Project survey

[John Salvatier]

I have emailed the top 10 list except for wedrifid (couldn't find contact info) plus Louie Helm, Michael Vassar and Carl Shulman. I've sent out a link to the sheet I am using to keep track of responses. 

I think the next steps will be to understand the results of the survey, start the True Project Rejection Challenge, and write up the results of the survey.

The final version of the email I used was: 

Dear X,

I hope I find you well!

Many projects would benefit people interested in living rationally but no individuals are motivated enough to execute them (more). The Public Goods Team is trying to encourage and facilitate systematic and organized work on such projects. One of our first steps is to identify the projects that are the lowest hanging fruit: those projects which are high value, and inexpensive (in terms of time, motivation, money etc.). We have come up with a preliminary list of such projects.

We are especially interested in your judgment of which projects are most attractive, because we think the judgments of smart people who have thought about this sort of thing are especially informative. Thus we are conducting a small survey of the LessWrong top 10 contributors list and others who seem relevant. We will use the results of the survey to help us focus our efforts on the most valuable projects. We will also write up our results and post them to LessWrong.

We have two questions:

• What projects not on the list seem low cost and high value?
• What projects seem like they are especially high value and low cost?

If you would like to reply publicly (very much appreciated), please send your reply to lw-public-...@googlegroups.com

Cheers,

John Salvatier

The list:

EliezerYudkowsky

Yvain

Alicorn

lukeprog

PhilGoetz

Kaj_Sotola

AnnaSalamon

weidai

cousin_it

wedrifid

MicheaelVassar

Louie

CarlShulman

[Aaron Tucker]

Awesome!