I was really confused by your post because it seemed to ask for normative rules about not talking about philanthropy and grants to EA causes, which doesn’t seem reasonable.
Now, after reading your comments, I think what you meant is closer to:
“It seems unworkably hard to talk about grants in the new cause areas. What do we do?”
I’m still not sure if this is what you want, but since no one has really answered, I want to try to give thoughts that might serve your purposes.
We consider AI Safety to be very important A trusted advisor is excited Everything checks out at the operational level
As far as I can tell, these are not the kinds of issue we are (or should be) discussing on EA Forum
I don’t understand the statement this “these are not the kinds of issue we are (or should be) discussing”.
To be specific:
We consider AI Safety to be very important
This is a cause area question and this seems totally up for discussion.
For example, someone could criticize a cause area by pointing to a substantial period of time, like 3 or 5 years where progress in a cause area is low or stagnant, or that experts say this, or that it is plausibly funded or solved.
(This seems possible but very difficult this is because of the moral and epistemic uncertainty but also because cause areas are not non-zero sum games.)
On the positive side, people can post new cause areas and discuss why they are important.
This seems much more productive, and there may even be strong demand for this.
It seems unlikely that an EA forum discussion alone will establish a new cause area but such a discussion seems like an extremely valuable use of the forum.
A trusted advisor is excited
It seems reasonable to say that existing advisors are low in value or that new advisors can be added. This can be done diplomatically:
“EA has really benefited from increase in Longtermism community, I wonder if the pool in Open Phil’s advisors has been expanded to match?”
“Here are a list of experts who are consistently highly valued by the community. Has Open Phil considered adding them as advisors?”
“I see that person A was an advisor for this grant. I understand Person B who is also an expert has these beliefs that [plausible for these reasons] that seems to suggest different views for this intervention.”
Everything checks out at the operational level (“application prototyping, testing, basic organizational set-up, and public talks at Stanford and USC”)
It seems easy to unduly pick holes in new orgs, but there are situations where things are very defective and the outlook is bad, and it’s very reasonable to point this out, again diplomatically:
“I think this org had several CEOs over a 2 year period. This is different from what I’ve seen in other EA orgs and clarification about [issues with tangible output] is useful.
“I heard the founder talk at Stanford. During the talk, person A pointed out that X and Y were true. I think person A is an expert and their concerns weren’t addressed. Here is a summary of them...”
(Note that I think I have examples of most of the above that actually occurred. I don’t think it’s that productive or becoming to link them all.)
In the above, I tried to focus on criticism, because that is harder.
I think your post might be asking for more positive ways to communicate meta issues—this seems sort of easy (?).
To be clear, you say:
I could be wrong, but it’s hard to imagine endorsing a norm where many top EA Forum posts are of the form “I talked to Alexey Guzey from New Science, it seems exciting” or worse “I talked to Adam Marblestone about New Science, and he seems excited about it”.
But it’s not totally clear to me which of these are both useful and appropriate. For example, I could write a post on whether or not the constructivist view of science is correct (FWIW I don’t believe Alexey actually holds this view), but it’s not clear that the discussion would have any bearing on the grant-worthiness of New Science.
I think a red herring is that in the “Case for the grant”, the wording is very terse. But I don’t think this terseness is a norm outside of grant descriptions, or necessarily the only way to talk or signal the value of organizations.
For example, a post, a few pages long, with a perspective about New Science that point out things that are useful and interesting would certainly would be well received (the org does seem extremely interesting!). For example, it can mention tangible projects, researchers and otherwise write truthful narratives that suggest they are attracting and influencing talent or otherwise improving the Life Sciences ecosystem.
I might have more to say but I am worried I still “don’t get” your question.
a post, a few pages long, with a perspective about New Science that point out things that are useful and interesting would certainly would be well received
Okay that’s helpful to hear.
A lot of this question is inspired by the recent Charter Cities debate. For context:
Charter Cities Institute released a short paper a while back arguing that it could be as good as top GiveWell charities
Rethink Priorities more recently shared a longer report, concluding that it was likely not as good as GiveWell charities
Mark Lutter (who runs CCI) replied, arguing that more optimistic model parameters are reasonable
This all makes sense within the GiveWell-style of philanthropy where we’re making cost-effectiveness estimates on short-run goods like increased consumption or decreased mortality.
But in the HoldenOpenPhil model, where we’re debating things like:
Is this is an important cause area
Does the organization seem well run
Are there trusted expert advisors who endorse the organization
I’m unclear on what kind of EA Forum post is:
Appropriate (meaning it’s not just shilling for a charity, feels like substantial analysis, not just gossip over which organizations and causes are exciting or not among certain groups)
Useful (meaning it carries some weight w/r/t to grant decisions by funders, specifically HoldenOpenPhil in this case, not necessarily that it’s decisive or sufficient)
A lot of this question is inspired by the recent Charter Cities debate...This all makes sense within the GiveWell-style of philanthropy where we’re making cost-effectiveness estimates on short-run goods like increased consumption or decreased mortality.
