Miscellaneous and Meta

Resources for potential project ideas

Please note this is not an exhaustive list, and we’d be excited to see applications on topics we’ve not thought to include below.

Miscellaneous

Applied longtermist global priorities research and x-risk cause prioritization

• Doing empirical global priorities research - Luisa Rodriguez, 2020

  • “Unanswered questions” slide from this talk

• What is the likelihood that civilizational collapse would directly lead to human extinction (within decades)? (‘Other research directions’ section) - Luisa Rodriguez for Forethought Foundation, 2020

Social sciences, great power relations and existential risk factors

• Politics, Policy, and Security from a Broad Longtermist Perspective: A Preliminary Research Agenda - Michael Aird for Rethink Priorities, 2021

• Michael Aird Research statement for FHI RSP - Michael Aird, 2020

• Humanities Research Ideas for Longtermists - Lizka Vaintrob for Rethink Priorities, 2021

• Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate - Michael Aird, 2020

• Some research ideas on the history of social movements - Rose Hadshar, 2022

• Towards a longtermist framework for evaluating democracy-related interventions (‘Directions for future research’ section) - Marie Buhl & Tom Barnes for Rethink Priorities, 2021

• ALLFED: Research priorities (2021) and Effective Theses topic ideas (2019) on global catastrophe preparation around food/starvation

• Seeking social science students / collaborators interested in AI existential risks (‘Research questions’ section) - Vael Gates, 2021

• Space Governance (‘Concrete questions in space governance you could research’ section) - Fin Moorhouse, 2022

• Legal Priorities Research: A Research Agenda (‘Space Governance’ section, pp. 105-112) - Legal Priorities Project, 2021

• Space governance is important, tractable and neglected (‘How to work on this?’ section) - Tobias Baumann, 2020

Forecasting and improving institutional decision-making (IIDM)

• Forecasting AI Progress: A Research Agenda - Gruetzemacher, Dorner, Bernaola-Alvarez, Giattino, & Manheim, 2020 (comments here)

• How valuable would more academic research on forecasting be? What questions should be researched? - Michael Aird, 2020

• Research Directions on Improving Policymaking - EA Geneva, 2020

• Legal Priorities Research: A Research Agenda (‘Institutional Design’ section, pp. 83-98) - Legal Priorities Project, 2021

The misc of the misc

• Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline - Arden Koehler & Howie Lempel for 80,000 Hours, 2020

The above list is partly a selection from Michael Aird’s A central directory for open research questions, and partly an original and more up to date list curated by Will Aldred.

Meta

Macrostrategy and theoretical longtermist global priorities research

• The Global Priorities Institute’s research agenda - 2020

• Crucial questions for longtermists - Michael Aird for Convergence Analysis, 2020

• Self-Study Directions [and Research Directions] in macrostrategy - Denis Drescher, 2020