Before dismissing blog posts keep in mind the Sequences were blog posts. And they are probably much more useful and important than all but the best academic papers.
How are we measuring useful or important? The sequences are entertaining, but its not clear to me they do much to actually help with the core goals of MIRI (besides the goal of entertaining people enough to fund MIRI, perhaps).
The advantage of a high-impact academic paper is it shapes the culture of academic research. A good idea in a well-received research paper will almost instantly lead to lots of other researchers working on the same problems. A great idea on a well-received research paper can get an entire sub-field working on the same problem.
The sequences are more advertisements than formalized research. Its papers like the one on Lob's obstacle that get researchers interested in working on these problems.
The sequences are more advertisements than formalized research. Its papers like the one on Lob's obstacle that get researchers interested in working on these problems.
I think that's up for debate.
And the sequences aren't "just advertisements".
I don't know any LW-ers in person, but I'm sure that at least some people have benefited from reading the sequences.
Can't really speak on behalf of researchers, but their motivations could literally be anything, maybe just finding the work interesting, to altruistic reasons or financial incentives.
Many people have an incorrect view of the Future of Humanity Institute's funding situation, so this is a brief note to correct that; think of it as a spiritual successor to this post. As John Maxwell puts it, FHI is "one of the three organizations co-sponsoring LW [and] a group within the University of Oxford's philosophy department that tackles important, large-scale problems for humanity like how to go about reducing existential risk." (If you're not familiar with our work, this article is a nice, readable introduction, and our director, Nick Bostrom, wrote Superintelligence.) Though we are a research institute in an ancient and venerable institution, this does not guarantee funding or long-term stability.