But isn’t the GiveWell-style philanthropy exactly not applicable for your example of charter cities?
My sense is that the case for charter cities has some macro/systems process that is hard to measure (and that is why it is only now a new cause area and why the debate exists).
I specifically didn’t want to pull out examples, but if it’s helpful here’s another example of a debate for an intervention that relies on difficult to measure outcomes and involves, hard to untangle, divergent worldviews between the respective proponents.
(This is somewhat of a tangent but honestly, your important question is inherently complex and there seems to be a lot of things going on, so clarity from smoothing out some of the points seems valuable.)
But in the HoldenOpenPhil model, where we’re debating things like:
Is this is an important cause area
Does the organization seem well run
Are there trusted expert advisors who endorse the organization
I don’t understand why my answer in the previous post above, or these debates aren’t object level responses to how you could discuss the value of these interventions.
I’m worried I’m talking past you and not being helpful.
Now, trying more vigorously / speculatively here:
Maybe one answer is that you are right, it is hard to influence direct granting—furthermore, this means that directly influencing granting is not what we should be focused on in the forum.
At the risk of being prescriptive (which I dislike) I think this is a reasonable attitude on the forum, in the sense that “policing grants” or something, should be a very low priority for organic reasons for most people, and instead learning/communicating and a “scout mindset” is ultimately more productive. But such discussion cannot be proscribed and even a tacit norm against them would be bad.
Maybe you mean that this level of difficulty is “wrong” in some sense. For example, we should respond by paying special, unique attention to the HOP grants or expect them to be communicated and discussed actively. This seems not implausible.
I’m unclear on what kind of EA Forum post is:
Appropriate (meaning it’s not just shilling for a charity, feels like substantial analysis, not just gossip over which organizations and causes are exciting or not among certain groups)
Useful (meaning it carries some weight w/r/t to grant decisions by funders, specifically HoldenOpenPhil in this case, not necessarily that it’s decisive or sufficient)
I could see how HOP areas are harder but as in my first comment, I think it’s inherently hard for anyone to criticize any well researched grant, especially if you account for social factors, as you do.
However, I think there are ways to indicate comfort or discomfort with grants or even major EA orgs.
There are specific examples of this, where people have individually started posts that were influential and drew enormous attention to their concerns.
If you go to the all posts page and select “Yearly” and “Top”, you will find an remarkable example in the top 10 for 2021 (please do not link this post in any reply).
I’m pretty sure that some of these posts do influence Open Phil (but maybe not quite in the way we want).
Again, I choose a negative example because it’s harder.
There’s abundant posts that promote or talk about their work in a cause. In some sense. all blog posts from orgs promote their orgs and pretty much any such honest writing from an EA is welcome.
I think there’s a causal chain where this can influence Open Phil or specific grant makers.
By the way, I’m 90% sure that two or more Open Phil members will read/has read your post already.
I was really confused by your post because it seemed to ask for normative rules about not talking about philanthropy and grants to EA causes, which doesn’t seem reasonable.
Now, after reading your comments, I think what you meant is closer to:
“It seems unworkably hard to talk about grants in the new cause areas. What do we do?”
I’m still not sure if this is what you want, but since no one has really answered, I want to try to give thoughts that might serve your purposes.
From your comment:
I don’t understand the statement this “these are not the kinds of issue we are (or should be) discussing”.
To be specific:
This is a cause area question and this seems totally up for discussion.
For example, someone could criticize a cause area by pointing to a substantial period of time, like 3 or 5 years where progress in a cause area is low or stagnant, or that experts say this, or that it is plausibly funded or solved.
(This seems possible but very difficult this is because of the moral and epistemic uncertainty but also because cause areas are not non-zero sum games.)
On the positive side, people can post new cause areas and discuss why they are important.
This seems much more productive, and there may even be strong demand for this.
It seems unlikely that an EA forum discussion alone will establish a new cause area but such a discussion seems like an extremely valuable use of the forum.
It seems reasonable to say that existing advisors are low in value or that new advisors can be added. This can be done diplomatically:
“EA has really benefited from increase in Longtermism community, I wonder if the pool in Open Phil’s advisors has been expanded to match?”
“Here are a list of experts who are consistently highly valued by the community. Has Open Phil considered adding them as advisors?”
“I see that person A was an advisor for this grant. I understand Person B who is also an expert has these beliefs that [plausible for these reasons] that seems to suggest different views for this intervention.”
