Do you also feel funding constrained in the longtermist portion of your work? (Conventional wisdom is that neartermist causes are more funding constrained than longtermist ones.)
Mostly yes. It definitely is the case that, if we were given more cash than the cash that we already have, we could meaningfully accelerate our longtermism team in a way that we cannot do with the cash we currently have. Thus funding is still an important constraint to scaling our work, in addition to some other important constraints.
However, I am moderately confident that between the existing institutional funders (OpenPhil, Survival and Flourishing Fund, Long-Term Future Fund, Longview, and others) that we could meet a lot of our funding requestâwe just havenât asked yet. But (1) itâs not a guarantee that this would go well so weâd still appreciate money from other sources, (2) it would be good to add some diversity from these sources, (3) money from other sources could help us spend less time fundraising and more time accelerating our longtermism plans, (4) more funding sooner could help us expand sooner and with more certainty, and (5) its likely we could still spend more money than these sources would give.
This comment matches my view (perhaps unsurprisingly!).
One thing Iâd add: I think Peter is basically talking about our âLongtermism Departmentâ. We also have a âSurveys and EA Movement Research Departmentâ. And I feel confident they could do a bunch of additional high-value longtermist work if given more funding. And donors could provide funding restricted to just longtermist survey projects or even just specific longtermist survey projects (either commissioning a specific project or funding a specific idea we already have).
(I feel like I should add a conflict of interest statement that I work at RP, but I guess that should be obvious enough from context! And conversely I should mention that I donât work in the survey department, havenât met them in-person, and decided of my own volition to write this comment because I really do think this seems like probably a good donation target.)
Here are some claims that feed into my conclusion:
Funding constraints: My impression is that that department is more funding constrained than the longtermism department
(To be clear, Iâm not saying the longtermism department isnât at all funding constrained, nor that that single factor guarantees that itâs better to fund RP;s survey and EA movement research department than RPâs longtermism department.)
Skills and comparative advantage:
They seem very good at designing, running, and analysing surveys
And I think that that work gains more from specialisation/âexperience/âtraining than one might expect
And there arenât many people specialising for being damn good at designing, running, and/âor analysing longtermism-relevant surveys
I think the only things Iâm aware of are RP, GovAI, and maybe a few individuals (e.g., Lucius Caviola, Stefan Schubert, Vael Gates)
And Iâd guess GovAI wouldnât scale that line of work as rapidly as RP could with funding (though I havenât asked them), and individual people are notably harder to scale...
Thereâs good work to be done:
We have a bunch of ideas for longtermism-relevant surveys and I think some would be very valuable
(I say âsomeâ because some are like rough ideas and I havenât thought in depth about all of them yet)
I/âwe could probably expand on this for potential donors if they were interested
I think I could come up with a bunch more exciting longtermism-relevant surveys if I spent more time doing so
I expect a bunch of other orgs/âstakeholders could as well, at least if we gave them examples, ideas, helped them brainstorm, etc.
Do you also feel funding constrained in the longtermist portion of your work? (Conventional wisdom is that neartermist causes are more funding constrained than longtermist ones.)
Mostly yes. It definitely is the case that, if we were given more cash than the cash that we already have, we could meaningfully accelerate our longtermism team in a way that we cannot do with the cash we currently have. Thus funding is still an important constraint to scaling our work, in addition to some other important constraints.
However, I am moderately confident that between the existing institutional funders (OpenPhil, Survival and Flourishing Fund, Long-Term Future Fund, Longview, and others) that we could meet a lot of our funding requestâwe just havenât asked yet. But (1) itâs not a guarantee that this would go well so weâd still appreciate money from other sources, (2) it would be good to add some diversity from these sources, (3) money from other sources could help us spend less time fundraising and more time accelerating our longtermism plans, (4) more funding sooner could help us expand sooner and with more certainty, and (5) its likely we could still spend more money than these sources would give.
This comment matches my view (perhaps unsurprisingly!).
One thing Iâd add: I think Peter is basically talking about our âLongtermism Departmentâ. We also have a âSurveys and EA Movement Research Departmentâ. And I feel confident they could do a bunch of additional high-value longtermist work if given more funding. And donors could provide funding restricted to just longtermist survey projects or even just specific longtermist survey projects (either commissioning a specific project or funding a specific idea we already have).
(I feel like I should add a conflict of interest statement that I work at RP, but I guess that should be obvious enough from context! And conversely I should mention that I donât work in the survey department, havenât met them in-person, and decided of my own volition to write this comment because I really do think this seems like probably a good donation target.)
Here are some claims that feed into my conclusion:
Funding constraints: My impression is that that department is more funding constrained than the longtermism department
(To be clear, Iâm not saying the longtermism department isnât at all funding constrained, nor that that single factor guarantees that itâs better to fund RP;s survey and EA movement research department than RPâs longtermism department.)
Skills and comparative advantage:
They seem very good at designing, running, and analysing surveys
And I think that that work gains more from specialisation/âexperience/âtraining than one might expect
And there arenât many people specialising for being damn good at designing, running, and/âor analysing longtermism-relevant surveys
I think the only things Iâm aware of are RP, GovAI, and maybe a few individuals (e.g., Lucius Caviola, Stefan Schubert, Vael Gates)
And Iâd guess GovAI wouldnât scale that line of work as rapidly as RP could with funding (though I havenât asked them), and individual people are notably harder to scale...
Thereâs good work to be done:
We have a bunch of ideas for longtermism-relevant surveys and I think some would be very valuable
(I say âsomeâ because some are like rough ideas and I havenât thought in depth about all of them yet)
I/âwe could probably expand on this for potential donors if they were interested
I think I could come up with a bunch more exciting longtermism-relevant surveys if I spent more time doing so
I expect a bunch of other orgs/âstakeholders could as well, at least if we gave them examples, ideas, helped them brainstorm, etc.