What would this mean exactly? I assume OpenPhil have already splitt up different types of funding between different teams of people. So what would it mean in practice to split up OpenPhil itself?
Making it into two legal entities? I don’t think the number of legal entitets matters.
Moving the teams working on different problems to different offices?
So OpenPhil is split into different teams, but I’ll focus specifically on their grants in XRisk/Longtermism.
OpenPhil, either directly or indirectly, are essentially the only major funder of XRisk. Most other funders essentially follow OpenPhil. Even though I think they are very competent, the fact the field has one monolithic funder isn’t great for diversity and creativity; certainly I’ve heard a philosopher of science describe xrisk as one of the most hierarchical fields they have seen, a lot due to this.
OpenPhil/Dustin Moskovitz have assets. They could break up into a number of legal entities with their own assets, some overlapping on cause area (eg 2 or 3 xrisk funders). You would want them to be culturally different; work from different offices, have people with different approaches to xrisk etc. This could really help reduce the hierarchy and lack of creativity in this field.
Some other funding ideas/structures are discussed here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039368117303278
What would this mean exactly? I assume OpenPhil have already splitt up different types of funding between different teams of people. So what would it mean in practice to split up OpenPhil itself?
Making it into two legal entities? I don’t think the number of legal entitets matters.
Moving the teams working on different problems to different offices?
So OpenPhil is split into different teams, but I’ll focus specifically on their grants in XRisk/Longtermism. OpenPhil, either directly or indirectly, are essentially the only major funder of XRisk. Most other funders essentially follow OpenPhil. Even though I think they are very competent, the fact the field has one monolithic funder isn’t great for diversity and creativity; certainly I’ve heard a philosopher of science describe xrisk as one of the most hierarchical fields they have seen, a lot due to this. OpenPhil/Dustin Moskovitz have assets. They could break up into a number of legal entities with their own assets, some overlapping on cause area (eg 2 or 3 xrisk funders). You would want them to be culturally different; work from different offices, have people with different approaches to xrisk etc. This could really help reduce the hierarchy and lack of creativity in this field. Some other funding ideas/structures are discussed here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039368117303278