Yeah, so, my experience from working in academia says to me that the odds of finding two researchers with a similar frame on a novel problem and good social chemistry such that they add to each other’s productivity is something like between 1⁄200 and 1/1000, even after filtering for ‘competent researchers interested in the general topic’. So I’m not at all surprised that the results of getting about 10 new researchers working on alignment has not found a match yet.
From my experience working in industry, I think that a big failing of the attempts I’ve seen at organizing research groups is undervaluing a good manager. Having someone who is ‘people-oriented’ to coach and coordinate is important for preventing burnout, and for keeping several ‘research-oriented’ people focused on working together on a given task instead of wandering off in different directions.
Yeah, so, my experience from working in academia says to me that the odds of finding two researchers with a similar frame on a novel problem and good social chemistry such that they add to each other’s productivity is something like between 1⁄200 and 1/1000, even after filtering for ‘competent researchers interested in the general topic’. So I’m not at all surprised that the results of getting about 10 new researchers working on alignment has not found a match yet.
From my experience working in industry, I think that a big failing of the attempts I’ve seen at organizing research groups is undervaluing a good manager. Having someone who is ‘people-oriented’ to coach and coordinate is important for preventing burnout, and for keeping several ‘research-oriented’ people focused on working together on a given task instead of wandering off in different directions.