Refusing to work on capabilities is neither necessary nor sufficient for lab safety employees to have high impact. What about something like this?
Before taking on any project, even if it is billed as safety, i will consider whether it’s close to the maximum possible impact I could make, and only work on it if it is.
I will count capabilities externalities of my work in this estimate, which could make the overall impact net negative.
I am aware that working on other things might be an easier path to promotion, or earn more respect from colleagues. i am committed to resisting these incentives.
I think there’s a natural bias toward overestimating positive impact and underestimating capability externalities. Overall this could easily lead to a community with overall negative impact, and I’d guess it has. If so, it might be optimal to try to add an explicit corrective bias against this. For this reason I prefer Leo’s statement.
Refusing to work on capabilities is neither necessary nor sufficient for lab safety employees to have high impact. What about something like this?
Before taking on any project, even if it is billed as safety, i will consider whether it’s close to the maximum possible impact I could make, and only work on it if it is.
I will count capabilities externalities of my work in this estimate, which could make the overall impact net negative.
I am aware that working on other things might be an easier path to promotion, or earn more respect from colleagues. i am committed to resisting these incentives.
I think there’s a natural bias toward overestimating positive impact and underestimating capability externalities. Overall this could easily lead to a community with overall negative impact, and I’d guess it has.
If so, it might be optimal to try to add an explicit corrective bias against this. For this reason I prefer Leo’s statement.