a) GV asked Open Phil if they had the capacity to look into psychedelics/Alzheimer’s, and Open Phil said “no”
b) GV asked Open Phil for shallow investigations of those areas, and the results weren’t promising enough for Open Phil to want to continue, but weren’t so un-promising that GV gave up
c) GV has some research capacity independent of Open Phil, and decided to use it on these causes (maybe because Dustin/Cari see them as personally motivating/”warm fuzzies”, even if they are potentially high-impact)
...there are plenty of other possibilities I haven’t had time to think of, but some combination of (a) and (c) feels pretty likely to me. (This is entirely speculative; I have no special insight into the relationship between GV and Open Phil.)
I can imagine a couple of scenarios:
a) GV asked Open Phil if they had the capacity to look into psychedelics/Alzheimer’s, and Open Phil said “no”
b) GV asked Open Phil for shallow investigations of those areas, and the results weren’t promising enough for Open Phil to want to continue, but weren’t so un-promising that GV gave up
c) GV has some research capacity independent of Open Phil, and decided to use it on these causes (maybe because Dustin/Cari see them as personally motivating/”warm fuzzies”, even if they are potentially high-impact)
...there are plenty of other possibilities I haven’t had time to think of, but some combination of (a) and (c) feels pretty likely to me. (This is entirely speculative; I have no special insight into the relationship between GV and Open Phil.)