[Skill profile] “Research skills” by Benjamin Hilton

Learn how to do research, and how you can use research skills to do good.

Narrated by AI.

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Outline:

(01:21) Key facts on fit

(01:43) Why are research skills valuable?

(02:42) Research seems to have been extremely high-impact historically

(04:30) There are good theoretical reasons to think that research will be high-impact

(05:31) Research skills seem extremely useful to the problems we think are most pressing

(07:17) If you're a good fit, you can have much more impact than the average

(07:43) Depending on which subject you focus on, you may have good backup options

(09:03) What does building research skills typically involve?

(09:20) Academic research

(11:05) Practical but big picture research

(13:02) Applied research

(14:32) Stages of progression through building and using research skills

(17:07) Personal fit is perhaps more important for research than other skills

(18:02) How much do researchers differ in productivity?

(21:04) Can you predict these differences in advance?

(22:03) What does this mean for building research skills?

(23:03) How to evaluate your fit

(23:07) How to predict your fit in advance

(25:43) How to tell if you're on track

(27:25) Within academic research

(28:00) Within independent research

(28:20) Within research in industry or policy

(28:32) How to get started building research skills

(31:59) Choosing a research field

(36:10) Once you have these skills, how can you best apply them to have an impact?

(36:49) Which research topics are the highest-impact?

(37:37) Using the problem framework

(39:19) Rules of thumb for finding unfairly neglected questions

(42:29) Find jobs that use a research skills

(42:45) Career paths we've reviewed that use these skills

(43:56) Learn more about research

(44:31) Explore other useful skills

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 18th, 2023

Last updated:
December 14th, 2023

Source:
https://80000hours.org/skills/research

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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