Hi Milan – there’s not much more to say here. The grants in question aren’t housed under our Other Scientific Research portfolio because we didn’t recommended them, because they didn’t go through our standard prioritization and investigation process. Most of Good Ventures’ giving is based on recommendations from Open Phil and GiveWell, but Good Ventures has made and will continue to make occasional other grants as they see fit. We think that’s perfectly normal and expect that the same thing would occur if and when we partner closely with other funders.
To which I replied:
Thanks, Michael. I feel like we’re somewhat talking past each other – I’m curious for more detail about why the psychedelic grants & the Alzheimer’s grants didn’t go through Open Phil’s standard processes. Can you say more about that?
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.)
Hi Milan. Nope, not much more to say here. I feel like my last couple of answers have exhausted what there is to say on this. Sorry to not be more helpful.
Michael Levine replied:
To which I replied:
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.)
And Michael replied:
It’s Dustin and Cari’s money, so it’s their decision what to do with it.