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 request—we just haven’t asked yet. But (1) it’s not a guarantee that this would go well so we’d 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 I’d add: I think Peter is basically talking about our “Longtermism Department”. We also have a “Surveys and EA Movement Research Department”. 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 don’t work in the survey department, haven’t 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, I’m not saying the longtermism department isn’t at all funding constrained, nor that that single factor guarantees that it’s better to fund RP;s survey and EA movement research department than RP’s 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/experience/training than one might expect
And there aren’t many people specialising for being damn good at designing, running, and/or analysing longtermism-relevant surveys
I think the only things I’m aware of are RP, GovAI, and maybe a few individuals (e.g., Lucius Caviola, Stefan Schubert, Vael Gates)
And I’d guess GovAI wouldn’t scale that line of work as rapidly as RP could with funding (though I haven’t asked them), and individual people are notably harder to scale...
There’s 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 “some” because some are like rough ideas and I haven’t thought in depth about all of them yet)
I/we 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/stakeholders could as well, at least if we gave them examples, ideas, helped them brainstorm, etc.
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 request—we just haven’t asked yet. But (1) it’s not a guarantee that this would go well so we’d 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 I’d add: I think Peter is basically talking about our “Longtermism Department”. We also have a “Surveys and EA Movement Research Department”. 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 don’t work in the survey department, haven’t 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, I’m not saying the longtermism department isn’t at all funding constrained, nor that that single factor guarantees that it’s better to fund RP;s survey and EA movement research department than RP’s 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/experience/training than one might expect
And there aren’t many people specialising for being damn good at designing, running, and/or analysing longtermism-relevant surveys
I think the only things I’m aware of are RP, GovAI, and maybe a few individuals (e.g., Lucius Caviola, Stefan Schubert, Vael Gates)
And I’d guess GovAI wouldn’t scale that line of work as rapidly as RP could with funding (though I haven’t asked them), and individual people are notably harder to scale...
There’s 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 “some” because some are like rough ideas and I haven’t thought in depth about all of them yet)
I/we 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/stakeholders could as well, at least if we gave them examples, ideas, helped them brainstorm, etc.