anti-inflammatories and immobilising wrist braces), so there are some grounds for caution.
One of the few things I would recommend that wasn't mentioned in Max's post, so far as I recall, and isn't mentioned in a lot of resources was keeping your hands warm, but I see you mentioned that in your own comment. There also seems to be some evidence that nutrition can be relevant for tendon healing (assuming that your RSI is related to your tendons): see this review. The main things they point to are vitamin C, taurine, vitamin A, glycine, vitamin E
Aand leucine.I'm also happy to talk about this 1-1 if you like.
How did your pain eventually go away, David ?