Donating to FHI is still extremely safe on the weirdness spectrum. They’re part of Oxford. Actual risky stuff would be paying promising researchers directly in non-tax deductible ways. But this is weird enough to trip people’s alarms. You get no accolades for doing this, in fact quite the opposite, you will lose status when the ‘obviously crazy’ thing fails. We see the same thing in VC funding, where this supposed bastion of frontier challenging risk takers mostly engages in band-wagoning.
Is there any tax-deductible way to give promising researchers money directly (or through some 3rd party that didn’t take a cut)? Seems like someone could set up a 501c3 that allowed for that pretty easily.
Donating to FHI is still extremely safe on the weirdness spectrum. They’re part of Oxford. Actual risky stuff would be paying promising researchers directly in non-tax deductible ways. But this is weird enough to trip people’s alarms. You get no accolades for doing this, in fact quite the opposite, you will lose status when the ‘obviously crazy’ thing fails. We see the same thing in VC funding, where this supposed bastion of frontier challenging risk takers mostly engages in band-wagoning.
Is there any tax-deductible way to give promising researchers money directly (or through some 3rd party that didn’t take a cut)? Seems like someone could set up a 501c3 that allowed for that pretty easily.