Behold the space of ideas, back before EA even existed. The universe gives zero fucks about ensuring impactful ideas are also nice to work on, so there's no correlation between them. Isn't it symmetrical and beautiful? Oh no, people are coming...
By virtue of being of conferring more social status and enjoyment, attractive ideas get more attention and retain it better. When these ideas work, people make their celebratory EA forum post and everyone cheers. When they fail, the founders keep it quiet because announcing it is painful, embarrassing and poorly incentivized.
Be reminded of the earlier situation and then predict how it will affect the distribution of the remaining ideas
Leads to...
The impactful, attractive ideas that could work have largely been taken (leaving the stuff that looks good but doesn't work). The repulsive but impactful quadrant is rich in impactful ideas.
So to summarise, here's the EA idea space at present
So what do I recommend?
- Funders should give less credence to projects that EAs typically like to work on and more credence to those they don't. The reasoning presented to them is less likely to be motivated reasoning.
- EA should prioritise ideas that sound like no fun
- They're more neglected, less likely to have been tried already,
- You overestimated how much it would affect your happiness
- It's less likely that the idea hasn't already been tried and failed
- You're probably biased against them due to having heard less about them, for no reason other than people are less excited to work on them
- Announcing failed projects should be expected of EAs
- EAs should start setting an example
- Tune in next week for my list of failed projects
- There should be a small prize for the most embarrassing submissions
- Funders should look positively on EAs who announce their failed projects and negatively on EAs who don't.
- EAs should start setting an example
Keyest of points: Pay close attention to ideas that repel others people for non-impact related reasons, but not you. If you can get obsessed about something important that most people find horribly boring, you're uniquely well placed to make a big impact.
Tja! Good post. I have contemplated this myself for the last few weeks so I am really happy to see you post about it right now. Do you or anyone else have takes on whether it is advisable for people to pursue schlep? The concept on Ikigai, for example, emphasizes passion in what you pursue. Schlep is like the anti-passion. My personality is somewhat adapt at tolerating quite large amounts of schlep so I could just ignore what I think is fun and grit through some serious schlep, using caffeine, nicotine and motivating music as my crutches.
I am asking as some people have advised me against this, and think my impact will be higher, and my life better if I instead, a bit more selfishly pursue what I think is fun and instantly rewarding.
I am really unsure about how to resolve this. I guess the choice would be easy if there are 2 different projects I could work on with similar impact but where the only difference is that I think one is much more fun.
The reality is more like there are some things that are fun, but I am really unsure of the impact, especially the counterfactual impact, as other people seem to think that it is fun too. The schlep option, on the other hand, is stuff where I am really unsure if anyone else would pick it up if I did not pursue it.
To schlep or not to schlep - that is the question. I am partly inspired by Joey at CE - I think he is pretty serious about schlepping if I understood an interview with him correctly (search "sacrifice all your own happiness"). ASB also posted on some serious schlep being needed in biosecurity.
Number 2 there sounds like a new EA podcast: "The unsung warriors of EA" or something. All the podcasts are now about the "thinkers" and researchers - fascinating ideas and intellectually stimulating. The new podcast could instead be made interesting by focusing on the pain, challenges and the coping mechanisms of those schlepping hard. Maybe someone could start asking some serious schleppers about how they would like to be recognized, I just thought podcasts are good as they might simultaneously to recognizing people also inspire others to pursue schlep.