I think to some extent there’s just a miscommunication here, rather than a difference in views. I intended to put a lot of things in the “Fundamental, macrostrategic, basic, or crucial-considerations-like work”—I mainly wanted to draw a distinction between (a) all research “upstream” of grantmaking, and (b) things like Available funding, Good applicants with good proposals for implementing good project ideas, Grantmaker capacity to evaluate applications, and Grantmaker capacity to solicit or generate new project ideas.
E.g., I’d include “more relevant knowledge about institutions, including theoretical frameworks for how to think about them” in the bucket I was trying to gesture to.
So not just e.g. Bostrom-style macrostrategy work.
On reflection, I probably should’ve also put “intervention research” in there, and added as a sub-question “And do you think one of these types of research would be more useful for your grantmaking than the others?”
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But then your “ETA” part is less focused on macrostrategy specifically, and there I think my current view does differ from yours (making yours interesting + thought-provoking).
Thanks, these are interesting perspectives.
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I think to some extent there’s just a miscommunication here, rather than a difference in views. I intended to put a lot of things in the “Fundamental, macrostrategic, basic, or crucial-considerations-like work”—I mainly wanted to draw a distinction between (a) all research “upstream” of grantmaking, and (b) things like Available funding, Good applicants with good proposals for implementing good project ideas, Grantmaker capacity to evaluate applications, and Grantmaker capacity to solicit or generate new project ideas.
E.g., I’d include “more relevant knowledge about institutions, including theoretical frameworks for how to think about them” in the bucket I was trying to gesture to.
So not just e.g. Bostrom-style macrostrategy work.
On reflection, I probably should’ve also put “intervention research” in there, and added as a sub-question “And do you think one of these types of research would be more useful for your grantmaking than the others?”
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But then your “ETA” part is less focused on macrostrategy specifically, and there I think my current view does differ from yours (making yours interesting + thought-provoking).