Comment on page
What is global-priorities-relevant research?
On this page we link to and discuss some takes on answers to the questions, Which research is most impactful? Which research should be prioritized?
Syllabi and course outlines that address global prioritization
Those listed below are at least somewhat tied to Effective Altruism.
(To be included here)
We next consider organizations that take a broad focus on helping humans, animals, and the future of civilization. Some of these have explicitly set priorities and research agendas, although the level of specificity varies. Most of the organizations below have some connections to Effective Altruism; over time, we aim to also look beyond this EA focus.
GPI focuses on prioritization research—what to prioritize and why; how to make these decisions. They focus less on how to implement improvements and interventions.
The agenda is divided into "The longtermism paradigm" and "General issues in global prioritisation."
The agenda focuses largely on formal theory (in philosophy, economics, and decision science) and, to a lesser extent., methodology. They aim to identify and inform "crucial considerations," and rarely focus on specific impact assessments.
Nonetheless, the agenda cites some empirical and directly policy-relevant work, and there are suggestions (e.g., from Eva Vivalt) that they might move more towards this in the future.
Below, I (Reinstein) list the categories from GPI's 2020 agenda. I give a first-pass impression of the relevance of these categories for The Unjournal, in something like descending order (bold = most clearly relevant).
More relevant to The Unjournal:
Less relevant to The Unjournal: "Intergenerational governance", "The value of the future of humanity", "Articulation and evaluation of longtermism", "Other ways of leveraging the size of the future", "Moral uncertainty for longtermists"
More relevant to The Unjournal:
To be expanded, cataloged, and considered in more detail
Happier Lives Institute research agenda ("Research Priorities," 2021): A particularly well organized discussion. Each section has a list of relevant academic literature, some of which is recent and some of which is applied or empirical.
Animal Charity Evaluators: Their "Methodology" and "Research briefs" are particularly helpful, and connect to a range of academic and policy research
Open Philanthropy (OP): “Technical and Philosophical Questions That Might Affect Our Grantmaking” is a fairly brief discussion and overview linking mostly to OP-funded research.
Giving What We Can's "high-impact causes": simple discussions of the cause they prioritize, backed by numbers and links/citations
Rethink Priorities 2021 strategy (forum post): Some directional suggestions in the "Our current plans" section under "Our research going forward is expected to focus on:"
UNICEF strategic plan: Not easy to link to research; they have a large number of priorities, goals, and principles; see infographic: 
Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research: Their "Findings" page considering relative cost-effectiveness; generally a shallow review/BOTEC spreadsheet approach. "CEARCH attempts to identify a cause’s marginal expected value (MEV)."
- Effective Thesis Project "research agendas": This page is particularly detailed and contains a range of useful links to other agendas!
- "What’s Worth Knowing? Economists’ Opinions about Economics" (Andre and Falk, 2022): The survey, as reported in the paper, does not suggest a particular agenda, but it does suggest a direction . . . economists would generally like to see more work in certain applied areas.
- Ten Years and Beyond: Economists Answer NSF's Call for Long-Term Research Agendas (Compendium, 2011): This seems extremely relevant. . . . NSF asked economists and others to "describe grand challenge questions . . . that transcend near-term funding cycles and are likely to drive next-generation research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.”
Effective Altruism: Research Priorities and Opportunities: Public hosted slides, presented at LIS 9 Jun 2021
Slides as single scrollable document
Last modified 8d ago