EA - What Rethink Priorities General Longtermism Team Did in 2022, and Updates in Light of the Current Situation by Linch

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What Rethink Priorities General Longtermism Team Did in 2022, and Updates in Light of the Current Situation, published by Linch on December 14, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryRethink Priorities’ General Longtermism team, led by me, has existed for just under a year. In this post, I summarize our work so far.Our initial theory of change centered around:Primarily, facilitating the creation of faster and better longtermist “megaprojects” (though in practice, we focused more on somewhat scalable longtermist projects).Secondarily, improving strategy clarity about which “intermediate goals” longtermists should pursue (though in practice, we focused more opportunistically on miscellaneous high-impact research questions). (more)We had ~5 Full-time Equivalents (FTE) on average (a total of 54.5 FTE months of research work up until the end of November) and spent ~$721,000. (more)(Shareable) Outputs and outcomes of our work this year include:I encouraged the creation of and supported the Rethink Priorities’ Special Projects team, which provides fiscal sponsorship to external entrepreneurial projects.Marie and Renan (based on prior work by Renan, Max, and me) made a simple model for prioritizing between longtermist projects and identifying ones that seemed especially promising to research further. (more)Our fellows and research assistant (Emma, Jam, Joe, Max, Marie) completed 13 research “speedruns” (~10h shallow dives) into specific longtermist projects. (more)Our fellows and research assistant (Emma, Jam, Joe, Max, Marie) completed further research on several longtermist projects, including air sterilization techniques, whistleblowing, the AI safety recruiting pipeline, and infrastructure to support independent researchers. (more)Renan cofounded and ran Condor Camp, a project that aims to find and engage world-class talent in Brazil for longtermist causes while also field-building longtermism and supporting EA community building in the country. (more)Ben cofounded and ran Pathfinder, a project to help mid-career professionals to find the highest impact work (more)I initiated a founder search for multiple promising projects, including:Shelters and other civilizational resilience work (resulting in recommending grants to Tereza Fildrova, who helped organize the SHELTER weekend, and Ulrik Horn, who is exploiting his fit for work in this area). (more)An early warning forecasting center (resulting in working with Alex D to explore founding a project in this area). (more)Ben researched nanotechnology strategy and made a database of resources relevant to this area. (more)Separately from my work at Rethink Priorities, I was a guest fund manager for EA Funds’ Long-Term Future Fund, and a regranter for the Future Fund. (more)The recent changes to the EA funding situation have significantly affected our team’s strategy, in that megaprojects now seem less relevant, and in that new research questions might have become especially important in light of the FTX crash. (more) However, I still think it’s very plausible that we continue to focus on entrepreneurial longtermist projects as our main research area. We’re currently in the process of reorienting and setting our strategy for 2023. (more)You can help our team by contributing ideas for highly impactful research projects, funding us, expressing interest in working with us, and giving feedback on the work and plans outlined in this post. (more)PreambleI’ve led the new General Longtermism team at Rethink Priorities for slightly under a year. Recent changes in the EA funding landscape have had a large impact on our work. I’ve decided that now is a good time to write a detailed summary of our work so far, as well as how recent events have affected our work.The primary purpose of this article is to be informa...