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My brain dump "Potential priority areas within cognitive sciences (psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind)":
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12m_KDzKWfwQebrHGN4G4XCVIYPUHrm05Z6SB_loZr5w/edit
If you were able to assign a bunch of social scientists (psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, etc.) to study the most important questions in the world, what questions would you ask?
This post is inspired by the lack of EA relevant academic literature in the behavioral sciences. Excellent exceptions to this rule include work by Lucius Caviola and Stefan Schubert (e.g., "The Many Obstacles to Effective Giving", http://journal.sjdm.org/19/190810/jdm190810.pdf ; and "The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction", https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50145-9 ). But outside of their work, there seems to be very few people studying human behavior from an EA perspective.
For a few more examples of the kinds of important questions social scientists could be working on, check out this article on why AI Safety research needs more social scientists: https://distill.pub/2019/safety-needs-social-scientists/
Personal background: I am a Princeton Psychology PhD student working on projects ranging from neuroimaging to infohazard reduction and promotion of effective giving. I would love to hear what the EA Forum thinks academics should be studying :)
My brain dump "Potential priority areas within cognitive sciences (psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind)":
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12m_KDzKWfwQebrHGN4G4XCVIYPUHrm05Z6SB_loZr5w/edit
This is cool, thanks for sharing! Looks like Lucius Caviola's and Stefan Schubert's research projects are already on your radar ;)
A lot of cause-specific research relates to these disciplines! I don't have a go-to list that answers your question directly as asked, but here are a few examples of resources that touch on this that might help to spark some ideas
Some quick thoughts (there is certainly already research on these but they seem important, and I don't know about reliability of existing research):
I like these a lot! Thanks for sharing :)
80,000 Hours made a list of Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline. The disciplines include psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, economics, sociology, and some other potentially relevant disciplines.
Also, I made a central directory for open research questions, and many of the questions that can be found via that either are behavioural science questions or could inspire behavioural science questions. (The 80,000 Hours article drew on the directory, so it contains a more curated and organised-by-discipline selection from that, but the directory provides a larger total menu.)
Skimming through my directory for collections that I think might be particularly relevant, some that stand out are:
(Those categories are pretty arbitrary and quick and only for the purpose of this comment.)
This is really cool! Thanks for sharing, Michael :)
Great question! These are just some initial instincts - I'm not sure any of these questions are overly neglected, and they are too broad to be research questions, but curious to hear what others think:
I think these are really important questions too!
I've proposed a number of things that I would love to see tested:
- Can we adapt Carl Rogers to real life? Inspire people to see ourselves in others (empathy), see the best in others (positive regard), and bring out the best in others.
- Can we expand Can Do attitudes? Can we put aside our doubts, do the work, and end up understanding, respecting, cooperating with, and bringing out the best in others in unexpected ways?
- Can we use our complex buying behaviors to foster empathy and positive regard? We buy different things, but we often have similar coveting, budgeting, browsing, shopping, and hoarding experiences. Can knowledge and sophistication in buying widgets help people build empathy and positive regard for people who buy doodads?
- Can exposing people to different kinds of biases help them better understand different kinds of discrimination?
- Safe driving allows us to foster altruistic and cooperative behavior on a global scale. Can we expand it to general society? Teach everyone to listen (instead of yield), check their biases (instead of the blind spots), reject Ideological Rage (instead of road rage).
More details here:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7srarHqktkHTBDYLq/bringing-out-the-best-in-humanity
How must we get systematically organized to alleviate suffering in the world?
I've done a bit of thinking on this topic, main post here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vCQpJLNFpDdHyikFy/are-the-social-sciences-challenging-because-of-fundamental
I'm most excited about fundamental research in the behavioral sciences, just ideally done much better. I think the work of people like Joseph Henrick/David Graeber/Robin Hanson was useful and revealing. It seems to me like right now our general state of understanding is quite poor, so what I imagine as minor improvements in particular areas feel less impactful than just better overall understanding.
It has been very frustrating sitting in Psychology seminars led by big prestigious professors, listening to them spout absolute nonsense completely unsupported by quantitative analysis. So I feel your pain for sure!
Digging up one of my old tweets: Social Psych talk: no error bars, description of stats, or listing size of subject groups. p values displayed as p=0. This is accepted?