research-methodology

npx skills add majiayu000/claude-skill-registry --skill research-methodology --agent claude-code

Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.

# Research Methodology: Tips for Empirical Alignment Research *Based on [Ethan Perez's post](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/dZFpEdKyb9Bf4xYn7/tips-for-empirical-alignment-research). Applies to highly experimental LLM alignment research (scalable oversight, adversarial robustness, chain-of-thought faithfulness, process-based oversight, model organisms of misalignment).* ## Core Principles ### 1. Hard Work Pays Off - Run as many experiments as you can, tinker a lot, try lots of stuff - Often many reasonable-sounding ideas need testing—sometimes the 5th or 20th thing is what works - **"Rich get richer" effect**: the more you experiment, the better you get at picking the right experiments - More things work when you try more stuff → easier to stay motivated ### 2. Rapid Iteration (Velocity) - **Reduce uncertainty at the fastest possible rate** (Jacob Steinhardt) - Get quick feedback and iterate on ideas rapidly - With LLMs, you can reduce uncertainty really quickly—even with a single message to GPT-4/Claude - Can gain 1+ OOMs more information per unit time by derisking ideas in the quickest way possible ### 3. Avoid the "Swamp" - The **swamp** = getting stuck when you really want