I’m a bit surprised that recusal seems to be pushed for last-resort in this document. Intuitively I would have expected that because there are multiple members of the committee, many in very different locations, it wouldn’t be that hard to have the “point of contact” be different from the “one who makes the decision.” Similar to how in some cases if one person recommends a candidate for employment, it can be easy enough to just have different people interview them.
Recusal seems really nice in many ways. Like, it would also make some things less awkward for the grantors, as their friends wouldn’t need to worry about being judged as much.
Any chance you could explain a bit how the recusal process works, and why it’s preferred to not do this? Do other team members often feel really unable to make decisions on these people without knowing them? Is it common that the candidates are known closely by many of the committee members, such that collective recusal would be infeasible?
We’re a pretty small team, and for most grants, there usually are only one or two people on the fund who have enough context on the project and the grantees to actually be able to assess whether the grant is a good idea. Those are also usually the fund members who are most likely to have conflicts of interest.
Since none of us are full-time, we also usually don’t have enough time to share all of our models with each other, so it often isn’t feasible to just have the contact-person share all of their impressions with the other fund members, and have them vote on it (since we realistically can’t spend more than an hour of full-fund time on each individual grant we make).
One of the things that I am most concerned about if you were to just move towards recusal, is you just end up in a situation where by necessity the other fund members just have to take the recused person’s word for the grant being good (or you pass up on all the most valuable grant opportunities). Then their own votes mostly just indirectly represent their trust in the fund member with the COI, as opposed to their independent assessment. This to me seems like it much further reduces accountability and transparency, and muddles a bunch of the internal decision-making.
The current algorithm we are running is something closer to: Be hesitant with recusal, but if the only people on the fund who are strongly in favor of a grant also have some potential weak COI, then put more effort into getting more references and other external sources of validation, but usually still taking the vote of the person with the potential weak COI into account.
Maybe we could integrate this officially into this policy by saying something like: If you have a COI of this type, we will give less weight to your vote, but your vote will still have some weight, depending on how strong your COI is judged by the other fund members. Though I am worried that this is too detailed and would require changing every time we change the local dynamics of how we vote on things.
One of the things that I am most concerned about if you were to just move towards recusal, is you just end up in a situation where by necessity the other fund members just have to take the recused person’s word for the grant being good (or you pass up on all the most valuable grant opportunities).
It also seems that the recusal being discussed is quite weak. In my limited experience, recusal means totally vacating oneself from the decision making process. For example, when a SCOTUS Judge recuses himself, he doesn’t take any role in the debate or voting. Similarly, when moderating the EA facebook group, generally conflicted mods won’t argue for a position (though this is just my description of a norm and not an explicit rule we’ve had). If fund members with large conflicts of interest end up de facto making the decision anyway then the COI policy doesn’t seem to have achieved anything.
I would suggest instead that other fund managers research the application and make the decision. This would help avoid an unfair bias towards funding people who are ‘in the community’.
One of the things that I am most concerned about if you were to just move towards recusal, is you just end up in a situation where by necessity the other fund members just have to take the recused person’s word for the grant being good (or you pass up on all the most valuable grant opportunities
I agree this would be a very bad outcome, and I’m surprised you think it is a possibility. Individuals/organisations should not be precluded from receiving LTF grants due to their personal lives, particularly if LTF continues to be the major funder for certain types of grants. I think the onus is on LTF to find a way of managing COIs that avoids this, while also having a suitably stringent COI policy.
I think the onus is on LTF to find a way of managing COIs that avoids this, while also having a suitably stringent COI policy.
I mean, these are clearly trading off against each other, given all the time constraints I explained in a different comment. Sure, you can say that we have an obligation, but that doesn’t really help me balance these tradeoffs.
The above COI policy is my best guess at how to manage that tradeoff. It seems to me that moving towards recusal on any of the above axes, will have to prevent at least some grants being made, or at least I don’t currently really see a way forward that would not make that the case. I do think looking into some kind of COI board could be a good idea, but I do continue to be quite concerned about having a profusion of boards in which no one has any real investment and no one has time to really think through things, and am currently tending towards that being a bad idea.
I’m a bit surprised that recusal seems to be pushed for last-resort in this document. Intuitively I would have expected that because there are multiple members of the committee, many in very different locations, it wouldn’t be that hard to have the “point of contact” be different from the “one who makes the decision.” Similar to how in some cases if one person recommends a candidate for employment, it can be easy enough to just have different people interview them.
Recusal seems really nice in many ways. Like, it would also make some things less awkward for the grantors, as their friends wouldn’t need to worry about being judged as much.
Any chance you could explain a bit how the recusal process works, and why it’s preferred to not do this? Do other team members often feel really unable to make decisions on these people without knowing them? Is it common that the candidates are known closely by many of the committee members, such that collective recusal would be infeasible?
We’re a pretty small team, and for most grants, there usually are only one or two people on the fund who have enough context on the project and the grantees to actually be able to assess whether the grant is a good idea. Those are also usually the fund members who are most likely to have conflicts of interest.
Since none of us are full-time, we also usually don’t have enough time to share all of our models with each other, so it often isn’t feasible to just have the contact-person share all of their impressions with the other fund members, and have them vote on it (since we realistically can’t spend more than an hour of full-fund time on each individual grant we make).
One of the things that I am most concerned about if you were to just move towards recusal, is you just end up in a situation where by necessity the other fund members just have to take the recused person’s word for the grant being good (or you pass up on all the most valuable grant opportunities). Then their own votes mostly just indirectly represent their trust in the fund member with the COI, as opposed to their independent assessment. This to me seems like it much further reduces accountability and transparency, and muddles a bunch of the internal decision-making.
The current algorithm we are running is something closer to: Be hesitant with recusal, but if the only people on the fund who are strongly in favor of a grant also have some potential weak COI, then put more effort into getting more references and other external sources of validation, but usually still taking the vote of the person with the potential weak COI into account.
Maybe we could integrate this officially into this policy by saying something like: If you have a COI of this type, we will give less weight to your vote, but your vote will still have some weight, depending on how strong your COI is judged by the other fund members. Though I am worried that this is too detailed and would require changing every time we change the local dynamics of how we vote on things.
It also seems that the recusal being discussed is quite weak. In my limited experience, recusal means totally vacating oneself from the decision making process. For example, when a SCOTUS Judge recuses himself, he doesn’t take any role in the debate or voting. Similarly, when moderating the EA facebook group, generally conflicted mods won’t argue for a position (though this is just my description of a norm and not an explicit rule we’ve had). If fund members with large conflicts of interest end up de facto making the decision anyway then the COI policy doesn’t seem to have achieved anything.
I would suggest instead that other fund managers research the application and make the decision. This would help avoid an unfair bias towards funding people who are ‘in the community’.
I agree this would be a very bad outcome, and I’m surprised you think it is a possibility. Individuals/organisations should not be precluded from receiving LTF grants due to their personal lives, particularly if LTF continues to be the major funder for certain types of grants. I think the onus is on LTF to find a way of managing COIs that avoids this, while also having a suitably stringent COI policy.
I mean, these are clearly trading off against each other, given all the time constraints I explained in a different comment. Sure, you can say that we have an obligation, but that doesn’t really help me balance these tradeoffs.
The above COI policy is my best guess at how to manage that tradeoff. It seems to me that moving towards recusal on any of the above axes, will have to prevent at least some grants being made, or at least I don’t currently really see a way forward that would not make that the case. I do think looking into some kind of COI board could be a good idea, but I do continue to be quite concerned about having a profusion of boards in which no one has any real investment and no one has time to really think through things, and am currently tending towards that being a bad idea.