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?

At The Unjournal, we are open to various approaches to the issues of "what is the most impactful research"? Perhaps looking at some of the research, we have already evaluated and research we are prioritizing (public link coming soon) will give you some insights. However, it seems fair that we should give at least one candidate description or definition.

A candidate description/definition; 'direct global impact of research'

"The direct global impact of a work of research is determined by the value of the information that it provides in helping individuals, governments, funders, and policymakers make better decisions. While research may not definitively answer key questions it should leave us more informed (in a Bayesian sense, 'more concentrated belief distributions') about these. We will measure the value of these 'better choices' in terms of the extent these improve the welfare of humans and other sentient beings, and the survival and flourishing of life and human civilization and values."

The above comes close to how some people on The Unjournal team think about research impact and prioritization, but we don't plan to adopt an official guiding definition.

Note the above definition is meant to exclude more basic research, which may also be high value, but which mainly serves as a building block for other research. In fact, The Unjournal does consider the value of research as an input into other research, particularly when it directly influences direct policy-relevant research, e.g., see "Replicability & Generalisability: A Guide to CEA discounts" .

It also excludes the value of "learning the truth" as an intrinsic good; we have tended not to make this a priority.

For more guidance on how we apply this, see our High-level considerations for prioritizing research.

Others' takes on this question, resources...

Syllabi

Syllabi and course outlines that address global prioritization

EA-linked

Those listed below are at least somewhat tied to Effective Altruism.

Rhys-Bernard: reading syllabus - An introduction to global priorities research for economists

Phil Trammel: "Topics in Economic Theory & Global Prioritization" - 2023 slides/syllabus/references

See also

• "Existing resources (economics focused)" page in "Economics for EA and vice versa" Gitbook

• Stafforini's list of EA syllabi here

Other representative and relevant syllabi

(To be included here)

Funder/organization research agendas

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.

Global Priorities Institute research agenda (2020)

GPI research agenda – considerations

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.

GPI research agenda – categories and content

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).

1. The longtermism paradigm🎉

More relevant to The Unjournal:

• "Reducing and mitigating catastrophic risk"

• "Economic growth, population growth, and inequality"

• "Forecasting the long-term future"

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"

2. General issues in global prioritisation

More relevant to The Unjournal:

• Distributions of cost-effectiveness

• Institutions

• Optimal timing and discounting

• Diversification and hedging

• Modelling altruism

• Altruistic coordination

Less relevant: Decision-theoretic issues, Epistemological issues

"Research agenda draft for GPI economics"

Open Philanthropy

Social Science Research Topics for Global Health and Wellbeing; posted on the EA Forum as "Social science research we'd like to see on global health and wellbeing"

Social Science Research Topics for Animal Welfare posted on the EA Forum as Social science research we'd like to see on animal welfare

“Technical and Philosophical Questions That Might Affect Our Grantmaking” is a fairly brief discussion and overview linking mostly to OP-funded research.

Other agendas and discussions

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

Also consider

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)."

General advice

• Effective Thesis Project "research agendas": This page is particularly detailed and contains a range of useful links to other agendas!

• 80000 Hours research questions by discipline

• "Cause X guide"

• Cause-mapping resources (sheet with links, associated with Falk Lieder)

Psychology and well-being

• EA Psychology research agenda

• How effective altruism can help psychologists maximize their impact (Gainsburg et al, 2021)

• Spencer Greenberg's list of "most important psychology topics"

• Life Improvement Science "Potential Research Priorities..." also "Grand challenges"

Economics: overviews and prioritization exercises

• "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.”

Reinstein's slides/outline of this field and opportunities

Effective Altruism: Research Priorities and Opportunities: Public hosted slides, presented at LIS 9 Jun 2021daaronr.github.io

Slides

Effective Altruism: Research Priorities and Opportunities: Public hosted slides, presented at LIS 9 Jun 2021daaronr.github.io

Slides as single scrollable document

See also (internal/Unjournal discussions)

Research scoping discussion spaces