Visiting Researcher at CSER working on the interaction of SRM and Existential Risk, and looking at how we can study existential risk. Have an interest in AI governance as well
This should be pretty exciting and congrats on making this decison.
'm interested in the ways that this distancing can contribute to increasing a diversity of perspectives. How are you intending to ensure this happens?
David addresses a lot of the arguments for a 'Time of Perils'in his 'Existential Risk, Pessimism and the Time of Perils' paper which this moral mathematics paper is a follow up to
I think this project may be leaving significant amounts of impact on the table if the diversity of the regranting team is not increased. The key advantages one might suggest of regranting over traditional grantmaking is it is better at the 'explore' side of the 'explore-exploit' spectrum. However, this is significantly reduced without more diversity amongst regranters, as the people they know and networks they are in may be similar.
I don't know and haven't researched the history of each regranter (they all seem impressive and capable from a cursory glance!) However my impression is there is no one from Africa or Latin America (two burgening areas of xrisk activity), and also much of Asia (with the majority of the world's population in it, as well as at least two great powers in China and India). Failing to have such geographic diversity may make it harder to seek out the highest impact opportunities, and seems to miss some of the key advantages of regranting.
There are other axes as well that improved diversity amongst regranters may be better. The inclusion of more women may be another one that is important. Increased diversity of backgrounds, including more people with humanities/social science. It also may be interesting to have either a 'devil's advocate' regranter who is skeptical of longtermism to fund critical work on longtermism and xrisk, or to have a regranter who approaches xrisk from a less 'EA' paradigm to increase the diversity of approaches to xrisk mitigation that may be funded.
How to increase these diversities and more I'd a difficult question. The point isn't just a box-ticking exercise, but rather to have a portfolio of regranters diverse enough that we can be confident that as large a diversity of relevant projects can be touched by the programme as possible.
I think David has broadly addressed his views on this in 'Existential Risk Pessimism and the Time of Perils" (https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Thorstad-Existential-risk-pessimism-.pdf), which I believe this moral mathematics series is a follow up to
Sort of. Except it's a donation, so the latitude for difference is much less. EA funds is also less established in terms of investigations, coherent worldviews etc (not that individual grnatmakers don't, but it's not the same as the Rigour of openphil) which means EA Funds looks not too dissimilar to OpenPhil 2.0 I think
Yep, of course its their decision. But we can suggest whether we think it is the best thing to do with it. They could choose not to do that, doesn't make it the right thing. The point I'm making here is IF they believe that having a better functioning EA community will give you better results, then they (maybe) ought to want to break up Open Phil into a couple of organisations.
Would one solution to the lack of diversity in funders be to break up OpenPhil? And I don't just mean separate their different teams, I mean take some of their assets and make another completely separate and independent eg Longtermist grnatmaking organisation, with different staff, culture etc
This should be pretty exciting and congrats on making this decison. 'm interested in the ways that this distancing can contribute to increasing a diversity of perspectives. How are you intending to ensure this happens?
David addresses a lot of the arguments for a 'Time of Perils'in his 'Existential Risk, Pessimism and the Time of Perils' paper which this moral mathematics paper is a follow up to
FYI this paper seems to have a really good list of EA Organisations in it. This may well come in handy!
I think this project may be leaving significant amounts of impact on the table if the diversity of the regranting team is not increased. The key advantages one might suggest of regranting over traditional grantmaking is it is better at the 'explore' side of the 'explore-exploit' spectrum. However, this is significantly reduced without more diversity amongst regranters, as the people they know and networks they are in may be similar.
I don't know and haven't researched the history of each regranter (they all seem impressive and capable from a cursory glance!) However my impression is there is no one from Africa or Latin America (two burgening areas of xrisk activity), and also much of Asia (with the majority of the world's population in it, as well as at least two great powers in China and India). Failing to have such geographic diversity may make it harder to seek out the highest impact opportunities, and seems to miss some of the key advantages of regranting.
There are other axes as well that improved diversity amongst regranters may be better. The inclusion of more women may be another one that is important. Increased diversity of backgrounds, including more people with humanities/social science. It also may be interesting to have either a 'devil's advocate' regranter who is skeptical of longtermism to fund critical work on longtermism and xrisk, or to have a regranter who approaches xrisk from a less 'EA' paradigm to increase the diversity of approaches to xrisk mitigation that may be funded.
How to increase these diversities and more I'd a difficult question. The point isn't just a box-ticking exercise, but rather to have a portfolio of regranters diverse enough that we can be confident that as large a diversity of relevant projects can be touched by the programme as possible.
I think David has broadly addressed his views on this in 'Existential Risk Pessimism and the Time of Perils" (https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Thorstad-Existential-risk-pessimism-.pdf), which I believe this moral mathematics series is a follow up to
Sort of. Except it's a donation, so the latitude for difference is much less. EA funds is also less established in terms of investigations, coherent worldviews etc (not that individual grnatmakers don't, but it's not the same as the Rigour of openphil) which means EA Funds looks not too dissimilar to OpenPhil 2.0 I think
I agree, it's not useful if it's just OpenPhil2.0. I'd hope Cari and Dustin would work out a way it would not be that if they wanted to
Yep, of course its their decision. But we can suggest whether we think it is the best thing to do with it. They could choose not to do that, doesn't make it the right thing. The point I'm making here is IF they believe that having a better functioning EA community will give you better results, then they (maybe) ought to want to break up Open Phil into a couple of organisations.
Would one solution to the lack of diversity in funders be to break up OpenPhil? And I don't just mean separate their different teams, I mean take some of their assets and make another completely separate and independent eg Longtermist grnatmaking organisation, with different staff, culture etc
Where would you say this is already happening?