It seems easy to unduly pick holes in new orgs, but there are situations where things are very defective and the outlook is bad, and it’s very reasonable to point this out, again diplomatically:
“I think this org had several CEOs over a 2 year period. This is different from what I’ve seen in other EA orgs and clarification about [issues with tangible output] is useful.
“I heard the founder talk at Stanford. During the talk, person A pointed out that X and Y were true. I think person A is an expert and their concerns weren’t addressed. Here is a summary of them...”
(Note that I think I have examples of most of the above that actually occurred. I don’t think it’s that productive or becoming to link them all.)
In the above, I tried to focus on criticism, because that is harder.
I think your post might be asking for more positive ways to communicate meta issues—this seems sort of easy (?).
To be clear, you say:
I think a red herring is that in the “Case for the grant”, the wording is very terse. But I don’t think this terseness is a norm outside of grant descriptions, or necessarily the only way to talk or signal the value of organizations.
For example, a post, a few pages long, with a perspective about New Science that point out things that are useful and interesting would certainly would be well received (the org does seem extremely interesting!). For example, it can mention tangible projects, researchers and otherwise write truthful narratives that suggest they are attracting and influencing talent or otherwise improving the Life Sciences ecosystem.
I might have more to say but I am worried I still “don’t get” your question.
Okay that’s helpful to hear.
A lot of this question is inspired by the recent Charter Cities debate. For context:
Charter Cities Institute released a short paper a while back arguing that it could be as good as top GiveWell charities
Rethink Priorities more recently shared a longer report, concluding that it was likely not as good as GiveWell charities
Mark Lutter (who runs CCI) replied, arguing that more optimistic model parameters are reasonable
This all makes sense within the GiveWell-style of philanthropy where we’re making cost-effectiveness estimates on short-run goods like increased consumption or decreased mortality.
But in the HoldenOpenPhil model, where we’re debating things like:
Is this is an important cause area
Does the organization seem well run
Are there trusted expert advisors who endorse the organization
I’m unclear on what kind of EA Forum post is:
Appropriate (meaning it’s not just shilling for a charity, feels like substantial analysis, not just gossip over which organizations and causes are exciting or not among certain groups)
Useful (meaning it carries some weight w/r/t to grant decisions by funders, specifically HoldenOpenPhil in this case, not necessarily that it’s decisive or sufficient)
But isn’t the GiveWell-style philanthropy exactly not applicable for your example of charter cities?
My sense is that the case for charter cities has some macro/systems process that is hard to measure (and that is why it is only now a new cause area and why the debate exists).
I specifically didn’t want to pull out examples, but if it’s helpful here’s another example of a debate for an intervention that relies on difficult to measure outcomes and involves, hard to untangle, divergent worldviews between the respective proponents.
(This is somewhat of a tangent but honestly, your important question is inherently complex and there seems to be a lot of things going on, so clarity from smoothing out some of the points seems valuable.)
I don’t understand why my answer in the previous post above, or these debates aren’t object level responses to how you could discuss the value of these interventions.
I’m worried I’m talking past you and not being helpful.
Now, trying more vigorously / speculatively here:
Maybe one answer is that you are right, it is hard to influence direct granting—furthermore, this means that directly influencing granting is not what we should be focused on in the forum.
At the risk of being prescriptive (which I dislike) I think this is a reasonable attitude on the forum, in the sense that “policing grants” or something, should be a very low priority for organic reasons for most people, and instead learning/communicating and a “scout mindset” is ultimately more productive. But such discussion cannot be proscribed and even a tacit norm against them would be bad.
Maybe you mean that this level of difficulty is “wrong” in some sense. For example, we should respond by paying special, unique attention to the HOP grants or expect them to be communicated and discussed actively. This seems not implausible.
I could see how HOP areas are harder but as in my first comment, I think it’s inherently hard for anyone to criticize any well researched grant, especially if you account for social factors, as you do.
However, I think there are ways to indicate comfort or discomfort with grants or even major EA orgs.
There are specific examples of this, where people have individually started posts that were influential and drew enormous attention to their concerns.
If you go to the all posts page and select “Yearly” and “Top”, you will find an remarkable example in the top 10 for 2021 (please do not link this post in any reply).
I’m pretty sure that some of these posts do influence Open Phil (but maybe not quite in the way we want).
Again, I choose a negative example because it’s harder.
There’s abundant posts that promote or talk about their work in a cause. In some sense. all blog posts from orgs promote their orgs and pretty much any such honest writing from an EA is welcome.
I think there’s a causal chain where this can influence Open Phil or specific grant makers.
By the way, I’m 90% sure that two or more Open Phil members will read/has read your post already.