Do you think it's an issue that scientists' research preferences are determined relatively arbitrarily (and so most likely suboptimally) right now? For example, many promising STEM undergrads specialize into physics/math even though the impact of research in these fields is arguably much lower/more tangential than (specific fields of) bio/pharma research, which could use the talent. Idea from my friend @Noah Birnbaum 

Hi Saloni! 

I wrote the latest Notes on Progress piece on the recent approval of Journavx. While researching, I encountered this interesting interview with Vertex Pharma CSO where he says that when moving from academia to industry, he was "sur­prised to dis­cov­er there were so many com­pa­nies that had projects not re­al­ly fo­cused on [causal] human bi­ol­o­gy and many hammers look­ing for nails."

He also believes that "there’s [no] wid­get or tech­nol­o­gy, whether it be the Hu­man Genome Project, or AI, or struc­ture-based drug de­sign, or what­ev­er you want to name, that trans­forms every­thing."

This isn't my area of expertise, so I found these statements interesting since they contradict a bit with mainstream or even technoptimist narratives. Any thoughts/agreement/disagreement, or do you know of any specific examples that align or contradict? I'd love to research & write more on this topic. 

+1 to everything here! These guys have been doing a great job running UChicago EA, very happy to leave it in their hands :) 

Thanks for posting! Your discussion of mistakes and rationality-and-epistemics-focused community-building reminded of this post, particularly Will's comment about funding/supporting a red team to criticize EA/longtermism. Is Open Phil open to doing  something like this?