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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: We should consider funding well-known think tanks to do EA policy research, published by DavidZhang on February 19, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Background: I am a Research Fellow at Europe's largest foreign policy think tank. Some of the points may not translate to a non-UK context, though I hope that most do. I'm very keen to hear comments especially from others working in policy and also open to discussing bilaterally. Instead of funding EA organisations to do EA policy research, we should consider funding existing, well-known think tanks to do this work. Often this might be preferable to doing the work 'in house', through an EA-organisation such as FHI or CSER. Examples of the kind of EA policy work we could fund think tanks to do include: Assessing of the likelihood of WW3 (as per Stephen Clare's excellent post) Comparing the merits of different voting systems Researching the most effective policies to reduce air pollution in middle-income countries Making the case for greater foreign aid contributions from developed countries Promoting international, shared AI standards This is not an original idea. A recent Founders Pledge report recommended funding Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to restart their Track II dialogue between the US and China. However, I think it is pretty rare for EAs to fund non-EA think tanks to do things, and I wanted to make the case from the perspective of a current think tanker. The power of funders One thing that has surprised me since I began working in a think tank is how much influence funders have over the scope and activities of a research project. It is not unusual for funders to be involved in: Setting the parameters of the research Specifying exactly what the research is used for, or whom Recruitment for the project Which organisations/partners are involved The tone of the research, and in some cases even the conclusions/recommendations Since the EA movement is somewhat cash-rich, and most of the bottlenecks are around time, expertise and capacity, our prior should be that paying experts to do valuable things is likely to be a good use of money. Think tanks seem like a clear case of experts and time which can be bought through funding. Of course, being an active funder also takes time and some level of expertise, however it requires less of both compared to doing our own research. Benefits of working through existing think tanks Expertise The most obvious benefit of working with existing think tanks is that they are full of experts who know a lot about issues that are of interest to EAs. This is particularly beneficial if we think that a distinction can be made between technical expertise and the ability to make good decisions. While EAs are good at the latter, they are often not the best at the former. For example, when it comes to US-China conflict (an issue I work on a bit), I would generally trust a well-informed EA to make better policy decisions, because they are likely to have good aims and do cost-benefit analysis well. However, I would not rank EA China experts above other China experts at Brookings or Chatham House in terms of their subject matter or technical expertise. This distinction implies that we want to get EAs to a position where they can make decisions and do cost-benefit analysis (e.g. it would be great to have an EA-aligned US Secretary of State, or EA-aligned foreign policy advisers in Beijing), but the technical research on China's hypersonic weapons, the chances of war, Beijing's intentions for Taiwan, US public opinion towards China, etc., does not need to be done by EAs. In fact it is likely to be performed better by experts at the best foreign policy think tanks. Experts are also aware of other ideas in the space and what is already popular or politically feasible, and may possess us...